Newly-launched Travel Smarter has launched an AI-powered loyalty optimisation platform designed to help frequent flyers earn airline status faster and maximise the value of their points and miles.
Founded by travel technology veterans Richard Viner, Joel Waldhoff, and CTO Pablo Casado-Bissone, Travel Smarter is building an agentic AI platform for travel loyalty, with the first optimisation agents now live and additional agents planned as the platform expands.
The product first opened to early-access users in January, following strong interest from the frequent flyer community.
Viner, formerly at Sabre, said he founded the company after airlines began moving to revenue-based qualification models, higher elite thresholds and tighter benefits.
He said changes to the loyalty schemes saw many frequent travellers losing status and not knowing how to regain it.
“I want to help every traveller in the world maximise their travel loyalty value,” he said.
“Anyone that knows me, knows that I’ve always been slightly obsessed with travel loyalty and have spent years helping friends and family earn enough points for free flights and reach higher airline status.
“Last year many friends started losing status despite travelling just as much. I began showing them how to regain it — which airline or alliance would get them there faster, unlock upgrades, or earn enough points for things like a family holiday, to help save them potentially thousands in flights.
“That’s when it became clear this wasn’t just a niche problem. Travel Smarter was built to solve it — helping travellers maximise the value of their travel and reach airline status faster.”
He pointed to a poll of 2,000 British Airways frequent flyers where 62% said they expect to lose status under new qualification structures.
“We saw an opportunity to build a platform that removes this complexity and helps travellers maximise the value of their loyalty — optimising earning, status progression and rewards across airlines, hotels and eventually car rental programmes,” said Viner, who has also worked for Expedia, Egencia and Perk.
“Travellers are losing airline status faster than ever despite flying just as much. Airlines are raising thresholds and quietly devaluing loyalty programmes. The airline you fly most isn’t always the fastest route to status. Travel Smarter removes the guesswork revealing the smartest path to status and the best return on travel spend.”
Travel Smarter helps travellers identify where their loyalty delivers the greatest value, optimising status, upgrades and rewards across airlines, alliances and credit cards.
Viner said the emergence of LLM’s, agent orchestration frameworks and AI-assisted coding tools has made it possible to analyse complex rule systems such as airline loyalty programmes, partner earning, extract, analyse and process far more quickly than before.
“Combining this with advancement in coding, these technologies allowed the team to rapidly model airline rules, simulate thousands of status and earning permutations, and deploy Travel Smarter’s first optimisation agents,” he said.
“While the platform is currently in its first version, these advances have enabled the company to bring a working product to market far faster than would have been possible just a few years ago.”
