Overview
Joris Vanherp is co-founder and chief executive of maya, a company he started in November 2023. He is based in Antwerp and works in artificial intelligence, large language models, leisure and online travel, and travel planning. Since September 2020 he has also been founder and chief executive of Live the World.
Earlier, Vanherp co-founded Data Factory and served as its chief executive from April 2019 to March 2021, and was data science lead at AreTheyHappy during 2020. He joined McKinsey & Company in November 2016 as a junior associate and became an associate in November 2017, remaining until April 2019. Before that he spent three years at PwC Belgium, first as a consultant and then as a senior consultant.
He studied electrotechnics and then energy engineering at KU Leuven, completing a Master of Science in engineering in 2012, and took a master's degree in global supply chain management at Antwerp Management School in 2013. He also studied at Grenoble INP - UGA and held roles with BEST - Board of European Students of Technology in Leuven.
Career history
In the news
- I can’t take credit for the team’s dramatic British makeover on the Eurostar, but I can tell you they’re worth meeting. The Maya crew is at World Travel Market (WTM) London next week. If you’ll be there, grab 20 minutes with them to see the most advanced AI agent for travel businesses working live, and see for yourself what it can do.
- Talk to Eimy A Santos M @ WTM about how Maya's clients now grow faster than ever while delivering exceptional service to all their travelers!
- Travellers are adopting AI fast, so here’s what we at Maya are developing and shipping to help travel companies delight their customers and stand out. 👇 🎙️ 𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗽𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. Travellers can now tap the microphone and just speak their question instead of typing it. It sounds small, but it removes friction at exactly the moment someone's deciding whether to engage or bounce. 🎯 𝗔 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗴𝗿𝗶𝗱. Your agent, powered by Maya, now chooses exactly which trips
- 𝐀 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 one of 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐀𝐈 𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐦𝐚𝐩 𝐈'𝐯𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥. The Singapore Tourism Board's AI Playbook lays out four stages for tourism businesses: 𝟭. Nascent, easy-to-adopt AI tools 𝟮. Optimised, agentic AI running back-end processes 𝟯. Connected, AI woven across cross-industry systems 𝟰. Transformational, agents that plan, execute and optimise operations without a human pressing start. Most of the industry, if we are honest, is parked at stage one. A
- 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗼𝗿-𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹? Live To Travel is now live with Zazu, its new conversational agent powered by Maya. ✈️ Live To Travel specialises in tailor-made journeys, from African safaris to beach holidays in the Indian Ocean. Choosing the right destination and pace is personal, and having support from the first question makes that easier. Zazu helps website visitors explore their options, answer common
- When I talk about agentic AI with family and friends, it sometimes feels like we’ve been on a different planet for the past six months. The conversations are getting more awkward. What feels like a generational leap to my team and me can sound like ChatGPT hype to someone with limited AI experience. 💬 Andrej Karpathy, an AI researcher who worked at OpenAI and Tesla, calls this a “sharp funnel”. Most people have hardly tried agentic AI systems. A much smaller group uses advanced models for real work in coding, design, or math. At the
- ChatGPT sends untracked traffic to your travel website. What changed since GPT-6 launched (Oct 7–8): → Tomek Rudzki (Peec AI) ran the same 1M prompts before and after. ChatGPT now links to a website in 42% of answers, up from 8-10%. 54% of those links go to a homepage. → Ask ChatGPT for a hotel, and it now replies with a questionnaire covering budget, dates, and who’s travelling. → The links carry no referrer or UTM tag. Adobe’s Cedric Huesler saw ChatGPT visits fall ~31k/day while Direct rose ~26k/day on the same pages. Travel is
- Update: ChatGPT fixed the UTM part. Traffic from ChatGPT should return to normal. - ChatGPT sends untracked traffic to your travel website. What changed since GPT-6 launched (Oct 7–8): → Tomek Rudzki (Peec AI) ran the same 1M prompts before and after. ChatGPT now links to a website in 42% of answers, up from 8-10%. 54% of those links go to a homepage. → Ask ChatGPT for a hotel, and it now replies with a questionnaire covering budget, dates, and who’s travelling. → The links carry no referrer or UTM tag. Adobe’s Cedric Huesler saw
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