HBX Group and What Startup Founders Can Learn From AI’s Transformation of the Travel Industry

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And you can learn more by simply visiting denodo .com. What pulls a startup founder back into the arena after they've built a company, sold it and earned the right to step away? Well, my guest today is currently the Chief Distribution Officer at the HBX Group.

He's also the founder of the Luxurist. He's going to be joining me on a conversation about entrepreneurship, luxury travel, AI, the future of travel distribution and he founded John Paul way back in 2007, built it into a major concierge business and sold it to Accor in 2016 and then he took some time out in sunny Mauritius and returned to business with a new vision for how technology, distribution and human service could come together in travel. This is a great start -up story that began in hospitality.

He will talk about the influence of his grandmother, who he describes as the queen of hospitality, and how that instinct helped him connect. An organised complexity shaped his approach to business. And this is a theme that ran throughout his career, whether in concierge services or luxury travel, my guest sees value in connecting fragmented systems and making the experience feel effortless for the customer. And I think this is a conversation that is especially relevant now because travel is changing fast.

AI can help build itineraries, compare options and support travellers in ways that were hard to imagine just a few years ago. But my guest today believes the real opportunity is using AI to give human travel advisors more time to personalise, refine and create those memorable experiences. And yeah, this is a start -up podcast, so we'll talk about start -up speed, entrepreneurship, corporate scale, and the risk of travel becoming commoditised, and why founders often need to secure their home market before racing into international expansion.

But enough from me, let me introduce you to my guest now. So thank you so much for sitting down with me today and joining me on the podcast Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? My name is David and Salem. I'm 47 have three kids living in Mauritius.

I'm an entrepreneur I found in my own company back in 2007 8 which has been a fantastic venture. I saw this company to our core back in 2016 Then I took a few years resting in Mauritius and more than two years ago I decided to come back to business with HBS and this new super exciting venture. Wow what an incredible story and I love how you've been on this journey and took that break in Mauritius and now that's where you're talking to me from today a beautiful part of the world but of course you can't just sit around drinking cocktails on a beach any founder any entrepreneur is always going to be pulled back into this world so tell me a bit more about that opening that you identified in the concierge market that would lead you to founding Jean Paul and luxurious.

Tell me more about that. There's got to be a story there, right? Yeah, I remember having been asked this question several times and I recently got the answer. I've made fake answers to this one, but recently I was meditating and I just realized there was something in my DNA which linked me to the Carthage world, which is probably my grandmother, who was the queen of hospitality.

And she was always trying to facilitate things for everyone. And I think that's the common denominator here. Because if you ask me the question, what was basically taking me to John Paul, it was this idea that I was not inventing something. I was not adding something new to the ecosystem, but I was just connecting the dots.

By connecting the dots, we were creating value for the whole ecosystem. And that's exactly the approach that we have with Lecturist. With Lecturist, I have the same frustration that in this travel distribution world, which is super fragmented, as you know, and more and more complex as we go, I realized that we probably need this middleman to organize the market better and create this value by more flawless and seamless customer journey for all the players involved in the ecosystem in the value chain.

Such a cool story and it's funny how the old Steve Jobs quote, you can't join up the dots looking forward, it's only when you look back that you can start to see how that pattern developed. I'm curious, when you look back at your career as an entrepreneur and a startup founder, how has the startup landscape changed from that first venture 25 years ago to launching one today in this AI driven world? How much has changed and how much has stayed the same? You know, I think it has totally changed.

And at the same time, the mindset of the entrepreneur has not changed. And for good reason. So in that time, back in 2007, we were at CUNY as entrepreneurs. At that time, when I used to say, what are you doing in life?

I'm an entrepreneur. I had to justify myself. And now it's the new trend and down. So this has changed in the way that it doesn't fit the same people going for entrepreneurship.

That's number one. Number two, things are... going super fast today. And another point is that 25 years ago, it was still about creating something, coming with a new patent, with a new software, with new algorithm.

Today, it's more about capturing the value on the flow, on an existing flow, adding value to an ecosystem. And the third point which has changed is the speed of execution. what used to take us a year in development, even as a startup, when it took 10 years at a large call, today it takes one week. And the market is evolving so fast that every single week, the agility brought by the startup environment is a real unfair competitive advantage.

So I think that in a nutshell, if you put all of that together, so the change in paradigm, plus the fact that today you have access to funding much more easily than it was before, I think that it gives the startup world the right to win in this world. And the last point which has changed as well is the relationship between large -corp and startups. At that time, you had a kind of competition, none of which trusted each other. Today, we see great examples all over the world where there is a good collaboration between startup and large -corp, where they understand how to leverage best of both worlds.

And I think that all of this together make the starter entrepreneurship and cultural mindset something which is accelerating for the good in 2026. And it feels at the moment in present day that AI and automation is almost a challenge around those areas of producing solutions without losing the human touch and empowering humans rather than replacing them. So when we look at what you're doing here, especially in a world where we're starting to see AI concierges and stuff, How specifically does AI and automation allow human travel advisors to provide that more personal experience without losing that human touch?

Absolutely. That's the big challenge. What I'm used to say first is that AI will not replace, in the near term, will not replace traditional travel agents, but AI -enabled travel agents will replace traditional travel agents. So it's how you use AI, how you use AI to do more, to do better.

And to answer directly to your question, you're asking me about this challenge between AI full automated versus human touch. The best way is to understand what AI can automate and use it for that, while focusing on what other parts are related to human and human touch and high touch. If you look at the proper customer journey in the travel space, there are some phases where AI has outpaced human capabilities. Let's talk about itinerary building, for instance.

I don't know any travel advisor on Earth capable of doing an itinerary better than Claude for any specific destination. That's number one. But once you have this canva, the added value brought by the travel agent is how to adapt it, how to personalize it, how to collect dots. We're talking about this just before.

How to make sure that this trip is made for Niel specifically and is not just generated by Cloud and entering to Niel and its needs. So I think that where you're using AI properly in this space, then you have more time to focus on your client and create this special human bond that creates the magic of it. That's number one. Number two, it's about personalization.

And personalization is not in the... AI space is not saying calling you Neil instead of Sir. It's the past. This is obvious today.

But it's more about the experience that you will be in the destination, making sure that in the morning, I don't need for you to fill in my CRM to know what you like, what you dislike. I can anticipate this for you. And this is because I have created this connection with you. I have this human to human connection and conversation, which leads me to know he will like.

And Sir, because we are in the travel industry, which is totally fragmented and unstructured at the local place. I mean, in fact, you can imagine that most of the experiences that you find on TripAdvisers, they are very well structured. They are provided by very large players. And it's a copy paste of what you can do in New York.

You can do it in Paris. You can do it everywhere in the world. But if you want to and if you go to the lecture space where people are more interested in hidden gems. in money can buy experiences, then this is experiences that are not listed.

So you get to know the person who knows the person who knows this experience and can make it with you, because you are looking for authenticity, for singularity. And so I've given you here three core examples where human can make the difference versus AI. But of course, it's an arbitrage. And thanks to AI, you can allow and dedicate time to deliver this.

So that's why I think that AI is a fantastic enabler for our industry. And you also have the additional challenge of delighting high -end customers who almost just expect everything to work seamlessly. And in a world of instant gratification, how do you build a digital platform that still feels exclusive and high touch? That's the real challenge.

You're talking about instant gratification, but it's also everything has to be instantaneous. You're expecting a customer service to reply to your complaints, requests, changes, modifications instantaneously. What it means to be high, and that's where HVX is probably the best position in the world to play this game and to be the big winner, and that's my vision, big winner of the next decade in the travel industry. is that what we see today is that you have specialists per vertical.

So you have a specialist for the flight, specialist for accumulation. Sometimes you have someone who vandal this together to offer you a package, but then you flight, you arrive, you need your transfer, you need activities, you want to make a modification, you booked by email, but you want to change by phone. So we're talking about multi -channel, multi -supplier, and so on. we need a knockout straighter to make sure that when you knew, we decide to use your WhatsApp to interact with me.

I'll give you the same type of answer, even if you haven't booked with me. And doing this is the multi -aggregator AI challenge, which is all about organizing this ecosystem, which is being built super fast, which is being more and more complicated because into it, I forgot to say that we are currently adding this full tech layer to give you the highest level of flexibility because in this new world everything has to be flexible. I need to cancel, modify, upgrade, downgrade, change.

So everything needs to be flexible, even if it's not. That's where it's tricky. So it's recreating this level of flexibility. And at the end of the day, to make it seamless, as you said, because this is the first requirement, we need someone in the vaccine able to orchestrate that.

and give access to the same information with instant access to all the players, whoever you interact with. And this is the role of HBAs. It's been this ecosystem. We strongly believe, I do believe, and that's why I decided to come back to business, because I have a vision.

I have a vision that we need to create this invisible player which will serve as the ecosystem for all the players involved in this market tomorrow. So here at present day, in 2026, you're now the Chief Distribution Officer at HBX Group. So I've got to ask, I mean, looking back, and especially on behalf of every startup founder listening, how do you maintain an entrepreneurial edge when you're working with a massive global organization? What's been your biggest challenge in this transition?

Because it feels quite different for you too. I don't think I can say my biggest. I have so many challenges around. I said at the beginning, I'm 47, so I'm not 27 anymore, meaning that I think I'm finding here with HBX and based on my own experience, I'm trying to find the right balance between those worlds.

And when I had my first interview with the people at HBX, I said, be careful, I'm an entrepreneur, so I will shock you, I will distract you, I will challenge you, I will be stupid, I will be shocking. But if you accept me as I am, I'll take on me to make sure that I try to understand your word, and we create the bridge between both words, which means that many topics, large -scale, is guiding the way, because it has to be consistent, it has to be reliable, it has to bring trust, the trust that embodies what HPX has been over the last 25 years.

But on the other side, if we want to be agile, innovative, creative, making sure that we capture the share of lay in, in the new areas offered by the AI in space, we need to be fast. We need to fail fast. We need to adapt our way of operating to this new changing world. And that's this combination which works super well today.

I got to say that I didn't make only friends at the beginning, but more and more, I convinced people that it's not a GVT, it's not a startup against large goal. It's us together. creating the conditions of remaining agile while being consistent and being this partner of trust for the market. And as you said at the very beginning of the podcast, the travel industry is notoriously fragmented.

So as CDO, what do you see as the future of travel distribution over the next few years? How do you see this continuing to evolve and evolving for the better too? Surprisingly, not only this world is fragmented and complex, but it's becoming more and more complex and fragmented every single day. Every single day, you have a new player from FinTech adding a new product, from Payments adding a new checkout process, all for the benefit of the traveler.

But behind the scene, it's becoming more and more complex, which means plus the AR revolution, which is eating the front end, is creating troubles for us as well because Of course, by offering new features and new capabilities to your travelers, you increase and elevate the level of expectations in terms of service that we have to deliver. So this is becoming more and more tricky for us to deliver the same level of service. And where the industry is heading up to is probably a multi -layer industry, which has to be structured in a way that We need to stop competition having everyone talking to the travelers and making sure that there is one layer which serves as an orchestrator to make sure that we create a value which is mutualized against all the markets.

The big risk which is happening because we saw that back in the year 2000 with the dot -com disrupting some industries. I'm talking about real estate insurance and so on. The biggest risk that we are facing with is the commoditization of our industry. The reason why I'm saying it's a risk is because if we go that way, it will certainly kill trauma itself.

Because the next step, if you commoditize the booking phase, you will commoditize then the product. If you commoditize the product, you kill the experience. By killing the experience, you probably kill the last piece, if you think of it, on your day to day, yourself. What remains human in your life?

Family and holidays. Yeah. Out of this, Amazon brings me everything. Uber takes me everywhere.

You see that the young generation is not interested in living these experiences anymore. They just need to post it on Instagram so they can create content, fake content today, thanks to AI. So they don't even need to go and physically live these experiences. At the end of the day, the last remaining true human peace in our world is holidays.

So if we want to avoid commoditizing this last piece of humanity, we need to create, defend and support this our world. And as someone that's right in the heart of this space and has been for some time, I'm curious, what innovations in the travel tech space excite you and make you think will prove to be invaluable to businesses and consumers in the months and years ahead? What are you seeing there? First of all, as you know, the traditional customer journey search compare book has totally disappeared.

used to different agents, to call a travel agent, to book online, to use an OTA. All of this has suddenly collapsed into one single conversation with an AI. Is it cloud, is it GPT, whoever, is it one single conversation? Which is more and more, you probably know that today, even today, 56 % of all the bookies are resulting from a conversation with an AI.

and it was 25 % nine months ago. So what is interesting, what is shocking is not only the number, but the speed of change, of changing the behavior of the travels. So we see this happening and we need to cope with it. And in terms of innovation, we get to be able to understand what's next and what's next.

So if we think forward, what's happening today, We just passed the first AI phase. We are entering the agent phase. So the next phase is that I will ask my AI to book everything for me. So I used to say, what's the itinerary?

Search compare for me. I'll book myself. Today, I tend to say book it for me. Tomorrow, travel will be endgain, meaning it will be connected to your devices so they will know how tired you are when your kids are on holidays.

What is the best season when you are down, when you need a break, whatever. They will book for you. They will bring that to your screen. I've looked that for you for this weekend.

And there is a discount if you wish. What do you think? Should we go for it or not? So travel becoming ambient, becoming a part of my life, such as health has become such a piece in my life and other things like that.

I think that we need to be ready for that. And the biggest quote from the alien and celeb, if you wish, is that I'm used to say that with human eye, you can measure the speed, but you cannot measure acceleration. What I mean by that, if I ask you what will happen from now to 2030, you will probably say, okay, let's look back at the last three years, what happened, and it will happen again. But you would be wrong, because it's probably that what will happen in the next three years is what happened in the last 20 years.

And 20 years ago, Facebook did not exist. So if you think of it, you understand that what's happening is the rise of social media and so on and travel becoming ambience. So you get to be ready for being AI ready, AI interaction ready. You have to be ready for this full flexible world to understand that what wasn't cancelable yesterday will be cancelable tomorrow.

And probably that's the area. which is the most interesting in terms of tech product disruption in the travel industry, to come back to your question. Yeah, I completely agree. And I know that so much of my own travel habits have changed now when I go to a lot of tech conferences around the world.

Two years ago i would have googled what's the best way to get in from this apple where i am to my hotel and i would have been. I would have had a couple of pages of sponsored results and get myself getting frustrated now i can ask a straight away it will give me metro train ride share. costs, how long, which would be the most sensible option and I can just get what I want and go straight away. So I notice in myself how quickly things are changing and for other founders listening, is any advice that you'd give to maybe founders, investors or corporate leaders on how to support founders without stifling their creativity?

Because you're someone in quite a unique position here where you've kind of been there on both sides of the table, but any advice that you would offer there? I think the answer is in your question. What you want to do is bring the best of your support to any project, manager, founder, owner. The point is you don't want to kill creativity.

And I would make a comparison with how you treat your kids. The best way to educate your kids is to show them the value, support them when they need you, but as well, let them do, let them create, let them fail. And most of the best success that I had in my life came from failures at the beginning. And I think this is something, this right to fail is something that everyone is talking about.

But the reality is that it doesn't fit in a corporate world. In the finance world, the reality, I'm very active in private equity. So I can say that as well as a private equity investor, we don't like failures. So we want to double secure the investment initiatives and so on.

Which is the wrong approach? Yes, it's great to secure 70 -80 % of what we're doing, while remaining creative on 20 % or 10%. Making sure that we try, we just try, we adapt, we feel fast, we adjust, and that's the only way that we can maintain this agility up to screen. So my advice would be, instead of asking people, are you risk -averse?

How do you want to manage this? I would say, let's be. good managers to cover 90 % of the score. Let's agree on the trigger.

What do we want to define? 90, 80, 70, 100, but at least let's make the rules clear between us and then we can expect a good reaction from the people we meet. And again, I'd love to leave everyone listening on a powerful and inspiring note. And if you were to look back at your career, if you could go back to the day you first founded John Paul there, what is the one thing that you would tell your younger self?

Anything you've picked up, anything that you'd like to tell your younger self there that would help? So you're talking about the David, 30 years old, who wanted to have had big dreams, wanted to go fast and so on. I would say go for it. Be prepared to hear that no one believes in you, but in a few years time, they will all say that they were approving your decisions and they were your best supporters back in the days.

One advice, my advice, my opinion, my experience is that from all my experiences, myself and the startups I've been investing in, we are always willing to go too fast internationally before being super strong where we're based. And I've seen that multiple times. Honestly, I don't know how to avoid that. Just saying that I always see these entrepreneurs willing to go fast to duplicate their early success in different places.

Why not measuring the difficulty of it and how much it could divert the attention, the focus and the business? How much expensive it is? Believing that you go faster at the end of the day, you understand that you would have been faster in securing your position first before duplicating it international. That would be my last piece.

Fantastic and a beautiful moment to end on and for anybody listening that would like to further learn and talk with you or your team or find out more about HBX Group, where would you like me to point everyone listening to further dive into anything we talked about today? HBXGroup .com Perfect. I will add a link to that along with your LinkedIn as well.

I hope we have inspired a few people listening and more than anything, thank you for taking the time to sit down with me and share your story. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks.

I think for me, this conversation today was a timely reminder that entrepreneurship changes, but that founder instinct is something that remains familiar. David has seen the start -up world move from a place where entrepreneurs had to explain themselves, to one where start -up thinking is admired across corporate boardrooms. And funding is easier to access, tools are faster, AI has compressed what used to take months into days or weeks. But the same old challenges remain.

Can you create value that customers can feel? David's view of travel was especially powerful too. He warned that if travel becomes too transactional, we risk losing the part that makes it deeply human. Yes, AI can build itineraries, support automation, and power new forms of personalisation, but the magic still comes from understanding the person, the moment, and that experience they're hoping for.

And finally, I think he also offered a valuable lesson for startup founders who are eager to grow fast. Yes, that early traction can be exciting. But international expansion can drain focus, time and money if the core business is not strong enough first. So I think that advice was simple and hard earned.

Build strength where you are before trying to replicate success everywhere. So I'll include links to everything that we talked about today, but I'd also love to hear from you. As AI becomes part of how we plan and book travel, how do we keep that experience personal? human and memorable.

As always, techtalksnetwork .com. You can talk with me, browse through 4 ,000 interviews and even work with me. Whatever it is, there should be something there for you, even if it's just a DM to say hi.

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