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Show Notes

Alex Ragin has been building software inside the travel industry since 2015, first through Zoftify, a travel-focused software development agency that grew from a two-person consultancy to a team of around 35, and more recently through Tourseta, a booking and operations platform built specifically for high-volume multi-day tour operators. Drawing on experience that also spans fintech and video streaming for major UK broadcasters, Alex argues that travel is not a single market but a collection of micro-industries — airlines, hotels, tour operators, cruises — each with distinct workflows that make cross-vertical software almost impossible to build well. He introduces a practical filter for evaluating AI applications: if a simpler procedural solution would be faster, cheaper, and more reliable, it probably should be used instead. On itinerary builders, he explains that missing supplier data forces manual validation at every step, quietly eroding traveler trust. His sharpest observation is that code represents roughly 20% of what makes complex software work; the remaining 80% is domain knowledge, process design, and edge-case handling that AI cannot yet replicate — the core of why you cannot vibe code a tour operator. He identifies internal development workflows, UI/UX auditing, and unstructured data analysis as areas where AI has delivered consistent, measurable gains, and flags AI-driven search referrals from ChatGPT and Gemini as the near-term distribution shift tour operators should be watching most closely.