Key Takeaways from our Main Stage presenters at the Virtuoso Travel Tech Summit

It is really hard to believe that our 3rd annual Virtuoso Travel Tech Summit was already more than 5 weeks ago. Looking back I am still filled with gratitude to and energy from all of our participants.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to highlight some of the learnings from each of our 3 Startup Showcase Deep Dive Sessions (Agency + Hotel Tech , Social Commerce , & Traveler Perspectives ) and have greatly enjoyed engaging with so many of you on these topics. Today, I am thrilled to share a few of my favorite learnings and insights from the Main Stage segment of our Travel Tech Summit. This segment of our Summit is focused on thought leadership, big ideas, and lessons from leading innovators. A detailed overview can be found here .

As you probably know, this year I shared my annual Keynote about the 5 Themes & Trends in Travel Tech and Innovation that I am paying attention to in advance of our Summit as a pre-read; watch here . Thus to kick off our Summit I invited Virtuoso’s David Kolner to join me on stage for a conversation about the themes I highlighted in the talk.

To start David asked me a critical question about how all of this tech and innovation connects to Virtuoso’s core work of supporting Agencies and Advisors in their work of caring for the world’s top luxury and ultra-luxury travelers. This was a great opening question as David and I, along with the rest of our audience, believe deeply in the power of the Human Connection and our shared goal of utilizing the best of technology to elevate the Human Connection. I also pointed out, as I often do, that for the next generation of affluent consumers seamless integration of technology will continue to be at the core of their definition of luxury. Last but perhaps most important is the Virtuoso Network's decades' long commitment to innovation, which is why Virtuoso is such a natural home for entrepreneurs and technologists.

Following that opening, David and I discussed the large wave of new age digital and AI first travel agencies that have been founded over the past few years and some of the lessons we can all learn from them. We also touched on the Connected Trip and the importance of this concern to our combined goal of elevating the traveler experience and facilitating better data sharing across the industry. This overview along with Davids wise questions was the perfect way to kick off our Summit.

Like last year, after my opening I invited a few friends to join me on stage to share how they think about these key themes and about their own innovations. Up first was a view into a theme that I call the Travelization of Finance , more on this in my Keynote, but the key point is that banks and financial institutions of all kinds are entering the travel business to increase margins, share of wallet, and cultivate a sticky and aspirational consumer relationship. To illustrate this point, I was thrilled to host Richard Kerr of Bilt Rewards , one of Americas fastest growing FinTechs. Richard shared Bilts vision with us and their concept of a ‘global neighborhood’ where one is always treated like a beloved neighbor. He also shared, that like with all the other banks and cards, travel spending and travel benefits are some of the most desired on the Bilt platform.

Bilt is a perfect example of the Travelization of Finance trend that I’m always speaking about. It is a perfect illustration of the fact that no matter how sticky financial institutions are, the addition of travel enables them to engage customers around the things that they care about most. Building a relationship that is not transactional but rather experiential and aspirational. The strong initial success of these early Financial adopters is the reason this trend continues to accelerate. We were fortunate to hear from Hopper, Noble, Unravel, and other innovators in this space at our past Summits.

After Bilt we heard from returning favorite Shane O'Flaherty of 微软 . Shane is actively engaged with many of the biggest and most innovative companies in our industry and thus brings the most insightful examples and lessons to share. I asked Shane to build on the theme of the Connected Trip that I have spoken about at our last two Summits and to share his work on this front. Shane wisely shared that we cannot wait for the industry to solve this problem on its own and thus today consumer needs to take control and push for the changes they seek. Microsoft, and others, are working on a Decentralized Digital ID system which as he puts it: when combined with AI may be the final unlock to both the Connected Trip and the hyper-personalization we all seek.

Imagine a future with no more Passport checkpoints, no more hotel room keys, not more welcome/onboarding surveys, no more impersonal greetings or generic amenities, etc. etc. etc. A future when your identity, through a Decentralized Digital ID, is your room key, your loyalty account, your digital wallet, and so much more. The document free airport is closer than we think; a future I cannot wait to experience.

Up next I wanted to spend some time focusing on Artificial Intelligence. Over the past few years we mostly heard from innovators from outside the Virtuoso Network and this year I was thrilled to highlight in house innovators from within the Network. ?

The insights and wisdom shared throughout the conversation were many but a few that stuck out to me include:

·????? Katie Robertson 's beautiful articulation of the importance of putting the human Travel Advisor at the center of this ecosystem and to empower Advisors with the most effective modern technologies.

·????? Jake Peters spoke about his applied technology approach (a laser focus on solving specific problems and challenges) and shared with us Fora’s AI Pod strategy and the fact that they spend a majority of their time playing and learning the latest AI tools.

·????? Janet Semenova , as always, shared her passion and ‘just do it’ philosophy which is the most effective way to get started. And like Jake, advised us to focus on tasks and problems advisors face daily.

·????? George Balogh beautifully talked about his collaborative approach of slowly introducing AI to his team and focusing on value creation and efficiency.

I was also curious what they have learned about AI adoption within their agencies. Both Jake and George spoke eloquently about the fact that adoption is much more about personality and work style than it is about age or other factors. In closing all of our innovators agreed that just getting started is the only way to get started and that if you make it fun (not scary or stressful), it will work a whole lot better.

From this dynamic panel we moved into one of my favorite presentations of the day. Carolyn Corda of 德勤 is a good friend and a data wiz. This year I asked her to focus on the changing consumer expectations based on the Great Commoditization of AI and to share her new mental model for product personalization. I cannot properly due justice to Carolyn's presentation as it was packed with data and insights; luckily her slides are on the web. But one takeaway I must highlight is her observation that travel marketing and storytelling is moving to “narrative over visuals”. This perfectly ducktails with my Horizontalization of Luxury theory and its core tenant that luxury brands no longer sell products or services but rather zero marginal cost goods like stories and feelings.

For me, the highlight of Carolyn’s presentation was her thinking about what I call the Infinite Product Permutation future to which we are heading and her 4 C’s of Travel Product Recommendation.

As you can see, in this mental model we plot travelers/consumers within this triangle based on their preference for and prioritization of Comfort, Convenience, and Clout. Study this triangle alongside the endless new product permutations coming onto the market and it's not hard to envision a future where dynamic products are created in real time and across product types.

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This writeup is already far too long. So that’s it for now. Next week I will share my take aways from our final 3 segments. The Hospitality Academics Panel, Travis’ presentation about innovation at Virtuoso, and of course our Venture Capital Investor conversation.

Most importantly I huge thank you to all of those who joined us in person and who have engaged in the conversation since!!

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