The Science of Relevance: Turning Data Streams into Customer Dreams

The Science of Relevance: Turning Data Streams into Customer Dreams
Speaker: Sebastien Grosjean, Founder & CEO at Smily

How do you turn raw data into human-centric travel experiences? In this session from TravelTech Paris 2025, Sebastien Grosjean (Founder & CEO of Smily) explores the shift from static personalization to contextual intelligence. Learn how to leverage real-time behavior and multi-source data signals to predict traveler preferences and deploy adaptive content at scale.

Key Themes:
• Contextual Intelligence: Moving beyond basic data points to "imagination at scale."
• Predictive Personalization: Identifying traveler personas before they book.
• Adaptive Content: Using GenAI to create dynamic, human-centric travel journeys.
• Conversion through Belonging: Strategies to transform data streams into emotional customer loyalty.

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Conference Details:
Conference: Travel Tech API Conference: Travel Unlocked! | part of FOST 2025
Date: 11 December 2025 • CNIT Forest, Paris

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Join our upcoming conferences: https://www.apidays.global/
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Transcript

2. THE SCIENCE OF RELEVANCE: Turning Data Streams into Customer Dreams
3. Agenda SEARCH BRANDING LEARNINGS 01 02 03
4. Family: built 100 Vacation Rentals + 2 Hotels past 39 years Travel: 6+ months/year for 20 years Founded/Co-Founded 14 companies, mostly tech. Booking.com Connectivity Advisory Board Member Sebastien Grosjean
5. Scalable All-In-One for Vacation Rentals 1.4B € in Gross Booking Value past 3 years World Best Partner of Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia* * Nominated in 2021, still preferred partner or equivalent
6. SEARCH 01
7. Referral Traffic from ChatGPT
8. * According to SimilarWeb - Sept 2025 20% Walmart Referral Traffic from ChatGPT
9. Referral Traffic from ChatGPT * According to SimilarWeb - Sept 2025 20%+ Etsy
10. Referral Traffic from ChatGPT * According to SimilarWeb - Sept 2025 ~15% Target
11. … and Amazon ? * According to SimilarWeb - Sept 2025 18% Before 3% Now ?
12. AI Adoption in Travel Source: Booking.com 50% 30% 18 to 34 year olds have used AI to plan and research their vacations Over-65s have used AI to research a destination
15. Emotions comes first Travelers don’t search for words; they SEARCH FOR A FEELING. Cozy Cabin Family Romantic
16. Trips Begin On Social Media use social media platforms (TikTok and Instagram) to make their travel decisions. 57% of Millennials and Gen Z travelers Source: Skift Research Exploring GenZ and Millennial Travel Habits 2023. Data as of November 2023
17. Trips Begin On Social Media 75% of Millennials are influenced by social media when making their travel decisions
18. Trips Begin On Social Media
20. Top Of Funnel Is Now Visual Emotional AI Filtered
21. How to handle this?
22. BRANDING 02
23. Why a brand?
24. .10€.
25. .500 €.
26. 50x
27. What’s a brand?
28. A good brand ties our company to positive perceptions that attract our target audience.
29. How to define a brand?
30. The 3P Of A Brand Promise Personality Proof
31. Promise The experience we commit to delivering. • Who are our ideal travelers? • Family ski holidays? Romantic getaways? Remote workers? • What experience do they get when they book with us instead of someone else?
32. If you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.
33. How we show up and how we express ourselves • Visual style: warm and cosy, minimalist and modern, playful and fun? • Tone of voice in your descriptions and guest communication • If your brand were a person, what would it look and sound like? Personality
34. Think beyond “professional” and “nice”.
35. Why travelers and algorithms should believe us • Reviews: average rating and share of five-star feedback • User-generated content • Consistency everywhere: OTAs, website, social channels Proof
36. Consistent proof is algorithm rocket fuel.
37. Our brand is what AI and travelers infer from: From Listings To Brand • Photos • Descriptions • Reviews • Social content • Communication
38. • Who are they? • Booking behavior • Key desires • Key pain points • Keyword bank • Landing pages • Social strategy • Exact experiences (quotes) • … AI can identify ideal travelers
39. AI can identify ideal travelers
40. AI can identify ideal travelers S
41. AI can improve photos
42. AI can change season of photos S
43. AI can personalize photos
44. AI can personalize photos S
45. AI can personalize listings based on season and identified customer profile
46. Experience Contextuelle de Smily Votre site personnalisera vos annonces en fonction de la saison et du client idéal détecté. À venir
47. AI can, based on photos Prepare popcorn… S
50. LEARNINGS 03
51. • Creating is easy • Accuracy is hard • Judge LLM / Content scoring agent / Evaluation agent is required 1 - Evaluation Agent is Required
52. Cheaper models, run again and again, can outperform the fancy ones and still cost a fraction of the price. 2 - Cheaper Models
53. 1. Source experts 2. Have experts create a playbook 3. Create the Evaluation Agent from the playbook 4. Create the Generation Agent 5. Feed real life data for reinforcement learning 3 - Agent Training Protocol
54. LinkedIn.com/in/sebgrosjean