Zoey launches: WhatsApp journey automation for travel, and yes, this one is mine

Let me start with the disclosure, because you deserve it before anything else: Zoey is my product. I'm the founder. So no, this is not independent coverage, and I won't pretend it is. What I can offer instead is something you rarely get in a launch announcement: the honest reasoning behind why this product exists, from the person who has been writing about the underlying problem on this platform for months.

What Zoey is

Zoey is a WhatsApp journey automation platform for the travel industry, built for tour operators, OTAs, holiday parks, and travel agencies. It guides travelers automatically and personally from booking to homecoming and beyond, via the one channel virtually every traveler already uses daily.

The platform consists of four building blocks:

• A visual Journey Builder for proactive tip timelines, so guests get the right suggestion at the right moment of their trip
• An AI engine that automatically answers 80% of customer questions
• A WhatsApp newsletter module with open rates above 90%
• A real-time dashboard with analytics and a full conversation overview

It works for very different travel concepts: a tour operator with complex long-haul itineraries has other needs than a holiday park that wants to inspire guests locally, or an OTA that wants to personalize at scale. Zoey is live now for travel companies in the Netherlands and Belgium, and you can request a demo at withzoey.com.

Why I built it

Regular readers will recognize the thesis immediately, because it runs through almost everything I publish here. The travel industry has a retention problem. Acquisition costs keep rising, yet the vast majority of travelers book their next trip elsewhere, simply because contact drops off the moment they get home. The relationship, and with it the next booking, quietly dies in an inbox with a sub-20% open rate.

Meanwhile, the moment of highest engagement in the entire customer journey, the trip itself, is exactly where most travel companies are absent. Nobody is there when it rains in Barcelona and the family needs a plan B. Nobody suggests the museum tickets, the beach club, the excursion that fits this specific travel party.

That's the gap Zoey fills. During the trip, travelers can book admission tickets, excursions, and activities directly via WhatsApp, which gives travel companies margin beyond the initial booking. After the trip, the platform builds on the profile it developed (travel behavior, preferences, conversations) and automatically generates personalized recommendations for a next destination. The conversation simply never stops, and that's the whole point: retention is not a campaign, it's a relationship that stays warm.

If you've read my piece on intelligent personalization or the travel growth roadmap, you've seen the building blocks of this thinking before. Zoey is what happens when you stop writing about the flywheel and start shipping it. :)

The honest caveats

Because I hold vendor claims to a standard on this platform, mine don't get a pass. The 90%+ open rate is a channel statistic: WhatsApp messages simply get opened, which is precisely why the channel is valuable, but opens are not bookings. The "80% of questions answered automatically" number is real but will vary by travel concept and how well your data foundation is set up. And as I wrote in my WhatsApp marketing piece: this channel punishes overuse. Frequency discipline and genuine relevance are not optional, they're the difference between a trusted travel companion and spam.

I'll also say this: I will keep covering competitors and adjacent players in this space the way I cover everyone, and when I write about the conversational commerce category, I'll remind you of this disclosure. If I ever fail at that, call me out. My credibility here is worth more to me than any single product plug.

Try it

If you run a travel company in the Netherlands or Belgium and the retention story above sounds painfully familiar, take a look at withzoey.com and request a demo. And if you're a reader from another industry: the pattern (own the conversation, build the profile, never let the relationship go cold) translates far beyond travel. That's a topic for another article.

-- Bram Versteegh

Bram Versteegh is the founder of MartechNext, covering the business of AI in marketing: who's building it, who's funding it, and how industries put it to work. He is also the founder of Zoey, the platform discussed in this article.

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