Awaze

Current truth

• Who: PE-backed European short-stay / holiday-rentals group, multi-brand, multi-country (~20 countries). Flagship brand Novasol; also Cottages.com. Three big, distinct markets — UK, Denmark, Germany (“three completely different sets of customers”). PE ownership → lean, single-platform, efficiency-first build philosophy (which they feel is starting to change).
• Their customers skew 40+ (esp. UK), mostly Gemini users, largely unaware of AI apps — so Claude is niche for them today; Gemini’s AI-apps roadmap is the platform that matters most for Awaze (“if this falls into the Google world, the disruption really starts”).
• Stage: warm discovery / pre-sales. Relationship runs through sebastian-florian (~4 months, since a Paris MCP event). The 2026-06-16 call brought in the decision-makers: john-perry (Sebastian’s manager; owns the 12–18-month eng-platform strategy) and blake-fulford-brown (Senior PM; data + commercial skeptic). No commercial terms discussed yet — no pricing, scope, or pilot. The Novasol keyword/prompt analysis is the natural wedge to a paid engagement.
• Why now (their driver): John’s 12–18-month engineering-platform strategy names trust & discoverability across LLMs / Google / MCP as a core pillar; internal narrative “when it kicks off, we need to be there — if we’re not, it’s all over,” plus competitor pressure (“competitors appear to be following the same investment plan”). The imminent Novasol ChatGPT app launch needs best-in-class app/tool descriptions before organic discovery turns on.
• What they have: Novasol ChatGPT app — about to launch (not live). Cottages.com ChatGPT app — live but tiny (~100 sessions). Cottages Claude connector — submitted, not yet live, no Claude traffic. No Awaze Claude connector live.
• Their data (shared on the call): direct LLM referral traffic is negligible (biggest domain ~0.1% of sessions from ChatGPT); but GPT-bot crawl ~1.12M sessions/30 days — data harvested, ~no human conversion (an attribution / dark-conversion question). Mistral & Perplexity outrank Claude as referral sources (European-audience effect). They suspect AI Overviews are eroding SEO traffic.
• Standout concern — reviews: LLMs surface negative reviews more than positive (“they like pushing negative more than positive”); at Awaze’s scale they fear it’s worse for them. Raised, unanswered (call cut short when their WeWork room was reclaimed).

What we committed to (relationship state)

• Email the hotel-category ADO/visibility report screen-shared on the call — Elliot.
• Run keyword + prompt analysis for the Novasol ChatGPT app (find the winning keywords; port Claude-connector insights into the ChatGPT app metadata in the interim) — Ghostteam.
• Stand up a Slack channel with John & Blake for async Q&A (Sebastian already has one) — Elliot.
• Offered (separate thread): the extended / agent-readiness ADO material (auth.md, micropayments, agent-accessible site).

What they owe us

• Sebastian: pull the ChatGPT traffic trend over recent months and share back.

Open questions

• Commercial model entirely open — is there a paid engagement here, and what shape (audit / optimization retainer / build)?
• Reviews-in-LLMs strategy — raised, unanswered; a likely follow-up topic.
• Gemini timing for Awaze’s Gemini-heavy base.
• Finish the cut-off ADO-funnel walkthrough + the Airbnb-waiting discussion.

Timeline

• [2026-06-16] (call — “App Discoverability”) Decision-makers joined the long-running Sebastian relationship: john-perry (eng-platform strategy owner) + blake-fulford-brown (PM). Awaze shared their traffic data (negligible LLM referral vs ~1.12M GPT-bot crawls/30d; Mistral/Perplexity > Claude). Ghostteam walked the ADO-score funnel + connector-vs-web behaviour, demoed Claude pickers, used direct-booker / Turkish Airlines / Monday.com / Airbnb-&-Marriott-waiting as examples. Committed: hotel report, Novasol keyword/prompt analysis, Slack channel. No commercials yet. Call cut short (WeWork room reclaimed).