Experience This! Travel

We cover a lot of ground on the Experience This! vodcast / podcast. Two topics that keep coming up: 1. AI 2. Startups Mindtrip, Inc. is definitely one of the most interesting AI based startups we've seen since GenAI became a thing in November 2022. Meet co-founder and CEO Andy Moss as he talks about what Mindtrip's vision is (hint: they're NOT A Trip Planner) and listen to this short segment where he compares their view of the "Connected Trip" to the corporate view that Booking.com especially has been chasing for years. Join co-hosts Lori Timony (sorry we missed you on this show), Christian Watts and Bruce Rosard at Arival 360 San Diego where we'll be looking for special guests for a special on-site show.

The god-father of tours and activities, Rod Cuthbert, joined co-hosts, Lori Timony, Bruce Rosard and Christian Watts on the most recent Experience This! Travel show. What a pleasure to share stories with "the man, the myth, the legend"! (Link to Podcast and Vodcast in the first comment or find it in Spotify, Apple, etc.) I posted one snippet on my personal LinkedIn page (Bruce Rosard), here's another one where Christian asks Rod about what mistakes he made. Fascinating show, thanks Rod!

ICYMI - Pete Comeau, Managing Director Phocuswright joins 2 of our 3 co-hosts, Lori Timony and Bruce Rosard on show #43 to discuss his insights from the Phocuswright Barcelona event. Pete leads Phocuswright's events, research and media (PhocusWire), is a great friend and an influential leader. We had a fun conversation focused on the where Phocuswright focuses: originally per Philip Wolf, "the intersection of travel and the internet" to now, I believe Pete said "the intersection of travel and technology" (I'll have to listen again). Missed you Christian Watts

There's so much happening at Airbnb related to Experiences, some of it well known, and some of it still being discovered by our industry. The big news, of course, is that they are removing 5000 experiences from their platform. And the way they did it, sending emails to experience creators, giving them two weeks notice and just cancelling trips that are already booked taking place after June 30 has really rubbed most of us in the industry in the wrong way. But the fact is, there are a lot of other ways these experience creators can sell their tours and activities and one of our guests, Madison Rifkin, Founder and CEO, Mount represents a new kind of distribution partner connecting experience creators with vacation rental hosts. The other, bigger news, is Airbnb's announcement about Icons. Here's their announcement: Airbnb is introducing Icons, a new category of extraordinary experiences hosted by the greatest names in music, film, television, art, sports, and more. Icons let you step into worlds you’ve only ever dreamed of. Drift off in the Up house. Spend the night in the Ferrari Museum. Hang out with Kevin Hart. Today, we’re unveiling the first 11 Icons on Airbnb, with new experiences dropping around the world throughout the year. “Icons take you inside worlds that only existed in your imagination—until now,” said Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder and CEO. “As life becomes increasingly digital, we’re focused on bringing more magic into the real world. With Icons, we’ve created the most extraordinary experiences on Earth.” Interestingly, most of the Icons will be available for free and the rest will go for less than $100 per guest, said Airbnb. Airbnb plans to make 4,000 tickets to these Icons available in 2024. Listen to the show to hear why they're doing this, but in short, its all about collecting user data and building the "Solar System" that is part of Airbnb's go forward strategy. Their new Group Functionality is similar. They want to start collecting user data from everyone in the booking, not just the person making the booking.?Sound familiar? Mitra Sorrells, editor in chief, PhocusWire shared the deets. Enjoy the show, also featuring hosts Lori Timony Christian Watts Bruce Rosard Link to full show in the first comment

Christian continues to be a thought leader for everything AI and Travel.

Experience This! Show #39 is one of our best yet. I three acronyms/phrases I haven't heard before: SGE: Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) is a new approach to search results. It's an experimental search experience that uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) to provide users with quick and clear overviews of search topics—without having to click on individual webpages STS: Strategic Text Sequences. OK, what? Harvard researchers introduce Strategic Text Sequences (STS) to influence LLM-driven search, especially in e-commerce. STS strategically inserts token sequences into product information, boosting visibility and rankings. The framework around STS leverages the Greedy Coordinate Gradient (GCG) algorithm for optimization. And my favorite from our guest Janette Roush, EVP Marketing and Digital, NYC Tourism + Conventions: "The Shitification of the Internet" Our other guest, Brennen Bliss, Principal, Propellic - Travel Marketing, shared his deep knowledge on what's going on here as search is going through dramatic changes, right here, right now. Some references if you're interested in this topic (and since you follow Experience This!, you likely are): Janette's recent post on LinkedIn: "I'm hearing rumors that vendors are starting to sell destinations on a service to influence how the destination appears in outputs generated by LLMs - which sends my BS detector through the roof...." https://lnkd.in/g7n3YQAz Christian Watts writes in PhocusWire about Gemini, Google Travel and the Threat to OTAs: https://lnkd.in/guSjXhwu Two part story from Mario Gavira, Vice President of Growth and Brand at kiwi.com, "Preparing Travel for the Future of AI Search" https://lnkd.in/gzt5Gf28 https://lnkd.in/ghuxU9AM You really should watch this full show and not just the clip here. The links to the show are in the first comment, and you are requested to check out the show and comment!

Show 38 was a great one, check it out as a podcast or vodcast.

Season 2, Show 6 - Weekend Update! Recorded on Feb. 23 It was a busy week in the Destination Experiences business. We covered: Hornblower Group's Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Our guest, Stephen Oddo, President of Walks and Devour Tours, both owned by Hornblower, really couldn't provide a lot of details, but Bruce and Christian provide their POV and speculation. The executive shakeup at Rezdy, which also includes Checkfront and Regiondo - the trio of restechs that merged after the $100M + investment from Vertical Capital Partners to acquire the three companies. Two of the Checkfront co-founders left the company earlier, Jason Morehouse and Grant Jurgeneit, and now COO Mark Holder is out. More surprising is that Rezdy's Chief Growth Officer, Susan DeBottis and CEO Chris Atkin are also out. And in an interesting and even more surprising twist, the new CEO is Mark Loh, who spent the last 8 years as Chief Product Officer at FareHarbor. And to add some more intrigue to this story, FareHarbor's founder Lawrence Hester is a partner at Vertical Capital Partners that provided the investment for the merger. This is going to get really interesting! What's the future for the consolidation of restechs? We only can speculate, and if you're reading this post, we'd love to hear you speculate too! We very briefly brought up some of the major players (but not all by any means) including Peek Xola Bókun, a Tripadvisor company Ventrata Gateway bookingkit iTicket TrekkSoft but there are 100's out there and we all believe more consolidation is coming soon. And finally, we discussed the potential implications of Tripadvisor's announcement that they are exploring a potential sale and what that might, or might not, mean for Viator (no one really knows, or at least, no one is saying anything about this). If you watch/listen to one Experience This! show before heading to Arival 360 Berlin, this is the one.

Season 2, show 5 just dropped. It was a great take on distribution though we were distracted when Christian started talking about trade shows! Peter Muttitt - great to have you as a guest! Lori Timony - you caught yourself before getting into trouble, can you find that comment you almost made? Full show in the first comment.

The latest episode is out. Watch it here https://lnkd.in/gyUFQmis