Sonder is back. In a sense.
Canadian AI travel company TravelAI announced Monday that it has acquired the Sonder brand and relaunched Sonder.com. The deal did not include Sonder’s real estate or its operating business.
Sonder, which operated boutique hotels and short-term rentals, filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations in November after hotel giant Marriott International abruptly ended its partnership with the Airbnb rival. Guests were forced to leave midway through their stays, and employees lost their jobs overnight.
Despite the $2.2 billion market capitalization travel company’s disarray in 2021, Travel AI said Sonder’s name still carries weight for travelers and in search results.
“The vast majority of travelers who still search Sonder every month were unaware of the issue last November,” TravelAI CEO and founder John Liottier told Business Insider. “What they will remember is that they had a great travel experience.”
The new Sonder will no longer operate facilities or accept reservations. Instead, it leverages AI to serve as a curated list of city stays, including boutique hotels, apartments, and homes, and directs users to third-party sites like Vrbo, Expedia, and Booking.com to book.
Liottier said TravelAI seeks to leverage “search fairness and residual traffic” to Sonder.com to provide the same kind of high-quality, unique stays that travelers expect from Sonder properties.
The properties featured on the site fit into what TravelAI calls a “Sonder Bar.” TravelAI’s system curates based on reviews, ratings, photos, neighborhood features, and features identified in Old Sonder properties.
The new Sonder.com features AI-curated properties from third parties like Vrbo and Expedia. Travel AI
Of the 10 million accommodations that TravelAI can curate from partner sites, only about 5% are Sonder Bars, Liottier said.
He declined to reveal how much TravelAI paid for the Sonder brand and website, but said it was “good value” and that its payback would be measured in “months, not years” and that it was targeting $100 million in bookings through Sonder.com in the first year. As of Monday afternoon, Liottier said the platform was already generating reservations. When a customer clicks through and makes a reservation, the company receives a commission.
TravelAI has acquired several travel brands over the past few years, including Casai.com, OwnerDirect.com, and Smarttours.com. Liottier said Sonder is the company’s most high-profile brand acquisition to date.
Through the acquisition of Sonder, TravelAI also hopes to draw attention to the broader AI travel technology the company is working on, Liottier said.
This includes Sonder Concierge, a beta tool that recommends accommodations based on what it learns about individual traveler preferences. Last month, TravelAI also released Traveler.md, an AI memory tool designed to make these settings available to a variety of travel sites and AI assistants.
With the relaunch of Sonder.com, the company needs to tell customers it’s not the same brand that kicked them out of hotels and left them stranded on vacation last fall, Liottier said.
“That’s the challenge we face: getting our former customers to understand that we’re not that old Sonder.”