Why this AI travel company is bringing Sonder back from the dead

Why this AI travel company is bringing Sonder back from the dead John Lyotier, CEO of TravelAI, said one challenge will be communicating to customers that it's not the same Sonder that chaotically shuttered last year. TravelAI Sonder is back. Sort of.TravelAI, a Canadian AI travel company, announced Monday it purchased the Sonder brand and relaunched Sonder.com. The deal did not include Sonder properties or its operating business.Sonder, which operated boutique hotels and short-term rentals, filed for bankruptcy and shuttered its operations in November after hotel giant Marriott International abruptly ended its partnership with the Airbnb rival. Guests were forced to vacate properties mid-stay, while employees were left without jobs overnight.Despite the chaotic ending to a travel company valued at $2.2 billion in 2021, TravelAI said the Sonder name still carries weight with travelers — and in search results."There is a large percentage of travelers who still search for Sonder every month who were unaware of the issues from last November," John Lyotier, CEO and founder of TravelAI, told Business Insider. "What they remember is that they had a great travel experience."The new Sonder will not operate properties or take reservations. Instead, it will operate as an AI-powered, curated list of urban stays, including boutique hotels, apartments, and homes, and will send users to third-party sites to book, like Vrbo, Expedia, and Booking.com.Lyotier said TravelAI is trying to capitalize on the "search equity and residual traffic" to Sonder.com to give travelers the same kinds of quality, unique stays that they expected at Sonder properties. Properties featured on the site meet what TravelAI calls the "Sonder Bar." TravelAI's system bases its curation on reviews, ratings, photos, neighborhood characteristics, and features identified in former Sonder properties. The new Sonder.com features properties listed by third parties, such as Vrbo and Expedia, curated with AI. TravelAI Of the 10 million properties TravelAI can curate from its partner sites, only about 5% meet the Sonder Bar, Lyotier said.While he declined to share what TravelAI paid for the Sonder brand and website, he said it was a "good value," that the payback will be measured in "months, not years," and that he has a target of $100 million in bookings via Sonder.com in the first year. As of Monday afternoon, Lyotier said the platform had already generated bookings. The company receives a commission when customers click through and book.TravelAI has acquired several travel brands over the past several years, including Casai.com, OwnerDirect.com, and Smarttours.com. Sonder is its highest-profile brand acquisition to date, Lyotier said.Through the Sonder acquisition, Lyotier said TravelAI is also hoping to draw attention to the bigger-picture AI travel technologies it's working on.That includes Sonder Concierge, a beta tool that recommends properties based on what it learns about an individual traveler's preferences. TravelAI also launched an AI memory tool last month, Traveler.md, that's designed to make those preferences usable across different travel sites and AI assistants.With relaunching Sonder.com, Lyotier said the company will need to communicate to customers that it's not the same brand that booted them out of hotels and left them stranded on vacation last fall."That's a challenge we'll have — making sure that the former customers understand that we are not that old Sonder." Read next Kelsey is a senior reporter for Business Insider, where she covers business and tech news as well as stories about travel, luxury, and consulting.Her feature story "Disaster at 18,200 feet" received awards from the New York Press Club and the North American Travel Journalists Association, as well as honorable mention from the Society of American Travel Writers. It was also included on Longreads' and Pocket's best of 2022 lists. She has also received an American Journalism Online Award for her coverage on missing and murdered Indigenous people in Wyoming.She's appeared on CBS, NPR, NBC, and other outlets to discuss her work. She previously worked on the world news desk at the BBC in London and received a master's in journalism from Northwestern University.She can be reached by email at kvlamis@businessinsider.com or via the encrypted-messaging app Signal @kelseyv.21.Popular storiesDisaster on Denali: Inside a 1,000-foot fall on America's highest peakThrifting is more popular than ever. It's also never been worse.Rolex wouldn't service the vintage watch my mom inherited. Watchmakers say it happens all the time.A tiny, invasive bug and the climate crisis are changing how guitars are made, and shifting the course of music historyThe tourism free-for-all is overGovernment-run boarding schools were founded to 'civilize' Native Americans. Hundreds of dead children remain buried in the schoolyard graves.Meet the Texas minister who helps fly dozens of women to New Mexico every month to get abortionsPeople are flocking to Colorado for the great outdoors, but the air pollution is so bad, it's forcing many to stay insideInside Kabul: An aid worker reveals the devastating chaos that erupted during the US exit from Afghanistan Travel Artificial Intelligence