What does it mean to become an AI native or an AI first travel business today?

Well, we have this expression down under, I don't know if, uh, if y- if you, uh, use the term pleb, but I consider myself a pleb [chuckles] when it comes to AI.

But, you know, I'm- I've got a dozen bots running around in the background.

I live on AI.

Everything I do involves it 'cause I wanna immerse myself and, and try and get it.

So slightly educated pleb using this stuff a lot.

Um, you know, it's f- and I chair a number of businesses, and each of them is very, very anxiously looking at where do we sit, how do we survive, what do we do next? And I think it really depends on the vertical you're in.

What are you looking for within the organization to say they're embracing AI in the right way, they're asking the right questions, they're experimenting, they're, you know, questioning their business model, and if, and if it's gonna be relevant?

And what happened when you were here?

Oh, I don't know if you heard that long sigh that just came out when [laughs] you raised that, but it's, uh, you know, it's still quite a fresh memory.

There's this quite a well-known article that was in The Australian Financial Review, and it started off by saying, "Roger and his mates were cycling over a mountaintop in Central Otago in February, and he got a call from the CEO of Webjet, who said, 'Roger, you need to get to Melbourne now.

We've got maybe six weeks to live.'" And that's the true story.

So I was chairing Webjet, dropped everything.

You know, we were literally on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, so rode to civilization, managed to get a car.

Flew out the first flight I could get to Melbourne.

Tell me of those first conversations with Webb and Travel and the opportunity that presented itself.

But, yeah, look, tell us a little bit about your background and really how that culminated in you getting into sort of travel technology with Webjet, Last Minute, and others.

It all started in the early 80s when...

I got my first job.

So I went through uni in Auckland, did law and languages.

Clearly had nothing to do with technology at all.

But I got my first job in technology in San Francisco in, I think, late 82.

When my wife and I went back to New Zealand, we launched a software company called Datacorp that we built over three or four years and sold.

So we're not starting really from scratch, but you see really good, uh, opportunity to innovate in travel tech, maybe with some of these big sort of behemoths in mind, helping them sort of revolutionize what they do.

But, yeah, look, tell us a little bit about your background and really how that culminated in you getting into sort of travel technology with Webjet, Last Minute, and others.

It all started in the early 80s when...

I got my first job.

So I went through uni in Auckland, did law and languages.

Clearly had nothing to do with technology at all.

But I got my first job in technology in San Francisco in, I think, late 82.

When my wife and I went back to New Zealand, we launched a software company called Datacorp that we built over three or four years and sold.

So we're not starting really from scratch, but you see really good, uh, opportunity to innovate in travel tech, maybe with some of these big sort of behemoths in mind, helping them sort of revolutionize what they do.

But yeah, look, t-tell us a b- a little bit about your, your background and really how that culminated in you getting into, uh, sort of travel technology with Webjet, Lastminute, a- and others.

It all started in the, uh, early '80s when, um, I got my first job.

So I went through uni in Auckland, did law and languages, you know, clearly had nothing to do with technology at all.

But got my first job in technology in San Francisco in, I think, late '82.

When my wife and I went back to New Zealand, we launched a software company called DataCorp that we built over three or four years and sold.

And it was, uh, a really, like, we were kids.

We really didn't know what we were doing, but we worked hard, and we had a good idea, and, you know, we bought a couple of competitors, and then we sold the whole business to what was then called BayCorp.

But you see really good, uh, opportunity to innovate in travel tech, maybe with some of these big sort of behemoths in mind, helping them sort of revolutionize what they do.