Tailor-made travel is often marketed as highly personal, but the technology behind it can be anything but seamless. Baboo Travel is developing an AI-enabled platform designed to bring inquiries, itinerary planning, proposals, customer communication, bookings and trip operations into a single environment for Destination Management Companies, local experts and travel teams. The company’s approach puts artificial intelligence behind the scenes while keeping destination expertise and human relationships at the center of the traveler experience.

Personalized travel sounds simple from the outside: tell an expert what you want, and they build the trip.

Behind the scenes, however, a tailor-made itinerary can involve a surprisingly complicated technology stack.

A single trip may require CRM software, spreadsheets, email conversations, messaging applications, PDFs, itinerary tools, supplier confirmations, payment systems and operational documents. For smaller Destination Management Companies (DMCs) and specialist local operators, managing those disconnected systems can consume as much time as designing the trip itself.

Baboo Travel is attempting to tackle that problem with an AI-enabled platform designed specifically around the workflow of tailor-made travel.

Founded in 2020, the company built its proposition around connecting travelers with local experts who understand their destinations. Its latest technology strategy extends that model from the customer-facing experience into the operational infrastructure used to create and manage customized journeys.

The fragmented problem behind personalized travel

Mass-market travel can be highly automated because the products are relatively standardized.

A tailor-made trip is different.

A traveler might request a multi-city itinerary with specific hotels, private guides, unusual experiences, transportation preferences and dietary or accessibility requirements. Every element can require coordination between different suppliers and people.

That creates an operational problem for DMCs.

Technology is supposed to make the process easier, but a collection of disconnected systems can instead create more administrative work.

Baboo’s platform is designed to consolidate that workflow into a single operating environment.

Local Experts can receive inquiries, understand traveler requirements, build itineraries and proposals, communicate with clients, manage bookings and confirmations, coordinate operations and maintain the history of the trip within the same environment.

The significance is less about adding another travel-management application and more about reducing the number of places where trip information has to live.

AI works behind the scenes

Baboo is taking a relatively pragmatic approach to artificial intelligence.

Rather than positioning AI as the travel agent itself, the company is embedding AI into the operational processes that support human travel specialists.

The technology can help organize incoming inquiries, surface important customer information, assist with itinerary creation, automate repetitive work and help teams process large volumes of travel information.

That distinction matters.

Travel planning involves subjective decisions that are difficult to automate completely. A destination specialist may know a particular hotel owner personally, understand the seasonal character of a neighborhood or recognize that a seemingly perfect itinerary will not work for a specific traveler.

An AI model can process information quickly. It does not automatically possess that local knowledge.

Baboo founder and CEO Paul Sarfati argues that the opportunity is therefore to give local experts better tools rather than remove them from the process.

Building software around the DMC workflow

One of the more interesting aspects of Baboo’s strategy is its decision to design the platform around how DMCs operate rather than adapting generic CRM software to travel.

That difference can have significant practical consequences.

A traditional CRM is primarily designed around customers, leads and sales activity. A tailor-made travel platform has to understand another layer: the trip itself.

A single traveler can have multiple requirements, suppliers, destinations, bookings, changes and operational dependencies associated with one journey.

Keeping that context together allows a Local Expert to move from the initial inquiry to itinerary development, proposal, customer conversation, booking and operations without repeatedly reconstructing the traveler’s requirements.

The objective is essentially to turn the trip into the central data object around which the workflow operates.

The customer could benefit from the same consolidation

The operational improvements are also intended to reach the traveler.

Instead of receiving information through disconnected emails, attachments and messages, customers can have clearer proposals, centralized communication and updated booking confirmations.

That could become particularly useful once a trip is underway.

Tailor-made travel does not end when a customer clicks “book.” Flights change, transfers are updated, restaurants need confirmation and travelers may request changes while they are already at their destination.

Maintaining a single, continuously updated record could make it easier for both travelers and local experts to respond.

This is where AI-assisted travel technology could become more useful than a simple itinerary generator.

Local knowledge remains the differentiator

There is a broader question surrounding AI in travel: if software can create an itinerary in seconds, what happens to the role of the travel professional?

Baboo’s answer is that technology should amplify local expertise rather than eliminate it.

The company’s model depends on destination specialists who understand the nuances that generic travel algorithms can struggle to capture.

A recommendation engine may know that Oaxaca is popular, for example. A local expert can understand which experiences are genuinely worthwhile, which suppliers are dependable and what works for a particular traveler.

Similarly, an AI system can identify a hotel that matches a list of requirements. A human expert may know that another property, with fewer reviews or less digital visibility, is a much better fit.

The technology therefore becomes infrastructure for expertise rather than a substitute for it.

Travel technology is moving from booking to orchestration

Baboo’s strategy reflects a broader transformation in travel technology.

For years, digital travel innovation focused heavily on discovery and booking: search for a flight, compare hotels, reserve an activity.

AI is pushing the industry toward a different model — orchestration.

Instead of simply finding products, intelligent systems can potentially coordinate multiple services, understand preferences, maintain context and assist with decisions throughout the customer journey.

For complex travel, that could be especially valuable because the product is not a single booking.

It is a network of interconnected services.

The challenge will be making AI useful without allowing automation to flatten the personal qualities that make customized travel valuable in the first place.

AI behind the scenes, humans in front

Baboo’s emerging platform is ultimately built around that balance.

The company wants AI to reduce administrative work, organize information and accelerate repetitive processes while local experts continue to shape the actual experience.

That creates a model in which technology is largely invisible to the traveler.

The customer does not necessarily need to know which AI system helped organize their inquiry or accelerate the itinerary. They need the final result to feel thoughtful, relevant and personal.

That may be one of the more sustainable applications of AI in travel.

Rather than replacing the human expert, the technology can remove some of the operational friction that prevents experts from spending more time with customers.

As Baboo continues rolling the platform out across its internal operations and Local Expert network, the company’s larger bet is clear: the future of tailor-made travel may depend less on replacing human expertise than on giving that expertise a much better digital operating system.

Market Landscape

AI is reshaping travel technology beyond traditional search and booking, with several emerging trends:

• AI itinerary planning: Generative AI can accelerate the creation of customized trip proposals and itineraries.
• Travel workflow automation: AI can reduce repetitive administrative work across inquiries, supplier information and customer communications.
• Conversational travel planning: Natural-language interfaces allow travelers to describe preferences rather than navigate complex search systems.
• DMC technology: Specialized platforms are increasingly focused on the operational needs of local destination companies.
• AI-assisted personalization: Systems can combine traveler preferences with large volumes of destination and supplier information.
• Human-in-the-loop travel: High-value and complex travel remains dependent on expert judgment, relationships and local knowledge.

The emerging competitive advantage may therefore be AI-powered orchestration combined with human destination expertise.

Top Insights

• Baboo is building an AI operating layer for tailor-made travel, bringing planning, communication, booking and operations into a more unified workflow.
• The platform targets a major DMC pain point: fragmented tools that force local experts to manage the same trip across multiple systems.
• AI is positioned as an assistant rather than an agent, helping organize information, automate repetitive work and accelerate itinerary creation.
• Local expertise remains central, reflecting the limits of generic AI when recommendations depend on relationships, context and destination-specific knowledge.
• Travel technology is moving toward orchestration, where AI can coordinate an entire journey rather than simply help users book individual products.

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