Loveholidays has quietly built one of the fastest-growing positions in European package travel, expanding from a UK-only startup in 2012 into eight markets and roughly 15% of the UK packaged travel market. 

In this conversation, head of strategy Isabella Cheng unpacks the bigger shift behind that growth: dynamic packaging has gone from a niche 2% of the UK market in 2009 to about a quarter of it today, and Loveholidays has built its entire model around being the technology layer that aggregates flights and hotels on the fly rather than selling pre-built package holidays.

Cheng also gets specific about where AI actually earns its place at the company, walking through how their chatbot Sandy handles the majority of customer chats at agent-level satisfaction and saves an estimated £4 million a year, and how AI-assisted coding has let engineering nearly double its deployment pace without adding headcount. She wraps with a candid take on the IPO question that's been trailing the company for years.

Loveholidays has quietly built one of the fastest-growing positions in European package travel, expanding from a UK-only startup in 2012 into eight markets and roughly 15% of the UK packaged travel market.&nbsp;
In this conversation, head of strategy Isabella Cheng unpacks the bigger shift behind that growth: dynamic packaging has gone from a niche 2% of the UK market in 2009 to about a quarter of it today, and Loveholidays has built its entire model around being the technology layer that aggregates flights and hotels on the fly rather than selling pre-built package holidays.
Cheng also gets specific about where AI actually earns its place at the company, walking through how their chatbot Sandy handles the majority of customer chats at agent-level satisfaction and saves an estimated &pound;4 million a year, and how AI-assisted coding has let engineering nearly double its deployment pace without adding headcount. She wraps with a candid take on the IPO question that's been trailing the company for years.

A regular dissection of the news, issues and trends in travel and technology, featuring interviews with industry executives and entrepreneurs and hosted by PhocusWire editors.

A regular dissection of the news, issues and trends in travel and technology, featuring interviews with industry executives and entrepreneurs and hosted by PhocusWire editors.

In Phocus is a regular dissection of the news, issues and trends in travel and technology, featuring interviews with industry executives and entrepreneurs and hosted by PhocusWire editors.

In Phocus

Loveholidays' Isabella Cheng explains how the shift toward dynamic packaging and a selective, results-first approach to AI are powering the company's expansion across Europe and its growing share of the UK packaged travel market.