From brainstorming buddy to content scaling and revenue management”, how AI is aiding each of these four startups

They have come out of the pandemic, each stronger in their own ways. And now thanks to new tools driven by AI and other disruptive technologies, we heard from four regional startups at WiT Singapore 2023 – each determined to find cost-effective ways to scale and thrive in today’s brave new market.

Gathered onstage on a panel called ‘The Tech That Binds, The Startups That Thrive’, panel members from South Korea, Singapore, India and Taiwan each explored how they have found their own unique ways to emerge from the pandemic and strengthen their hold in their respective travel space. We asked them how they were solving problems with the future in mind.

AI tools to the front row

Playing the role of non-believer for the purposes of this panel, Rod Cuthbert, founder & former CEO of Viator, soon realised that this would not be a group in which tech-scepticism was the in-thing (or even tolerated?).

And rightly so: when you are a startup newly emerged from a global pandemic, time is of the essence and lowering costs is your top priority. Thanks to a slew of AI-generated tools in particular, help is on the way.

Winnie Tan, CEO & Founder of TripZilla.com said that for a startup team of online content creators, experimentation has been at the heart of finding new ways to do things. “I guess, tech-adoption wise, the last couple of years would have been the same, Covid or no Covid. It was necessary for us to find ways to do things and produce results faster, easier and cheaper,” says Tan. “The good thing was, we had help from AI.”

Benny Lee, Founder & CEO, STAYFOLIO, has utilised a range of tech solutions including IoT technologies and Chat GPT to drive revenue

Using a range of new AI-driven tools, the TripZilla team were able to save time when producing first-draft stories and utilise generative AI to produce, from scratch, realistic royalty-free photos. Then there were AI-powered video conversion tools: “For good content articles that perform very well, we repurpose it into videos, which can be done in less than five minutes,” she says. “So, by milking the content to the max, there’s a lot of cost-savings there.”

Even in areas like client servicing and campaign execution, automation tools were helping to automate things like scheduling of content, allocation of budgets across all the social media platforms and performance reporting. For Tan though, rather than serving as a human replacement, the tools were ensuring everyone could stretch themselves further.

“We don’t replace our human editors with AI, but it’s more like a brainstorming and research assistant. So you have a brainstorming buddy and a research assistant in one,” she says. “As a content producer, we can’t guarantee a piece of what goes viral: it’s a lot of hits and misses. But I think with an AI buddy, it ensures that the standard is really high now.”

In a positive sense, the tools were allowing her team to develop faster. “Everybody needs to find their core competence – and that’s the thing about working in a startup, you want to work with the most talented people. Now with all these resources and this assistance they’re given, they can do a lot more.”

From right: Daniel Cheng (Founder & President RTM Association – Redefine Tourism Mixer- , Taiwan), Vikram Malhi (CEO & Co-founder, ZUZU Hospitality Solutions), Rod Cuthbert (Founder & former CEO, Viator / former CEO, Rome2rio / Non-executive Director, Veltra Corp & Jayride / Board Member, Tourism Tasmania), Winnie Tan (ICEO & Founder, TripZilla.com), Benny Lee (Founder & CEO, STAYFOLIO)

Data abilities scaled up

Given that Asia’s cultural complexity has always been a blessing and a curse for businesses seeking to scale, technology can provide a perfect antidote for those seeking to scale fast.

For instance, in running a revenue-and-distribution platform for independent hotels, Vikram Malhi, CEO & Co-founder of ZUZU Hospitality Solutions, says the range of new tools in the market has allowed his team to better serve around 2,500 hotels across seven different countries.

“The big use of technology for us, was in revenue management and pricing. For the 2,500 hotels, we track roughly 10 competitors. So that’s about 30,000 hotels. And each hotel has about five-to-six different room type rate plan combinations. For each of these, we look at their pricing data for 365 days,” he notes.

“Every day, we have about 10 million data points on pricing alone. We then need to analyse that data and make the right decision for our hotel partners. So for us, with technology and AI, a big impetus in the last two years was to automate a lot of that, using big data or AI, to make sure that we’re making the optimal pricing decision for our hotels.”

Blending engineering and humanity

In running a travel startup accelerator in Taipei, Daniel Cheng, Founder & President of RTM Association has a unique view on the startup ecosystem and its various business models and leadership personalities. RTM Association hosts 40 start-ups per batch in a programme, for around half a year, providing them education, consulting, and investor relationship management.

Cheng observed that the discussion around AI has seen the dynamic around the ideal skill-sets for startups come full circle since he began in 2014. “When I founded my organisation RTM in Taiwan, at the time, many tech-savvy guys got into our travel domain. They didn’t know anything about travel, but they had very cool technologies,” he recalls.

“When they entered the travel space, they started realising that, ‘Oh, travel is not a place where technology and tools can solve all the problems’. They had to get human – those engineers learned how to utilise humanity: and how to use cultural ways to take advantage of their skills and create business models. Now in a time of AI, I start seeing humans startup to better utilise engineers and new technologies to improve lives.”

“The big use of technology for us, was in revenue management and pricing. For the 2,500 hotels, we track roughly 10 competitors. So that’s about 30,000 hotels,” explains ZUZU’s Vikram Malhi

IoT Technology for experiential travel

Korean startup STAYFOLIO offers a unique travel experience that combines traditional Korean hanok stays with contemporary design and lifestyle amenities. Its hanoks, or tradional Korean houses, are carefully curated to provide a serene and authentic Korean experience with a modern touch, delivering what the company hopes is a one-of-a-kind stay.

Benny Lee, Founder & CEO, STAYFOLIO, has been in business for two years, during which he has utilised a range of tech solutions, from IoT technologies to chatbots powered by Chat GPT and other AI tools. For many customers including Rod Cuthbert, the virtual assistants are near-impossible to tell from human customers.

Lee said that during the pandemic in particular, technology filled an important gap when face-to-face contact was restricted. “At the time, IoT technologies were very important to us, because they made the tech-interface and the non-face-to-face element become possible,” he recalls. During this phase, revenues spiked significantly, he noted.

Does AI threaten human labour?

For STAYFOLIO at least, hiring new human staff has been put on hold. “We’re not hiring right now, because we’re ‘hiring’ Chat GPT’s characters,” he notes. “We’re creating the content, doing the writing and talking to our Chat GPT members. Right now, it’s very useful: and there are no costs,” he says.

“But on the people side, when it comes to human instincts or emotion, the bots don’t understand anything. Chat GPT doesn’t deal in creativity,” he notes. In targeting what Lee described as a “nano client” with very personalised and refined taste, human talent remains the key.

Cheng of RTM says more Taiwan-based startups are using AI or similar technologies to improve their business models. He cites the example of Gogoout, an OTA focusing on car rentals: “They still need to have human sellers to connect with the car-rental stores. But once they get the information and contracts, all the information and data can be quickly processed onto the OTA and their database, thanks to AI’s empowerment.”

RTM’s Cheng observed that the discussion around AI has seen the dynamic around the ideal skill-sets for startups come full circle since he began in 2014.

ZUZU’s Malhi acknowledged that at this stage, different tech tools have their acknowledged limitations. Yet in areas like rapid-response, AI was proving very useful. “I think where we have found the usage to be good, is around generating content, and making it sound like it created by humans. So it’s more realistic,” he describes.

“An example would be that a lot of our hotel partners struggle with responding to reviews for hotels. We know they don’t have enough staff: it’s really hard for them to make sure that it’s responded to on-time. We’re now fully automating that using Chat GPT. And the responses that go out are really realistic. They seem like someone has actually taken time and written them down.”

For Tan of TripZilla, changes in Google search rules currently threaten the business model of content-based startups, she notes. “Google introduced this search-generated experience, and we’ve tried it out. I think that is very interesting and is keeping me awake at night. Those who have tried it will know that the future of search is totally different on the search engines,” she flags. “It’s going to be difficult. With all these zero-search clicks, people don’t need to click any links to go to your site.”

Fortunately, she feels that TripZilla’s smart humans should, at least for now, keep pace with Google’s smart technology. “I think what we’re experimenting with now is how to make our content appear on snippets. How to make it appear on a search generated experience – so that even when the day comes, where zero-click searches are on the rise, we will still be there.”