A guy who used to hand carry passports to airport cargo terminals just built the database he couldn't afford in 2018 for a fraction of the cost, and every application still passes through a human before it goes anywhere.
Rob Lee is CEO and co-founder of Swift Passport and Visa Services, a company he started in 2008 helping private aviation clients navigate passport and visa logistics. In this conversation, Rob traces the industry from same day passport courier runs through the shift to eVisas and ETAs, and explains why his team uses AI heavily to build internal tooling while keeping customer data out of public AI tools and a human check on every application.
What You'll Learn
- Same day submission: Swift's early edge came from same day processing of small batches while larger competitors sat on high volume mail for a day or two.
- Business visa niche: The one day speed advantage mattered most to business travelers with short notice trips, which became Swift's core market.
- eVisa disruption: The shift from paper visas to electronic visas and ETAs starting around 2018 to 2019 initially looked like it would eliminate the need for a service like Swift's.
- Payment friction: Countries like India built extensive fraud checks into eVisa payment systems, creating a new kind of complexity that replaced the old paper bottleneck.
- AI reliability gap: Rob says general AI models still give inconsistent, sometimes incorrect answers about visa requirements because the underlying web content is outdated or contradictory.
- Internal AI use: Swift uses AI extensively to scrape government and consulate websites and build a requirements database, with human review as a mandatory quality control step.
- Cost collapse: A database project Rob priced at roughly $780,000 in 2018 became achievable at a small fraction of that cost using current AI assisted development.
- Diplomacy over technology: Visa processing delays are often a diplomatic reciprocity mechanism between countries rather than a technical limitation.
Time-Stamped Highlights
- (0:00) The Johannesburg immigration story that started it all
- (3:39) Getting into aviation clients and starting during the 2008 recession
- (5:24) Hand carrying passports to the cargo terminal
- (7:36) Cracking the code on same day submission
- (10:21) Chasing down a Chinese visa in 48 hours
- (10:37) Brazil's three to four week visa era
- (11:36) The industry wide shift to eVisas and ETAs
- (13:46) India's payment fraud checks and 15 failed attempts
- (18:56) Why AI filled visa forms still get people turned away
- (25:08) Swift's own policy on customer data and AI
- (29:27) Building the database Rob couldn't afford in 2018
- (33:15) How the new platform prefills forms and letters of intent
- (35:13) Best travel hacks: park fees, natural resource taxes, and 60 day prep windows
- (38:54) Why visa delays are a diplomatic bargaining chip, not a technical problem
Guest bio Rob Lee is CEO and co-founder of Swift Passport and Visa Services, which he started in 2008 to help travelers navigate expedited passport and visa processing. The company has grown over roughly 18 years into a business serving corporate travelers, airlines, and individual applicants across dozens of countries. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eelbor/ | Company: https://www.swiftpassportservices.com/
About the Podcast The Travel Tech Podcast features long form conversations with leaders across travel and technology, exploring how software, data, operations and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role.
Host bio Alex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation grade testing and compliance rigour to enterprise AI systems, helping organisations build and test AI agents in regulated environments. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety critical domains.
What is Travel Tech Podcast?
The Travel Tech Podcast, hosted by Alex Brooker, features long form conversations with leaders across travel and technology. The show explores how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Alex Brooker is an industry veteran with experience in aviation, start up to exit, and AI transformation.