Willi Ibbeken, Sebastian Kreutzberger and Julian Kögel (from left to right) from Ygo. Lisa-Sophie Kempke, Getty Images/Carkhe, Unsplash/dav_billings/lawlesscapture
20 open browser tabs and the back and forth in WhatsApp chat: Which flight? Which hotel? How much do we spend? Organizing a trip can be annoying. Some trips never make it out of the planning phase.
It’s not without reason that Reels are circulating on Instagram under the title “POV: your trip made it out of the group chat”. A startup now wants to solve the problem – with an AI bot. This should make booking a trip fun. And run in just one tab. From the first search query to payment.
Through its website Ygo Trips, Ygo sells flights, hotels and experiences – concert tickets, museum tours, wine tastings – bookable as a complete package. Particularly popular at the moment: tickets for ABBA Voyage in London or Formula 1 in Monza – with a short trip built around them.
Sometimes there are surprising insights: “Many young women between 20 and 22 are currently booking a Formula 1 trip,” says Julian Kögel, CEO of Ygo. He tips Lewis Hamilton as the motivation behind it – and season six of the racing series “Drive to Survive” on Netflix.
“Of course another LLM can also recommend you to go to this five-star hotel – but it’s fully booked.”
Sebastian Kreutzberger
(CTO)
So far, you can click through various offers at Ygo – from August 1, 2024, booking will be made entirely via an AI bot, which will communicate their preferences to the user via chat. À la “I want the sea and culture, where can I get both?”
Ygo wants to establish itself as a first mover in its industry. Kögel says: “AI is changing how people move around the internet, how they interact with content, how they shop – it will also change how they book their holidays.” A report from Deloitte According to this, 15 percent of Millennials are already using AI bots like ChatGPT to plan trips.
What makes Ygo different from travel bots like Trip Planner AI and Wonderplan
The special thing about Ygo: The AI should not only recommend flights, hotels and museums, but can also book them independently. “This makes us the first on the market,” says Kögel, who has already run his startup compared to Amazon has, “the industry’s only one-stop shop”.
So far, the startup, which was founded in 2022, has no institutional investors on board – that is now set to change. It wants to raise two million euros in the next two months. At the same time, Ygo is launching its travel bot. Anyone who wants to use it can be put on a waiting list as of this week.
“The entire industry is on board with us as advisors or has invested with us.”
We meet Kögel and his two co-founders, Sebastian Kreutzberger and Willi Ibbeken, in their office in Berlin, right on Potsdamer Platz. Ygo shares the space with another startup, there is a poster of the Elevator Boys stuck to the door in the bathroom, and the coffee is only available with oat milk.