Travelier’s VP of AI Ante Dagelić says artificial intelligence is reshaping the travel industry by shifting company culture. He argues that a true AI-first mindset must be applied across every layer of an organization, not just in isolated tech projects. Speaking with PhocusWire, Dagelić outlined how the travel platform is using these tools internally and what it means for the future of work.
Internal tools and automation
Dagelić points to two specific examples of AI in action at the company. The first is Jarvis, an internal data brain that allows employees to ask questions about products and business growth and receive detailed analysis. The second involves automations designed to handle supply chain tasks.
Travelier operates in fragmented markets across Southeast Asia and Latin America, relying heavily on small local operators and unstructured messaging. The company built agents that resolve about 95 percent of manual tasks. These systems save tens of thousands of working hours a year.
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The company’s investment in AI tools has grown on a similar trajectory to competitors like Trivago, which increased its internal AI investment more than fivefold in the first seven months of 2026. However, Travelier emphasizes that spending on models is secondary to spending on people and processes. The company founded a dedicated AI department in 2025 to help other teams adopt these tools.
In R&D, the company is seeing efficiency multiples of up to 50x on work that previously took much longer. One team refactored its entire tech stack onto a new technology in a month and a half, a task that would have been unheard of a few years ago. Another delivered a project estimated at 7,000 man hours in just two weeks.
Changing how work gets done
Dagelić believes AI is moving from a simple tool to a team member that has context and can make decisions. He notes that most organizations are not structured to handle this shift. Team sizes, approval chains, and seniority levels often encode assumptions about how work was done in the past, which may no longer apply.
He warns that AI exposes inconsistencies in data and undocumented processes. You cannot automate a task that exists only in someone’s head. The technology requires clean data and clear documentation to function effectively. Companies that invested in this infrastructure over the last few years are moving quickly now, and that gap is expected to widen.
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On the customer side, Travelier is already seeing more than twice the year-over-year growth in revenue from direct LLM redirects. While behavior is clearly changing, the exact way customer acquisition will adapt remains uncertain. Dagelić suggests that brand perception will play a major role as models collect and distill data about companies from various sources.
Hiring for fluency
AI fluency has become a key factor in the company’s hiring process. Interviewers now dedicate time to discussing how candidates use AI and how it has changed their work. The company believes managers must be hands-on with AI to effectively promote an AI-first culture.
Dagelić says the bar is rising for employees. Candidates who bring new approaches to working with AI raise the standard for the entire team. Identifying these individuals early in the recruitment process is a priority.
