Many companies are trying to use AI chatbots (beyond ChatGPT) in different industries — especially in the consumer sector. startup based in Berlin Leila is building on this trend to create an eponymous chatbot (along with an app) that recommends new travel destinations. It can also help them when it comes to reservations.
The company was started by Jeremy Jauncey, founder of travel agency Beautiful Destinations with millions of followers on social media platforms, and Saad Saeed, who co-founded grocery delivery service Flink.
Jauncey told TechCrunch after a call that the company wanted to bring a new solution to the travel industry based on their experience in social networking and building tech products.
“Having spent so much time over the last 10 years really deeply embedded in social media and the creator economy, we felt that the discovery journey needed something fresh. We’ve seen that, post-pandemic, many users are basing their travel decisions on what they’ve seen on Instagram and TikTok and capitalizing on that,” he said.
While the company is officially launching its app and chatbot today, Layla already has thousands of followers on Instagram, thanks to the Beautiful Destinations network. The founders believe that the Instagram chatbot provides a great entry point for users to search for different destinations to travel to.
Image Credits: Leila
Users can chat with Layla on Instagram about destinations, their temperatures, the best time to go and things to do along with flight and hotel options. The bot also shows videos of different destinations from creators (taken from the Beautiful Destinations network) to give you an alternative view of a place.
Saeed mentioned that the startup is pushing people to use Layla’s app on Instagram after a few exchanges of conversations. In the app, people can create different lists, share them with friends and chat with Layla about different trips. In addition, the app allows them to display videos, ticket prices and hotel options in a richer way.
Image Credits: Leila
Jauncey said the average person goes to multiple websites for all things related to travel advice from inspiration to the booking phase. And with Layla, the founders want to shorten that journey.
Layla has partnered with Booking.com to display hotel options and Skyscanner to display flight options. Currently, it starts with a commission split on these transactions as a revenue stream. However, with scale, the startup is also open to exploring more monetization avenues, such as personalized advertising opportunities.
The company has secured a seed investment of 3 million euros ($3.2 million) led by Firstminute Capital — which was created by lastminute.com co-founder Brent Hoberman and M13. Other investors include Booking.com co-founder Andy Phillips, Skyscanner co-founder Barry Smith and showbiz star Paris Hilton.
Layla believes its differentiation lies in displaying different kinds of content and lacking a website-like structure where users have to apply filters to get search results. While the company uses large language models to parse queries and display answers, it has built its own recommendation engine. In addition, Saeed said Layla is building vision technology to help it answer questions like “show me destinations that look like Mars” or surface suggestions that look like places in a photo or video.
Hoberman, an investor in the project, said Firstminute invested in the idea because they were excited about the combination of using AI to answer travel questions and showing proprietary videos of different destinations to drive people to travel.
“Layla will have challenges in training customers to ask the right kind of questions so the AI can provide accurate answers. Additionally, it should be the best layer of travel inspiration to differentiate itself from other solutions out there,” said Hoberman.
Competitors are also gearing up to use AI in their travel solutions. Vancouver-based Pilot is building an AI-focused travel planner to easily share travel ideas with friends. Airbnb and Brian Chesky have already started experimenting with AI-powered review summaries and are open to infusing the technology in other parts of the app. Kayak and Expedia have their own GPTs (ChatGPT plugins) and the travel publisher’s Matador Network Guidegeek The app displays real-time flight information. However, investors believe that “even a small lead matters right now” when it comes to the introduction of artificial intelligence in the travel industry.
