Pixi reimagines luxury travel content sharing

Travel Weekly

2 days ago

Travel advisor Katie Terrington once spent six hours building a visual itinerary for a $200,000 trip to Nepal, Bhutan and India, scouring a stock photo site for suitable destination images when her itinerary-building platform came up short.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the first time Terrington, founder of London-based Katie Terrington Private Travel, had resorted to extremely time-consuming measures to secure suitable content for her ultrahigh-net-worth clients. She has even had to book flights to visit and photograph villas, capturing floor plans and video walkthroughs that weren't available through traditional channels.
"For my clients, detail is so important," she said. "And if you're booking a five-bedroom villa, you need to have a real understanding of the configuration."
Terrington isn't alone in feeling these sorts of frustrations.
Emma Squire, who previously ran luxury travel agency ES Travel Design, experienced similar pain points around gathering content from travel suppliers.
"I was often emailing hotel partners saying, 'I need access to your images' or 'Can you send me your media library?'" she said. "If I was lucky, I'd get a response that day, but sometimes it would take two or three days. Then I'd get a Dropbox link or WeTransfer link, and 90% of the time the images and videos were disorganized."
Squire recognized the problem wasn't limited to the advisor side.
Alan Ball
Alan Ball, who previously worked as a hotel sales executive for brands including Six Senses and Soneva, recalls having "about 200 emails with people asking for media asset requests" at any given time.
The shared frustration led Squire and Ball to develop Pixi, a centralized content hub that launched publicly in early June. The platform enables travel suppliers to upload their marketing materials for travel advisors to access instantly, using artificial intelligence to categorize and tag content.
Since its launch, Pixi has attracted 50 hotel and resort properties across diverse markets, including the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Norway, Austria, Nepal, Bhutan, the U.S. and the U.K. Pixi's AI system automatically titles, categorizes and creates metadata for uploaded content.
Emma Squire
Squire said that approximately 60% to 70% of Pixi's hotel partners use the platform's AI feature, while some prefer to manually organize their content.
The platform charges hotels a monthly subscription fee starting at about $270, with pricing scaled according to property size. Membership also gives hotels access to analytics showing which advisors are downloading their content.
"It's a digital asset management tool; but for the travel suppliers, it's also a lead generator," Ball said. "They have visibility on which travel buyers are interacting with their content, so they can then reach out to those travel agents and offer additional help."
And while accommodations are Pixi's initial focus, by August the platform will have expanded to other travel verticals, including airlines, private jet companies, destination management companies and tourism boards.
"My dream is that Pixi becomes a household name in the luxury industry for being the central source of content, and you'll get travel advisors just saying to a hotel, 'Are you on Pixi?' like it's a standard thing," said Squire, adding that the company aims to reach around 1,000 supplier partners by the end of this year.
Free for advisors
For travel advisors, Pixi doesn't require any commitment or cost. The platform is free for industry professionals after a credential verification process.
Pixi established an invite-only ambassador program called Pixi Insiders that enables advisors in the program to earn commission for successful referrals, supplementing the company's core sales operations.
Katie Terrington
Terrington, a Pixi Insider, said that for her business, which manages travel for 25 families across the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, the U.K. and Australia, the platform enables real-time content sharing that's especially relevant to her clientele.
"If I'm on a call, I can start to ping them images and videos from Pixi straight away," Terrington said. "Here is a video walkthrough, or here is the view or here are other small details, because it's about selling the emotive piece."
And while many hotels already upload such content to their social media channels, Terrington said that sharing social media links with clients can feel inappropriate for the luxury market.
"I don't want to send an Instagram link to a client," she said. "Some of my clients are really private, and they don't have Instagram accounts. And you want something more bespoke. Pixi gives you the ability to show that curated content in such a gorgeous way."