Visit Travel Group: AI platforms that connect travel to the traveller

What Visit Travel Group does

VisitTravelGroup.com is the group's travel business. Travel now often starts with a question put to an AI assistant, and the answer is only as good as the sources behind it. Visit Travel Group builds those sources: destination platforms on names travellers already search for, each with a concierge, a knowledge base for the place and a direct path to book. It is operated by Costello Global Technology and is one of the main businesses in the group's portfolio.

A network of Visit and destination brands

The network holds 392 Visit and destination brands, among them VisitMalta.co.uk and VisitMiami.co.uk. They are premium domain names that the group holds and develops. A name such as VisitMalta.co.uk tells a traveller, and an AI assistant, what a site is about before either reads a word, and that clarity is the commercial point of the model: the names are the front door, and the platform behind them does the work.

From a traveller's question to a booking

Every destination platform follows the same sequence.

• A traveller asks. On a phone, a tablet or an AI assistant: where should I go, and where should I stay?
• The destination answers. The platform replies from its own knowledge base, in the voice of the destination.
• Partners are recommended. Hotels, airlines and online travel agencies that have joined the network are put in front of the traveller at the moment they decide.
• The traveller books direct. A short path from recommendation to reservation, with the partner in control of price and inventory.
• Automation keeps the platform current, handles enquiries and flags opportunities.
• Everyone sees the result. Traffic, enquiries and sales are measured and shared with the partner.

Who joins the network

Four kinds of partner join. Hotels and hotel chains want to be recommended, and booked direct, wherever travellers ask about their destination. Tourist boards and governments want a branded, AI-ready platform for their destination, built and run for them. Airlines want their routes in front of travellers while they are planning, not after. Online travel agencies and travel partners want to connect inventory to high-intent demand. In each case the partner keeps control of its own price and inventory.

The proof: VisitMalta.co.uk

VisitMalta.co.uk is the network's first national platform, built in partnership with KM Malta Airlines, Malta's national airline, with an AI concierge that connects travellers to the island. It is the working proof of the model. VisitMiami.co.uk is now being built, and the aim is to take the same approach to destinations worldwide.

What it means for the wider group

Each destination is both an operating business and a digital asset. The same names are candidates for the group's tokenisation programme and for the infrastructure being built as YourBank.app. Visit Travel Group is also where the group learns what AI platforms can do for a whole sector, and those lessons carry across to its claims sector platforms. The group's approach to investments and acquisitions applies to travel as it does elsewhere.