The Grapevine Effect: Transforming Corporate Travel Experiences

Описание: In this episode of Travel Around the Block, hosts Joel and Mike sit down with Jack Dow, founder and CEO of Grapevine—an AI-native assistant designed to keep business travelers supported, compliant, and in policy throughout their journey.

Jack shares his path from commercial real estate in the UK and Australia into travel tech, and how Grapevine began as a B2C friends-recommendations and travel content platform that used an early version of GPT-3 to tag points of interest in articles.
Grapevine’s pivot to B2B after Travel Tech Europe 2019, where discussions with a UK TMC (Gray Dawes Travel) revealed a major industry issue: many travelers don’t book hotels and other essentials through managed channels, with typical TMC hotel attach rates around 20–30%.

Jack outlines how Grapevine works as a lightweight, plug-in solution that integrates into existing tech stacks via data feeds. Rather than servicing flights, it focuses on post-booking, proactive communications—like a “proactive EA”—to prompt travelers at the right time to book hotels, ground transport, and other trip essentials in-policy.

The episode includes a live demo of Grapevine’s conversational AI answering policy questions, recommending hotels, and providing trip-relevant details (amenities, distance to venues, lounge access). Jack also discusses fundraising realities in travel, the need to educate generalist investors, and what’s next for Grapevine—taxis/ground transport, airport parking, WhatsApp and Slack/Teams channels, visa prompting, and richer real-time reporting.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:41 Jack Dow's Background and Journey
01:43 The Birth of Grapevine
03:13 Pivoting from B2C to B2B
05:00 Challenges and Opportunities in Business Travel
06:10 Startup Life and Micro Pivots
12:16 The Importance of Data in Business Travel
18:17 Fundraising and Investment Insights
30:28 The Role of AI in Grapevine
31:00 Rebuilding the System from Scratch
31:07 Understanding the Customer Data Platform
31:42 Granular Travel Data Analysis
32:11 Personalization and Trip Matching
34:00 Proactive Communications and Support
37:07 Conversational AI Demo
41:52 Future of Travel and AI
44:32 Upcoming Product Announcements
47:39 Lightning Round: Future Predictions
53:22 Closing Remarks and Thanks