Building MCP Before MCP Existed: Inside Despegar's Sofia Agent

Demetrios: [00:00:00] All right, we've got a special episode where I talk with Nicolas, an AI PM from the company Despegar in Latin America, all about how they are building their concierge agent for travel called Sophia. We get into many different things, even how they built what is a competitor to MCP before MCP was even a standard, and about some of the key challenges they faced while putting this AI agent, Sophia, into production.

Demetrios: Let's listen to it now.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: In our multi-agent, we have one application that's named Chapi, and it's like the brain of Sophia. Each agent, it's like kind of a, we call it a category or a different flow. For example, flights, hotels, activities, cars, et cetera.[00:01:00]

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: It's not like we are, like, 20, 30 people, uh, developing Sophia, but anyone in the company can create a flow, obviously, with our okay, let's say, but with our supervision. But anyone in the company can create their own flow and work on it. And because of the know-how, like we have some know-how, for example, how, on how to sell hotels, but the, the best team to do that is the hotels team.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: So they can take their flow and make the changes they think the, they think they, that, that has to be made.

Demetrios: Someone who wants to build a flow is expected to-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: To be technical.

Demetrios: Yeah. Okay.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Like in, in, in Despegar, we are organized as squads, and each of us, each squad, let's say the hotel, to go back to that example, has a product member, an IT team or a developer team, and a user experience [00:02:00] team as well.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: So they took their flow and, uh, make the changes and improvements that they think are the best.

Demetrios: Yeah. And it makes sense that you would wanna spread out that work- Yeah ... as opposed to one centralized team that's trying to develop everything, versus just give the foundational building blocks- Yeah ... that folks can then customize on top

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: of.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: The, the most of the categories or the, the flows, agents that we build, we start building it, and then we pass that to the corresponding team.

Demetrios: Mm-hmm. Uh, so you, you think, "Maybe we should do something along these lines," and then you build, like, the basics.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Uh, yes.

Demetrios: And then they can customize.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yes.

Demetrios: Uh-huh. And the whole idea there is it's all based around chat.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: It's all based around chat, also voice. Uh, like you can call, in our after-sales team, if you call, uh, our Despegar number, Sophia will- [00:03:00] Will, will contact you Yeah And then you can, you can be routed to an agent, but Sophia will be the one that, that first call, first talk to you.

Demetrios: Yeah, because I remember seeing that demo where it was like, "Hey, what's my flight number?"

Demetrios: Yeah. "What's my ... When do I check in?" Simple questions that somebody maybe is, is calling because they don't really know, and it takes a lot of work.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: It would surprise you, like, the simple of ba- or basic questions that we have in after sales, like- Yeah ... h- which is my check-in number? Where's my voucher? Uh, where's my invoice?

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: And it was, like, th- that simple questions are perfect for Sophia, and if the person asks, I don't know, like, a, a reschedule of the flight, probably they will, we will route you to an agent.

Demetrios: Mm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Uh, but, uh, the, the workload of the agents were like, uh, they are be- they are more optimized to do what it's a complex question.

Demetrios: Yeah. I remember my buddy Elliot, who works at [00:04:00] Voca Health, and he does stuff for doctors and clinicians, and it's more or less the same thing but all around voice. And so people will call a doctor's office and say things like, "How long was I supposed to fast before my surgery tomorrow?" Or whatever it was, and he said that, like, 80% of the- Questions

Demetrios: questions were super simple, just basic things that you probably got on some form- Document ... or some email. Yeah, in a document, but you don't wanna look for it, which I find hilarious. Like, if you just Googled it, you could probably find it, but it takes a little bit- But you need to

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: be sure that your doctor says that.

Demetrios: Yeah, and it probably takes a little bit more effort to go and click through the UI and figure out... And then I do think, and you've probably thought about this a lot as the product manager, you're leaving a little bit of effort or money on the table because [00:05:00] in your use case yesterday, where someone called and they said, "What's my check-in?"

Demetrios: Or, "When can I check in?", right?

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: I wanna be able to say, "Okay, go check me in."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah. Like, in, in the after sales part, what we are building right now, it's like going through all the process. For example, if you have a, uh, a change in your flight, like, we are trying to, Sophia, be able to do the task for you.

Demetrios: Uh-huh.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We are not there yet. We are starting with that. So we complete, like, we have two, like, two frameworks or two visions. One to, to growth horizontally and one to growth, like, uh, deeper in, in each flow. Mm-hmm. So we have cover horizontally every- like, almost everything, and we are now building, like, for each one of the topic, deeper solutions, so you don't have to contact or you don't have to do it yourself, any of the, or any of that tasks.

Demetrios: Yeah, [00:06:00] that's very special. It got me thinking as I was reflecting on that use case and wanting to be able to just say, "Okay, now go check me in." Then I was like, "Wait a minute. Why do we even have to check in to planes anymore?"

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: I don't know.

Demetrios: I took a step back. That's a

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: good question.

Demetrios: I was like, "What the fuck is this about?"

Demetrios: The-- We're getting psyoped 100% right now. Like, what is the check-in even for? I could see what it was for back in the day.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah, but now, like, it doesn't make any sense.

Demetrios: It does. It-- Right? Am I, am I crazy here?

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: No, I'm with you. I'm with you in, on that.

Demetrios: I imagine there's a lot of difficulty, though, with the identity or being able to vouch for...

Demetrios: Like, Sofia checking in for me, uh, the thing that is difficult is knowing that I'm actually-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: That it's

Demetrios: you ... telling Sofia. Yeah. Yeah,

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: and you are you, and the documents, and et cetera.

Demetrios: Yeah. But then again, like, why would I tell you to check in if I wasn't- If I don't want to ... if it wasn't me? Yeah. Like, it's just, it's a ridiculous thing, the whole check-in.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: I go back to that. I gave a few talks [00:07:00] about this experience when I was traveling to Portugal from Germany, and my flight was three hours delayed. And in Europe, if it's three hours delayed, you are able to get money back, and I was going back and forth with my LLM of choice, right? And saying like, "Hey, my flight's delayed this much.

Demetrios: Here's the flight number," blah, blah, blah. "Do I, am I entitled to any money?" And I go through that whole thing, and it's like, "Yeah, you can get 250 bucks per passenger." And I was traveling with my wife and two daughters, and I'm like, "Shit, I am rich." This flight, like the- Getting rich. Yeah. Just paid for my vacation.

Demetrios: And what do you think I tried to do that had me cut the conversation? What was it that made me realize like, "Ah, shit, I'm not actually gonna get the money"?

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: I don't know. Uh...

Demetrios: I tried to say, "Okay, go and make the claim for me."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Okay. And it didn't.

Demetrios: It was like, "I'm an AI assistant, I can't do that." I'm like, "Well, you're not assisting much, are you?"

Demetrios: [00:08:00] You're basically just giving me some random information, and-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: And giving you, giving you tasks to do- Yeah. ... yourself.

Demetrios: You're my imaginary friend who now is increasing my workload.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah. Yeah.

Demetrios: And so that is a perfect use case. Like, I would love it if I could just get file claims through a chatbot.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Through a chatbot.

Demetrios: But not... Uh, and this is where I, like in my talk, I was saying there is this really weird paradigm that's happening because all of-- There's a lot of Google services, or if you Google "file my claim for me," you can find- Find ... pages and pages of websites that will- To offer ... file your claim.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: But it's not inside of the native chatbot that I want to have.

Demetrios: Maybe they have their own chatbot, but it's not like- But

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: not the one that you use. Yeah.

Demetrios: Yeah, and it's not like I can just say, "Oh, hey, Gemini or ChatGPT or Claude," like use this- Please do this for

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: me.

Demetrios: Yeah, use this tool and file it for me. Yeah. And so that was where- Me as a [00:09:00] customer, I had so much friction.

Demetrios: And if I was already on Sophia, I'm already interacting with my, all of my travel itinerary through you in Despegar, it would make so much sense that I'm like-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: That you have all covered there. Yeah ...

Demetrios: yeah, just file that claim. Yeah. They did this. And if it was easy, I would probably be making a lot more money, 'cause there's so many times that my flight's been late-

Demetrios: and I'm just like, "Nah." Like, I don't care that much.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: The airplane services do anything they can to, like, get out of filing it- All the time, yeah, claim ... or get out of, like, pla- paying it. And so you know there's gonna be a back and forth, and you know it's gonna take up a lot of time when you do it. But that seems like a perfect use case for an agent.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: For, for any, uh, for Sophia, for any AI use case. Yes.

Demetrios: Yeah, so I'm giving you all kinds of ideas here. What-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: I'm going to take it. I'm going to take the ideas.

Demetrios: What are you actually working on? 'Cause I'm just giving you these utopian scenarios.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Like, we have, like, one main focus in [00:10:00] Sophia right now. It's, like, m- m- make our users more awareness of Sophia.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Like- Mm-hmm ... we have, like, two KPIs that we follow a lot. The first one is how many of our clients interact with Sophia.

Demetrios: Mm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Uh, and of course then we double-click on how many times or, uh, how useful Sophia was. But we have 30, 30% of our clients interacting with Sophia in any part of the journey. Uh, and we also, like, uh, follow a lot the KPI of Sophia's gross booking.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: That's like, say, like, saying the Sophia sales. Like, in how many sales Sophia, uh, was a im- a very important part of the customer journey.

Demetrios: How are you encouraging-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Presenting Sophia. Yeah,

Demetrios: exactly.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We have, like, we have two channels in, in the sales part. The first one is, or yeah, the first one is WhatsApp. Like, if you talk for, uh, to WhatsApp, uh, to [00:11:00] Despegar through, through WhatsApp, Sophia will text you, then it can route you to an agent.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: But, but Sophia can offers you flights, hotels, it- uh, itineraries, uh, activities, any product that you think, and also can help you with, uh, destinations, with what to do in each, uh, in each, uh, in each, uh, part of your travel. The, the value proposition of Sophia is that Sophia can offer you, like, real, uh, time offers.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Like, it's not a cache that, that we found some, uh, we found in our documents- Uh-huh ... or in our history. But Sophia make the actual search for you and give you the detail of the product that you click and you buy at the moment. So I think that that's one of the, of, of our main value propositions. So you can- Through WhatsApp you can, uh, explore all the, let's say, the shopping flow of flights, hotels, et cetera.

Demetrios: Mm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: So that's one of our channels, [00:12:00] and the other channel, it's in our app or in our website where Sophia has different placements around, um, around the, the platform. But since July, August, we are, like, trying to present Sophia to more and more customers. Like, like we want to... our customers to be more aware of Sophia in the sales part, and zooming or one of the things that we do, it was in the search box where you complete your destiny, your, your dates, your distribution, like how many are, people are traveling.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We, like, add a s- a switch or a toggle down that, or down there, and it says, like, "Use AI u- with my search."

Demetrios: Mm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: And when you click it, you go directly to Sophia, and you go through all the shopping flow in Sophia, and you only have to pay in our, let's say, traditional flow.

Demetrios: Yeah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: So that's one of the things that we are doing, and we are also adding, I don't know if anyone has seen Despegar, but [00:13:00] we have, like, in the, in the top of our platform, like, the buttons of each products that we have.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We are, like, adding now a new button that it's a model AI, like AI mode-

Demetrios: Yeah ...

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: where you have an open search box, and you can search wherever you want, and Sophia will answer. Mm. So you don't have to be like, uh, very static way of searching, like it's the way that you used to search in travel, like Buenos Aires to Madrid from this day to that day for two people.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Like, but you can say, "Hey, Sophia, give me the cheapest flight between these days," and Sophia will help you with that request. Or, "Sophia, give me the offers," or, "How are the prices now to go to Madrid?" So we are, like, enabling a new way so- to the users to search, uh, for our products and for, for their trips.

Demetrios: Oh, man.

Demetrios: It is so cool to think about the idea of just like, "I have this [00:14:00] block of time free. Where should I go?"

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah. That's what Sophia is going to help you with- Yeah ... let's say, like.

Demetrios: And I know Airbnb did that, and I wonder how successful it was because I haven't heard anything since, but it was, it was kind of like, "Show me just unique places to go to and..."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: It's n- be- before AI, it wasn't easy for us, like an OTA, to be part of the dreaming part, the dreaming section of your- Yeah ... trip. Like, where do I go? I have this time free. How do I plan this? Because we were very transactional.

Demetrios: Mm-hmm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: So Sophia, it's also covering that, uh, that, that we didn't in, in the Despegar platform in most of the OTAs.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We didn't have cover. So it's, like, a very new use case for our platform, and we are improving it, like, every day, let's say. Like, how we recommend you, uh, the destinations for you, how many budget do you have, uh, [00:15:00] what are your preferences, what to do in each, in each destination. So that's, like, a new part for our platform, and Sophia, it's, it's the best place to do, the best place to do it.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Do you

Demetrios: see the different user segments? 'Cause I imagine a subset of y- your users only uses it for flights, and then a subset only use it for hotels, and then there's some people that use it for the full end-to-end. Is that one of the KPIs you're looking at, too, is, like, how many more things can we get them to engage with?

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah. We'll, we look at that. Like, we used to have one KPI that was, like, in a scope conversation, like, "Hey, Sophia can answer the as- the, the, the user question or the user prompt." And that KPI was, like, in 95, 96%, like, very asymptotic, so we are not tracking it anymore. And we are now, like ... For now, we think we have covered most of the use cases that the customer request us.

Demetrios: Mm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We have, like, two [00:16:00] ways to keep growing Sophia. One, it's adding use cases that the customer didn't know they want, but they will use, and we have some of them. Uh, and also, um, improving the ones that we have today. Like, we can be better recommending new destinations.

Demetrios: Yeah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We can be better making you better trip plans, uh, improving our flight.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Like, for every product, our mantra is, for example, for the flight fl- for the flight shopping flow, we want Sophia to be able to perform things that you can't do on a traditional page. Like, if you go for the, for the traditional platform and search for a flight, it's not easy to compare dates, like, one day prior, one day later.

Demetrios: Or if it's Madrid versus Amsterdam.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Exactly. So we are trying to focus Sophia on performing that things that [00:17:00] it will be very difficult for a normal user to do in the traditional platform. Yeah. So we add value. Yeah, you normally need

Demetrios: various browser windows open- Yeah. ... to compare

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: and then- That's what all, we all do.

Demetrios: Yeah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We want Sophia, like, to be able to solve all of this in the chat.

Demetrios: Uh-huh. You know what I ... I'll give you some more things that I want- Please ... as a user. This is only because we had a hackathon in the summer, and the winners of the hackathon came on the podcast, and they talked to us about what they'd built, and it was just a little chatbot that you would drop into your WhatsApp groups, and then it would help you organize with friends.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yes. W- we are looking into that. Yeah. Because of- As we have Sophia in WhatsApp, it's the perfect use case. Like add Sophia to your g- group, uh, friends chat, chat, and call Sophia wherever you wanna m- check something. Like, "Hey, how's the m... Or how, how many do I have to pay to get a flight to Rio tomorrow?" I don't know.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah. Or on February. [00:18:00] So it's one of the use cases that we are very-

Demetrios: Yeah, I'm talking more, and you probably are too, in the dreaming phase. Okay. I've got a group of my friends that I used to go skiing with, and we wanna organize a ski trip. But we don't know when, and we don't know where- Where ... and we don't know where we're gonna stay.

Demetrios: And so Sophia, the way that I think these folks had done it is that you call the chatbot, or the chatbot interviews you. Mm-hmm. And then it takes down the dates, it takes down your price sensitivity, it takes down, you know, where, what kind of trip you wanna go on, because it's not always so clear. Like- Yeah

Demetrios: "Hey, we wanna go skiing." It's like, "Uh, what are your top three things to do on holiday?" And then it says, "Hey, I've got these different options for holiday. Whoever's in, give a thumbs up emoji, and I'll buy your flight."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Okay. And that's the task for you as well.

Demetrios: Yeah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: I think that one of the things that you mentioned, and we have, we are always looking [00:19:00] at this, in the travel industry, like the customer doesn't care if you took three more seconds or if they ask you questions, because it's going to be a, an experience that he's like waiting for.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: It's not like I'm asking any other LLM- Mm ... like, "Hey, what's my routine for today?" And it takes forever or ask me questions. But in the, in the travel industry, users are willing to give us that time to get an, a better answer, a better recommendation- Yeah ... the perfect product for, for their trip. So we are-- we have to be careful just not to ask too much question, but to explore that, uh, that, that idea of asking user informations because they are willing to, to give us that.

Demetrios: Yeah. And if you make it frictionless or in-app- Or,

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: yeah ...

Demetrios: type

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: of- With gami- with any gamification, let's say. Yeah. Like-

Demetrios: Yeah, or just, okay, it's an emoji, and then boom, it knows. That's, that's my confirmation. It's not [00:20:00] like I have to- You have to type it ... type anything or do any- anything in that regard. And the other thing that I was thinking is how you are able to do so much with that direct line of communication on WhatsApp, because me, I'm a bit of a coffee snob, and when I go to places, I like to know where all the best cafes are around where I'm staying.

Demetrios: And if you know that, then you can send me a nice little report of, "Hey, here's all the ones." But then even more than that, you can say, "I created this shared Google Maps."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yes.

Demetrios: And you just have to join my Google Maps, and it has everywhere- Already marked

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Marked with pins- Yeah ... like where you have to go.

Demetrios: Where you go.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We are starting to explore, like in trip use cases.

Demetrios: Mm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Like we, we now have like Sophia outbound messages to our customers, uh, mostly in the post sale, uh, journey of the, of the, of the c- of the user. But we [00:21:00] are starting to explore what's... or how can we deliver value to the customer in the in trip, uh, part- Yeah

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: of, of their journey. Uh, so yes, one that we were thinking was like restaurants, recommendations on, "Hey, I know that. I know the hotel that you are saying because you buy it with Despegar. So hey, this is, this is the nicest place near you. Uh, this is the nicest restaurant," et cetera. Yeah. So we are starting to explore that new phase that, uh-

Demetrios: Yeah, I remember my family came and visited me when, uh, one of the first years that I was living abroad, and they expected me to be the tour guide and put together- Of

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: course, I would

Demetrios: expect the same.

Demetrios: Which I, we kinda made a joke of it because in English, you know, you call, when you can't go somewhere and you have to go around, it's called a detour.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Okay.

Demetrios: And I'm Demetrius, and so I was given a detour.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Demetour.

Demetrios: It was basically everywhere we were going [00:22:00] was a bit of a roundabout way to get there, and it was, it was a complete detour.

Demetrios: But at the end of the day, what I put together was like a pretty legit guide on the place we were going, why we were going there, why I thought it was cool, the different, uh, restaurants that we had to choose from that I think everybody would enjoy, and that you can just create now.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: I don't need to spend any time, and each person- Need

Demetrios: can get their own, uh, stylized- Personalized

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: recommendation- Yeah ... for their own preferences.

Demetrios: It comes back to this idea that I was talking to Tiago about, personalization at scale-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah ...

Demetrios: is so cool. And the new ways of doing it, what I've been realizing talking to everybody here is it's almost like WhatsApp for the consumer is becoming the control center, just like Slack for the-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Enterprise.

Demetrios: is becoming the control center, right?

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Because WhatsApp, it's what it [00:23:00] is. That's why we said, we said like, I think it was an year ago, like, "Hey, we have to have Sophia in WhatsApp. We can't miss this opportunity. We have to work on this."

Demetrios: Yeah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: And we took the project, and we developed Sophia in our existing lines in WhatsApp, so.

Demetrios: Yeah. And for the Americans, I guess they're not seeing it as much 'cause whenever I go to the US, it's always

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: iMessage. iMessage, of course.

Demetrios: And anywhere outside of the US you are using WhatsApp. Yes,

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: in Latin America, WhatsApp is

Demetrios: very

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: big.

Demetrios: Yeah. In, in Europe and India, all of that, it's so popular. And so having that as your control center where- Potentially I'm interacting with various agents.

Demetrios: I've got my Despegar agent, I've got my iFood agent. Yeah. Uh, in, if I'm in Brazil, I know I'm talking to all these, uh-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Agents and, yeah ...

Demetrios: yeah, agents to get my stuff done.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: It will make your life easier.

Demetrios: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and to... Especially if you're able to get it to do more stuff. But then what [00:24:00] I am constantly thinking about is I don't wanna have to, like, switch between agents.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: I hear you. I just wanna talk to Sophia- To one ... and then Sophia can talk to the iFood agent.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: And so-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah, it's like having an ecosystem of our agents- All- ... all in one place, so you don't have to take care of which one should I te- Right ... text, but we can solve it that for you. Yeah.

Demetrios: Yeah. You know, the more things you throw at it, it's gonna be able to kind of be able to do it.

Demetrios: And that, I think, is the current browser wars that are happening. You know how, like, in 2014 or 2010, I can't remember exactly when, when, uh, Chrome was coming out, you had the new browsers, and that was, like, the browser wars because- Yeah ... it was the front page of the internet. It was how... It was our gateway to-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah, how you...

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: The, the platforms were presented to the customer.

Demetrios: Yeah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: And now it feels like that's the new gateway to the internet.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: Is how- The

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: agentic.

Demetrios: Yeah. And [00:25:00] what chat interface we use. So, and whose chat... It-- Maybe it's not the interface, uh, as much as it is what agent we choose to use. And each agent at the end of the day is probably gonna have their own chat, I guess.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Probably.

Demetrios: Which... Like, it doesn't worry you that Meta might just say, "Oh, actually, everything like that we can do now."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: For us, it's very valuable to have our customer in our application. So we always try to, to have that, uh, and to make them use our app. So Sophia, it's, let's say, more optimized in our app than in WhatsApp because of WhatsApp's limitations of templates- Mm

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: uh, uh, flows, et cetera. So in our app, you have a richer UI Sophia-

Demetrios: Mm ...

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: than you have in WhatsApp because of the [00:26:00] capabilities that, that we can build. So I think that for now, there's value on, uh, having s- ha- using Sophia in Despegar website or Despegar app.

Demetrios: Hmm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: And I like how you broke down yesterday the different phases.

Demetrios: You have, what? You have the dreaming phase, which is when you're planning the trip and you're starting to think, "Where could I go?"

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: And- Yeah, we have the, the dreaming phase. That is the first one that, as you just said, it, it's like, "Where can I go? What do you recommend me? That's-- This is my preferences. I have this budget."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Then you enter, when you decide your where do you wanna go, you enter to the planning phase. Like- W- when do I, when do I wanna go?

Demetrios: Mm-hmm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Uh, what can I do there? What are, uh, the main attractions? Where am

Demetrios: I gonna stay?

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Where you are gonna stay. W- and then you enter to, like, what we're calling the booking part or the, the purchase part.

Demetrios: Yeah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: When you select the right product for you. Mm-hmm. So we have those three [00:27:00] important after purchase, uh, b- uh, before purchase, uh- Yeah ... uh, parts. And as I mentioned, we try to cover it all with Sophia, um, that it's a, a, a new use case for our platform. So we are giving users more value than we used to as Despegar.

Demetrios: And then there's other phases of the trip. You have the actual trip itself.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We have, before, before the actual trip, we have the, uh, anticipating parts, like you buy a flight from us. But if I know, I don't know, if I know that you are going to go to ski, like I know that you have to, uh, uh, that I can recommend you or I can help you with, uh, ski passes, uh- Oh, yeah

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: equipment, et cetera. So that's all the anticipating part, like helping the custom- the, the user to have all that he needs when he arrive at the destiny.

Demetrios: Mm-hmm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Then we have the experiencing part [00:28:00] that it's one that, like, in trip, like we were talking, uh, before, like how we can deliver value when you are in your destiny.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Let's say like, "Hey, this is a very great place to take coffee." And then we have the sharing part. Like we are, we are also starting to work on, on this, but on travel it's very, like, useful to see what other customers or what other, what other people done on that place or on that des- on, on their trip. So we think that it's going to be important for us to have like a, I don't think like a, a m- maybe like a community, but if you can, i- if you are in your dream, let's say you wanna go to ski.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: I have went to ski like two months ago. Mm-hmm. I have up- upload to Sophia my review, my, uh, my recommendations, et cetera. And when you enter Sophia and you say, "Hey, I wanna go with ski," Sophia tells you, "Hey, I have this 10, 1,000 [00:29:00] reviews and, uh, for skiing users are recommending this." It will be very more powerful than- Yeah

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: than me telling you this. Like it's going to be more- That

Demetrios: social proof.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah. It's that social proof that we are going to, to trying to have.

Demetrios: Yeah. I was thinking about if you needed to actively reach out to customers to get those reviews, or if they were just willingly putting them and saying, "Hey, I went here, it was great.

Demetrios: I did this."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: And- Uh, I think that it's like a combination of those two things. Yeah. Like we have to- To go to get our customers to give us the review. But some of them also are doing it now without any-

Demetrios: Yeah, which also feels like a place for Sophia if you wanna get reviews. Like, Sophia could call people, say, "Hey, you went on this trip."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: "How did it go?" "

Demetrios: Yeah, tell me about it."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah. "

Demetrios: What did you like? What did you not like? What was

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: the-" I'm getting a lot of ideas here, so

Demetrios: Dude, you might as well hire me at this point. Shit.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: [00:30:00] You're making my job easier.

Demetrios: I know. What actually do you do? Because I'm doing your job right now. Shit. I'm talking

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: to you.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: That's my job

Demetrios: now. You can just... I can be an consultant if you want. I'll, uh, work part-time. But the, the thing that, it, that I was also wondering about is when you're going on the trip, you have that anticipation phase, and there's certain times that me, as a traveler, I will go some places, but I don't want to bring something, or I forget something, and then I just order it to my hotel, right?

Demetrios: Sometimes it's I order it in advance, and this is when... So I'll give you a very concrete use case.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Okay.

Demetrios: I'm going to Greece. I'm only taking a carry-on. I can't take liquids, and I'm gonna sound so cheap right now. But fucking sunscreen at any little kiosk in Greece is, like, 10 euros. [00:31:00] And if you order it-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: It's, like, four?

Demetrios: Yeah. No, it's, like, two. So there's times where I've asked my godmother, who lives in Athens, to send to my hotel- The- She buys, like, a two euro thing of sunscreen, sends it to my hotel in whatever island that I'm going to, so that I can have sunscreen, right? Uh, I'm thinking about that, like, whole customer journey.

Demetrios: There's probably a million other things that people want when they get- Yeah ... to the hotel that they want waiting for them. And if you said, "Hey, you're going to this ski trip. By the way, do you need a new ski helmet?"

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: Or when- Do you have

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: glasses?

Demetrios: Yeah. That's it. "When was the last time you got goggles?

Demetrios: We got these new ones on offer in case you wanna, like, look cool for your friends," 'cause everyone wants that external validation.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah, it's, like, uh, like, very near to your trip, like, sending you, "Hey, this is the list as, the list of things that you are going to need." Yeah. "Do you want, like, uh, any-" You need any

Demetrios: of them.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: any [00:32:00] of them? Do you want any of, any advice on any, on any of them?" So yeah. Yeah, that's, like, very... It's, like, very near your trip- Yeah ... but it's very useful use case.

Demetrios: Yeah. Then you just use OLX. For you guys, the architecture that you decided on was Sophia's gonna be the gateway, and then you're gonna-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Call ... s-

Demetrios: yeah, you can call tools.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: Or different agents that-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: That has, uh, their tools,

Demetrios: yeah. Yeah, and they're very specific to those- parts of the business Yeah And so if it's a complaint, I can complain directly to Sophia, and then it goes to the customer service agent.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: As opposed to a very verticalized agent that is only made for one thing, and if now I complain to that verticalized agent, it doesn't-

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: It doesn't do anything, yeah.

Demetrios: Yeah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Our vision with Sophia, it's like we want to be the channel of choice of our customers. [00:33:00] We want our customers to, like, independent from our platform, they can do all they wanna do in Sophia.

Demetrios: Mm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: So that's why we want to cover all the, the, the travel cycle, and Sophia has each agent or has many agent for each use case or for each part.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Because our, our goal or our dream, it's to be the channel of choice of our customers, like-

Demetrios: Yeah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We're- They wanna talk with Sophia, and that's it.

Demetrios: It's like WeChat in China.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah, kind of. You

Demetrios: can do anything in there. And m- m- I wanna break down to you guy... So you built Sophia, which is the travel assistant agent, and you created it before there was LangChain and before there was MCP, and so you made a lot of really interesting design decisions.

Demetrios: One being that you're gonna create your own orchestration layer.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah.

Demetrios: The other being that you basically [00:34:00] created your own MCP.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah. At, at the beginning, we didn't have the orchestration layer because we don't have as many tools or data. We, we have, like, the tools listed and the, the LLM decide what tool to call.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: But when we, we, we were growing more and more and more, we realized that we have a-- we, we need a new, like, uh, the orchestration and then multi-- or we need, like, a multi-agent, the orchestration, and then, uh, the, the agents with their tools. So it was, like, kind of an evolution. Uh, we started with Sophia that calling dir- directly to tools.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Then we evolved, like creating Chappie and creating the satellitalist, the satellital a- agents with their tools. Uh, uh, so it was, like, a decision made at the moment that when we start, when we were adding more and more tools, we realized that Sophia was getting a little bit lost there.

Demetrios: Ah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: And we needed [00:35:00] to evolve in some way.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: And when w- we did the, we did the research, and we, we said, "Hey, we need an orchestrator here." And there was any third party, like, very established in the market to, to go with that. 'Cause it

Demetrios: was in, like, 2024, if I remember correctly.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yes, it was in 2024. So that's- We started POC at the, the POC at the, the end of 2023, and in 2024, it was, like-

Demetrios: Exactly

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: the first year with a full dedicated team to Sophia.

Demetrios: Wow. And Then you said, "Now we need to recreate MCP." Or which, uh, at that time, again, there was no MCP, so

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: At, at the beginning when y- when we create the orchestration layer, all the agents were inside Chappie, that it's our main app or our brain. But then we realized that Chappie was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and it's w- it wasn't going to be able to manage that.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: So we decide [00:36:00] to put away or, like, uh, to take away the, the agents or that tool-- uh, the agents with their tools away from Chappie. Mm-hmm. And that's where-- when we decide, like, we have to, like, create connections between these two things.

Demetrios: Uh-huh.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: So MCP were available at that time because it was in 2024, and we create, like, our own MCP.

Demetrios: And now I imagine there's a lot of conversations between do we upgrade to MCP or do we stay with what we've created? Because MCP has this ecosystem around it. Or do we-- And probably on the orchestration layer, you're probably thinking, "Do we even need an orchestration layer anymore? Can we just let the model cook?"

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: That's, that's, yeah, that's talks that we're, that we have, like, every week, let's say. We now have MCP protocols in Sophia.

Demetrios: Mm-hmm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: We are not thinking about changing the old ones to MCPs. But [00:37:00] as the world is more MCP-driven now, we, we have to, or we had to add M-MCP to Sophia so we can, uh, keep up to date and connect with new things, like, let's say with ex-external things or with our, with other APIs of our, of Despegar that are creating their MCPs as well.

Demetrios: Mm-hmm.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: So m-m, the new connections can be made, uh, from, um, through MCPs. Um, and about the orchestration layer, we are, like... In-- When, when we, when you create an agent, like last week happens to us, we add a new tool. W-With one agent, like we create, we create a new tool, and with examples of the use cases of that tool, we were to, like, we weren't very specific and start with, uh, the-- Sophia, the day next to the, the, the develop, start to, like, sending all the prompts to that tool, and that, that wasn't right.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Mm-hmm. [00:38:00] So we think we need the orchestration layer for now. Mm-hmm. Because also the agents that we have are very different, like Issues Assistant or Flights or Trip Planner or Dream Phasing. Like, they are very different use cases that you have. So the orchestration layer keep that ve-very optimized and very...

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Let, I-- let's say simple in a way, like- Uh, breaking the decision of the LLM in two parts, keep the, the, the flow or the conversation more-

Demetrios: Yeah, it seems like it's a separation of concerns.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah. Yeah,

Demetrios: it's like s- You allow it to almost be like a walled garden. Maybe not walled garden, but just if it's going to grab one of these tools, then it takes it.

Demetrios: I still feel like you probably, if you reassess in a, a year or maybe six months, it'll be like, "Well, okay, maybe we can get rid of it now."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: [00:39:00] Yeah, probably.

Demetrios: Considering how much ... Like, it's just wild, uh, how much you don't need them anymore for a lot of the use cases, right? Yeah.

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Yeah. That's true. But a- as you mentioned, we started Sophia, like, two years ago in a desire to combine, uh, our knowledge of assisted contacts in- Mm-hmm

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: in sales, in after sales. Like, we saw the opportunity right there, and it was so clear. Like, LLMs were ... The, the perfect use case of LLM were conversational. We have been selling tickets or flights conversationally, so it was like the perfect combination of those two worlds. With the knowhow that Despegar has on how to do that- Mm-hmm

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: uh, with human agents. Like, we are very in touch with them, and they also make my, my job easier, like saying, "Hey, we thought that, like, a human agent would do this in, in this interaction." Yeah. And [00:40:00] we took it. We saw if that use case, it's also, uh, valid for Sophia, and we implement it. So it was, like, a desire to combine those two worlds, uh, that are very deep in our culture.

Demetrios: Do you ever give Sophia the ability to bargain with the customer or negotiate? Because I know that on certain hotel booking sites, they'll say, "We match the lowest price."

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: Not yet. We didn't do that yet.

Demetrios: Uh, y- 'cause it could be dangerous, right?

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: It could be dangerous. Yeah, you have ... The LLM is, is, is deciding for you, so could be dangerous.

Demetrios: Yeah, and you think, like, somebody can just come and say, "Oh, well, I saw it cheaper on this website." And the LLM's like, "Okay." Okay. "Well, I'll give it to you for

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: $1." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So no, no, not yet. We are not thinking about

Demetrios: that. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be nice. When it does happen, tell me so I can stress

Nicolas Alejandro Bogliolo: test- I will remember this [00:41:00] conversation.