As travelers increasingly rely on AI-powered platforms to discover and plan trips, many destinations are struggling to stay visible online. Drifter AI is helping tourism organizations adapt by ensuring places can effectively tell their stories—and remain discoverable—in the age of generative AI.
Founded by Aaron, Founder and CEO of Drifter AI, the company was inspired by his experience in the PR industry and his observations of how travel discovery was evolving. Aaron saw a growing disconnect between how destinations wanted to present themselves and how travelers were actually finding information online. At the same time, social media and AI-driven recommendations were concentrating attention on the same popular destinations, leaving many unique places overlooked.
Drifter AI was created to solve that visibility problem. The platform helps destination marketers and tourism boards improve how they appear across AI-powered discovery tools like ChatGPT and other generative search platforms. As traveler behavior shifts away from traditional SEO and keyword-based search, Drifter AI helps destinations stay technically visible and relevant to modern travelers.
Aaron approaches the company as both a founder and product designer, continuously refining the platform based on user feedback and emerging technology. While the company’s initial focus is on destination marketing organizations and tourism boards, its long-term vision is to expand across hotels, attractions, venues, and events—ultimately building a broader network and community around destination visibility.
“Travel Tech has brought together a valuable community of founders, operators, and investors who are all thinking about the future of travel,” said Aaron, Founder and CEO of Drifter AI. “The conversations and feedback that come from those relationships are incredibly important when building in such a fast-moving space.”
With its focus on AI visibility and destination storytelling, Drifter AI is helping shape the future of travel discovery.
AI-Powered Experiences for Real-World Exploration
Exploring a new city, venue, or attraction often comes with a tradeoff—guided experiences can be enriching, but they are often expensive, difficult to scale, or simply unavailable. Pintours is changing that by making high-quality, guided experiences accessible anytime, anywhere.
Founded by Lou Chatta, Pintours leverages artificial intelligence to power real-life, on-the-ground experiences. The platform enables travel companies, venues, and destinations to offer dynamic, personalized tours without the traditional operational complexity. By combining AI with the knowledge of expert guides and locals, Pintours creates bespoke experiences that adapt in real time to each user.
Inspired by Lou’s background in R&D at Apple’s Special Projects team—and his father’s lifelong career as a tour guide—Pintours brings together cutting-edge technology and deep industry expertise. The platform empowers tour guides to monetize their knowledge while helping businesses across travel, hospitality, and entertainment deliver scalable, high-quality experiences.
Pintours is already working with leading brands across the travel ecosystem, including GetYourGuide, Uber, and global event partners such as World Cup teams and host cities. The company also collaborates with platforms like Plug and Play, Groupon, Yelp, and Headout, alongside partners in attractions, transportation, and events. Its technology is designed to serve a wide range of use cases—from airlines and OTAs to sports venues and dining experiences—unlocking new opportunities for engagement and revenue.
“As a start-up, we’re excited to join Travel Tech’s Start-Up Membership Program to connect with investors and partners who share our vision for the future of experiences,” said Lou Chatta, CEO of Pintours.
With its focus on AI-driven personalization and real-world connection, Pintours is redefining how people discover and engage with experiences around the globe.
Smarter Communication for Tour Operators
Clear, timely communication is essential at every stage of travel—from planning and booking to on-the-ground support. Yet for many tour and activity operators, relying on emails and phone calls can slow response times, create friction, and lead to missed opportunities. Chirrup was built to solve that challenge.
Founded by travel industry veterans Brent Ramirez and Joanne Howard, Chirrup is a communication platform designed specifically for tour and activity operators. The platform brings calling, texting, and AI-assisted guest communication into one system, making it faster and easier to connect before, during, and after an experience.
With Chirrup, all customer-facing conversations across voice, text, and automated workflows live in one place. Operators can respond more quickly, improve the guest experience, and prevent common issues caused by missed calls, unanswered messages, or overlooked follow-ups, with AI supporting faster, more consistent responses. Companies are capturing revenue from missed opportunities, supporting more guests without adding staff, and increasing the number of high-quality customer reviews.
“As a start-up in the travel industry, we’re focused on connecting with the right partners and learning from other travel tech companies,” said Brent Ramirez, Co-Founder and Head of Product at Chirrup. “Travel Tech creates opportunities for collaboration that can directly support customer growth.”
By keeping conversations connected across every touchpoint, with AI working in the background, Chirrup helps tour operators stay responsive and deliver better travel experiences.
Traveling should be about experiences, not logistics — yet keeping family and friends updated often means juggling multiple apps where your data is fed to algorithms and advertisers.
Frequent traveler Teemu Kolehmainen recognized this problem firsthand. TripTrix isn’t a service where one can purchase tickets; rather, TripTrix’s role begins after the bookings are made, allowing the business or premium traveler the luxury of not having to worry about oversharing and security. TripTrix provides a secure, private space to share locations, automated status updates, and on-the-go experiences with only the people you choose.
“Travel and social media apps collect massive amounts of personal data, but frequent travelers are getting privacy-conscious and want control over who sees their travel details,” Teemu Kolehmainen, Founder of TripTrix, said. “We are building the first secure and encrypted platform specifically for sharing travel experiences with family and close friends – real-time photos, locations, and updates in one private place. It’s like having a secure and flexible family travel channel that nobody else can access.”
“As a new player in the travel tech industry, TripTrix is excited to join Travel Tech’s Start-Up Member Program so the team can be connected to the industry in a more formal manner and have greater representation of TripTrix,” said Kolehmainen.
Move Freely, Travel Light: How BaggageTAXI is Changing the Way We Journey
For many travelers, the first or last day of a trip comes with a familiar dilemma: What do I do with my luggage? BaggageTAXI offers a seamless solution—on-demand baggage pickup, secure storage, and delivery—so you can explore freely without being weighed down. Just book online or tap the app, and we’ll meet you at the airport, hotel, cruise port, or anywhere in between. Your bags are picked up, stored safely, and delivered exactly when and where you need them—even hours later or in a different city entirely.
Founded by Tristan Sommer-Enriquez, BaggageTAXI is building the world’s first on-demand pick-up, storage and delivery tech-first platform and global ambition of the uberization of baggage. After tripling growth in the UAE this year, the company is now expanding into the U.S., Netherlands and German market and is also operational in the U.K., bringing its time-saving service to a broader base of international travelers.
“We want to change how people think about travel logistics,” says Sommer-Enriquez. “When you book your trip, and you see: check-in is at 3 PM, but you land at 10 AM—your first thought should be: BaggageTAXI it.”
The platform doesn’t just serve travelers—it also supports the hospitality industry. Hotels and short-term rentals use BaggageTAXI to streamline operations, accommodate early arrivals and late checkouts, reduce liability, and enhance the overall guest experience. BaggageTAXI is also guest favorite for short and long term storage, with the ease of having their items delivered to airports or doorsteps.
As a new Travel Tech Advocate Member, BaggageTAXI values exposure to the global travel tech network and access to investors and partners who can help accelerate growth. “Travel Tech is the perfect place to build relationships that push our vision forward,” Sommer-Enriquez adds.
Ready to travel baggage-free? Explore our service or book your first pickup at BaggageTAXI.com.
UCPlaces was born out of a need to streamline the touring experience. Uri Sperling, Founder and CEO, spent years traveling the world and dealing with the burdens of navigating the tour guide experience – it was expensive, it wasn’t customizable and tour times were often at the whims of the tour guide company.
Launched in 2020, UCPlaces was originally designed for tour guides to create and sell GPS-guided tours. In the years since starting his operation, Sperling has worked with tourism and service industry companies like hotels and airlines to craft tours all over the world. Users participate in the tour through their phones, which results in a fully customizable experience that focuses on the user journey. Using UCPlaces, travelers can take tours in almost any language, on their schedule and at their pace. “UCPlaces is not only a service provider,” Sperling said, “but a community builder where people can create, share and sell experiences, these experiences are what inspire travelers to go places to begin with.”
“We’re still a small company,” Uri noted. “We feel that we are spearheading new technology in the industry, but with the exponential growth of travelers taking these guided tours on our platform, we believe that in just a few years, almost every traveler with a smartphone will be using their phone to take guided tours and we’re excited to have the influence and might of Travel Tech in our corner.”
Wednesday, May 20, 2026 — The Travel Technology Association (Travel Tech), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and protecting the travel technology industry, will honor Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), Ranking Member of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, and Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) with Travel Tech’s Innovation Leadership Award at its third annual Policy & Innovation […]
