Paul Nixon, founder and CEO of intuitive, talks with Travolution about the launch of its new API and shares his worldview on the theory and practice of software development in the era of AI

 

UK-based travel technology provider intuitive is launching a major restructuring of its core platform architecture which, according to founder and CEO Paul Nixon, “offers a best of both world’s proposition”.

These worlds are the 20-plus year footprint of its iVector reservation platform and the increasing availability of enterprise-grade AI-enabled software development tools.

The aim is to expose everything from the iVector platform through an API, according to Nixon. “We kicked off the build mid-January. By the end of March, we had an MVP with over 3,000 API calls and user interactions and by the end of this quarter we’ll have version 1.1 of that,” he said.

The new API has been built using AWS API Gateway Technology. Travel companies using iVector can benefit from AWS’ interoperable and standards-based architecture, allowing them to build their own products and/or features on top of iVector, taking advantage of new AI-enabled coding tools which, Nixon claimed, means “everybody can now write software”.

intuitive have been building proprietary travel technology for more than two decades, including one of the earliest examples of an XML gateway in travel. He used the metaphor of a motorway to describe his overview on the history of software development and where the new iVector API sits in this timeline.

“The inside lane is how we used to write software until relatively recently,” he explained. “It was hard. You needed expensive, clever people. There were bugs. Then, 2024 into 2025 we moved into the middle lane where AI would help to write the software. At this stage we’re seeing productivity increases of around 20%, maybe more if you’re really flying.

“Now, we’re in the fast lane. We’ve done several projects where genuinely you can go fifty times faster. I’ve done things myself that would have taken months in hours, and I’ve done things that would have taken years in weeks. This changes everything.

“My job as CEO now is facilitating the team here and the customers into that fast lane,” he explained, adding “this opens up three routes: intuitive’s developers building on behalf of clients, customers developing their own solutions directly on the API, or a collaborative approach between them”.

Read the rest of the interview on Travolution

“AI is like having a superpower, which is really exciting, but what happens when everyone else is going to have the same superpower? Our strategy in this context is to sync the accurate and comprehensive model of iVector with the benefit of AI native software development. The new API is the bridge between those two things.

– Paul Nixon, CEO and Founder at intuitive

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