Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Experience This! Travel Industry Insights and Opinions
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Titre
Date
Durée
Show #48 - Andy Moss, Mindtrip
25 Sep 2024
01:08:01
Join Christian and Bruce as we learn about Mindtrip, one of the hottest AI startups in travel. With a recent raise of $12M bringing their total funding so far to $20M, the group of 12 founders have experience from companies including Google, Apple, LinkedIn, ShopStyle, Roadster, Ariba. They're new to the travel industry and very confident they can duplicate their past successes.
We have to admit, what they're working on has great potential and we love their approach of putting the traveler in the center of everything.
They are specifically and definitely NOT a Trip Planner. Here's how they describe Mindtrip: "the most personalized way to discover, plan and organize any adventure — aound the world or in your own backyard."
Add to that, it has built-in group chat which is a definite difference maker and automated travel organization software (like Tripit for example).
This is a company to watch for sure, we had a great show with Andy.
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Show #47 featuring The Godfather of Tours & Activities - Rod Cuthbert, founder, Viator
14 Sep 2024
01:11:13
The god-father of tours and activities, Rod Cuthbert, joined Experience This! 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"! Rod shared his amazing founding story and how Viator was created as a spinoff from a failed Sabre Corporation project (good thing for Rod). He gave a lot of credit to Dominique Exmann who pioneered the rollout of Viator-branded, exclusive 'Skip the Line' access and VIP experiences at iconic sites including Musée du Louvre (Louvre Museum)Vatican City State Colosseum, Eiffel Tower and more that led to their leadership position in the market, and the acquisition by Tripadvisor (and compared that to what GetYourGuide and Klook are doing to catch up by raising almost $1B each!
We discussed open marketplaces (like the current Viator) compared to curated sites like Civitatis and Headout. We talked about bootstrapping compared to seeking VC funding and Rod's really interesting comment about the value of having professional investors and the experience they bring. Of course he mentioned our mutual mentor and good friend, the late, great, Philip Wolf, founder of Phocuswright, one of the most innovative thought leaders on the intersection of travel and the internet from the early '90s, and the impact he sees with our creation of Arival.
Fascinating show, thanks Rod!
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Season 2, Show 4: Innovation (or lack of) in the Travel Industry
24 Feb 2024
00:40:49
Meredith Rangel of Bookable Tourism joins us to discuss innovation in the Travel Industry. Is the industry lagging behind. Are some sectors ahead of others? Is the market too fragmented to create the right conditions for innovation?
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Season 2, Show 6: Weekend Update!
24 Feb 2024
00:42:20
Joined by Stephen Oddo from Walks (subsidiary of Hornblower Group), we discuss the latest updates with the Hornblower Chapter 11, the shake-up at the top of Rezdy & the Fareharbor connection, and rumors from Tripadvisor / Viator. This is a show not to be missed.
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Season 2, Show #3: Christian's Top 6 Gen AI Topics entering "Year 2"
21 Jan 2024
00:47:28
Who knows more than Gen AI for Experiences than our co-host Christian Watts? We say "nobody"!
This show covers Christian's Year One overview and his prediction of what the top 6 topics for Gen AI will be for experiences as we enter "Year 2" of Gen AI.
Here's a source for writing prompts that we mentioned on the show: beta.openai.com
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Season 2, Show #2 - A Mini Masterclass in Brand Marketing with Catherine Warrilow
15 Jan 2024
00:35:08
If you are looking for a mini masterclass in Brand Marketing, you have come to the right place. Catherine Warrilow, Director of Brand Strategy for The Plot, joins Bruce Rosard and Lori Timony in an "all you need to know about Brand Marketing in 45 minutes" discussion. This show is especially important for those smaller businesses that are unsure how to think about their brand and why they should. Follow that with actionable advice that Catherine freely provides.
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Show #30 - AI in Experiences, AI tour guides OR Human Tour guides. OR a hybrid approach.
29 Nov 2023
00:59:30
AI tour guides vs human tour guides.
Obviously, AI tour guides have more information and facts. Clearly, AI tour guides can create better stories, as long as you don't need them to be true. I'd still bet on the human though.
But there's a hybrid approach, where the AI (in this case a character - Miss Moneypenny) enhances a currently operating experience.
Is this the way forward?
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Meet Claus Raasted, the founder of The College of Extraordinary Experiences
19 Oct 2023
00:42:24
Uncover extraordinary experiences with Claus Raasted, founder of the College of Extraordinary Experiences! Explore immersive learning, bringing people together organically, radical innovation, and the future of the experiences industry.
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What's next in the world of experiences and what is an experience anyway?
29 Sep 2023
00:38:31
Christian, Bruce and Lori discuss the current and future state of experiences. What's a pop up experience and what about sports, dining, concerts? Are consumers still just buying the traditional products or is there a whole new world out there?
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Show #26 - Focus on Startups
21 Sep 2023
00:52:23
Christian, Bruce and special guest Tony Carne discuss a wide variety of topics including multi-city experience companies, wellness, passion travel, using AI for trip planning (yes again) and using AI as a tour guide. Startups and recent investments featured include Staples putting travel agents in their stores (what?), Boddy, Modern Adventures, Tailbox, Travelshift.
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Show #25 - Trip Planners - Chances of Success?
04 Aug 2023
00:49:33
Listen in as Lewis Krell (formerly of U Trip a Trip Planner start up now in the graveyard), Jeff Kischuk (of Tripian an up and coming start up), Bruce Rosard, Christian Watts and Lori Timony discuss the future of Trip Planners. Will we ever see one succeed?
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S2 Episode 14 Dan Christian of Travel Trends Podcast talks Multi Day Tours
15 Aug 2024
00:49:11
Dan Christian of Travel Trends Podcast joins Bruce, Christian and Lori to discuss the growth of the Multi Day Tour Market highlighting distribution, tech, funding, raises and more!
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Show #24 - The Experience Economy
28 Jul 2023
00:42:22
There are very few investors who focus exclusively on the Experience Economy. Michael Zeisser, Principal, FMZ Ventures, is one of the most prolific and he joined us for a fascinating conversation on his perspective.
Michael's background includes the McKinsey ecommerce practice, working as a senior executive at Liberty Media, at the time the controlling shareholders of IAC including Expedia and TripAdvisor, then went to work at for Jack Ma at Alibaba where he lead international investments.
He now runs a solo venture fund and is an investor and/or board member at companies including GetYourGuide, Fever, Bla Bla Car, Atlas Obscura, Easol and Reddit.
Michael discusses his theory about the Experiences Economy being the next economic sector after the information age and how travel is an important element at the top of the pyramid of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
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Show #23 - Breaking News! Rezdy and Checkront Merge
20 Jul 2023
00:38:37
A major deal was just announced, with two of the leading reservation technology companies in the world merging. Rezdy, based in Sydney Australia and Checkfront, based in Victoria Island Canada power 1000's of operators around the world. Rezdy also provides connectivity to 1000's more operators with the Rezdy Channel Manager.
Co-hosts Lori Timony, Christian Watts and Bruce Rosard are joined by Stephen Joyce, VP Content, Arival and original OG of Restech for the In-Destinations Experiences industry as co-founder and former CEO of Rezgo.
There will be a lot more to come on the pros and cons of this deal for the industry, distributors and operators.
Experience This! will for sure continue to watch this story.
What does this mean for our industry?
What does this mean for operators
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Show #20 - Niche OTAs
20 May 2023
00:52:12
OTAs are the fastest growing distribution channel for the Experiences Industry. And there are a lot of mixed feelings out there in operator land.
In this session we focus on Niche OTAs. Niche OTAs focus on a region, on an activity type, or in the case of our guest Melanie White from Virgin Experience Gifts, a different type of distribution - gifting.
This is a really interesting show that we encourage all operators to listen to and come up with ideas for new distribution channels.
Arival wrote an article on niche operators with lots of great info, available here
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Show #19 - Dynamic and Variable Pricing - What's the Difference
20 May 2023
00:55:52
Pricing, variable pricing, dynamic pricing - which one is right for you? What's the difference between variable and dynamic pricing?
We are joined by two experts with strong opinions discussing how the experiences industry has a lot to learn from hotels and airlines. But will the infrastructure support advanced pricing?
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Show #18 - Women in Travel Tech (part 2)
01 May 2023
00:48:41
Once again, Experience This! features two women who have advanced into the C Suite of travel tech. Susan DeBottis, Chief Growth Officer, Rezdy and Cady Wolf, industry veteran from Travelocity, Switchfly and Sojern and now founder and CEO of consulting firm A23 Advisors and Founder WiTT (Women in Travel Tech) join the Experience This! hosts to continue the discussion focused on womentin travel tech, especially focused on the Experiences sector.
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Show #17 - News of the Day
21 Apr 2023
00:34:00
It was pretty big news last week when Airbnb Experiences announced they were putting a pause on adding new experiences on the platform, including for existing experience hosts.
Given that Airbnb has had such a big impact on the In-Destination Experiences Industry, there's a lot of talk about what comes next. In 2016 when Airbnb launched Airbnb Experiences that was the beginning of usage of the word Experiences in place of what the industry was then known as, "tours and activities".
While the impact has been huge, the sales volume has not. That's the main topic of show #17.
Plus we discuss the demise of Heygo, a virtual travel company that raised $20M in VC funds in February 2022.
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Show #16 - The New Funnel for Experiences - Content Creators
15 Apr 2023
00:53:32
You're an Experience Creator, you get business with direct bookings and through distribution. Now there's a third funnel that is going to grow exponentially and be relatively low cost. Content Creators, also known as influencers have new platforms to work on to make your job as an Experience Creator easier to figure out who to work with, how to work with them, and what bookings they deliver.
This show features two of those platforms, Sally Bunnell, founder and CEO, NaviSavi and Ryan McElroy, co-founder and CCO, Jerne.
Lots to learn on this show!
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Show #14 - Cautious optimism for 2023 / Google Things to do update / AI at Arival
26 Mar 2023
00:49:34
On show #14 we had two guest stars, Alexi Tabrizi, Senior VP Global Sales, Big Bus; and Tina Kyriakis, found and CEO, Alternative Athens join us to talk about their experience talking to 100s of people at Arival and ITB. We talked about where the Experiences industry is right now, hint: "Cautious Optimism" , the ever changing but must use Google Things to do, and the extraordinary keynote and follow up breakout session by Marc Mekki including a dramatic case study featuring the AI version of Alan Turing.
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Pete Comeau of Phocuswright joins us for a chat
11 Jul 2024
00:41:03
Join Bruce and Lori as they sit down with Pete Comeau from Phocuswright to delve into PCW Barcelona, the future of Travel Tech investments, AI advancements, the Next Gen Traveler, and much more.
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Show #13 - The Rebirth of Alan Turing and What it Means for Experiences
20 Mar 2023
00:38:26
Host Christian Watts and Marc Mekki, "Innovation & Design Thinking Speaker" who presented the keynote at Arival 360 Berlin that everyone is talking about. During Arival, Marc brought Alan Touring to life in a remarkable display of using Generative AI. He gave himself a challenge (and showed how he accomplished it) to create a tour company in less than 4 hours with less than 100 euros.
Christian and Marc get the conversation going on the impacts of AI on the Experiences industry that we can't even begin to comprehend.
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Episode #12 - Women in Experiences
24 Feb 2023
00:42:59
Women In Experiences - climbing up the ladder, challenges along the way, gender pay gap. Dominique Sidley from Merlin, Judy Gauthier from Go City and Natalie Hernandez from Xplorie join Lori, Bruce and Christian to discuss the state of Women In the Destination Experiences industry leadership today.
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Show #10 - Social Platforms & Influencers
09 Feb 2023
00:43:43
We are joined in this show by Marica Mackenroth Brewster, founder & CEO, Von Mack Agency. We talk about the "Trip Hacks experiment" , YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram, new influencer platforms, MrBeast and more.
Link to video below
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Episide #9 - News Update and ChatGPT Pitch Show Info
02 Feb 2023
00:38:32
Our hosts Lori, Christian and Bruce talk about Destination Experiences news, investments and upcoming events.
Introducing a ChatGPT Pitch session, live streamed on LinkedIn on Wednesday February 15 at 12:00pm EST. This pitch session is for innovative, future ideas that have not been developed yet. What would you build if you had $150K and needed a product ready for market by June 1 2023?
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Show #8 - Immersive Experiences
25 Jan 2023
00:45:02
This is a great episode featuring Vince Kadlubek, co-founder, former CEO and visionary, Meow Wolf; and Ana Araque, co-founder, Imagine Experiences and a 30 year veteran of the travel industry.
Highlights of the show include super interesting answers to "what's an immersive experience"? Ana talking about Imagine Experience's James Bond and other experiences featuring live entertainers.
My personal highlight was listening to Vince talk about Immersive Experiences, leading to our discussion about Passion Travel (a concept we discussed with Dan Christian from Dharma on show #3), and then to Transformational Travel.
Great show Christian, Ana and Vince, thanks!
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Episode #7 - The latest from APAC. China opens, Tech, Loyalty & more
19 Jan 2023
00:58:24
This show starts to scrape the surface of what to expect in APAC as China begins to re-open to inbound and outbound travel. We feature three experts, Baidi Li of Go City, Hannah Pearson of Pear Andersen and CC Chan of Global Tix to chat about the latest from APAC including Tech, Loyalty programs, when will China business really return and what will they expect when it does.
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Show #6 - Experiences Industry News Update
12 Jan 2023
00:37:05
Co-hosts Lori Timony, Christian Watts and Bruce Rosard discuss the latest news happenings in the Experiences sector. China's re-opening, India, Corporate Event Experiences, NFTs and more.
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Show #5 - Talking about Groups
05 Jan 2023
00:40:09
Show #5 covers an often overlooked opportunity in the Experiences Industry - Group Sales. Instead of chasing individual sales withe high acquisition costs, groups represent "old school" distribution and a great way to build a base of business. Hear from two experts discussing their views on this critical channel for success, Joe Martin, Uplevel Tourism and Fabio Monteiro, SUMMIT One Vanderbilt
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Show #4 - The most widely read articles on arival.travel in 2022, Passion Travel, more
28 Dec 2022
00:47:27
This show features Janelle Visser, editor for Arival reviewing the most read articles on arival.travel in 2022. We are also joined by Dan Christian from Dharma who discusses the passion economy and how it is fueled by content creators and influencers. Next the conversation jumps into OTA's and distribution, and women in travel tech.
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Show #3 - Top 10 Trends: 2022 ----- > 2023
23 Dec 2022
00:40:01
In this episode we discuss the Top 10 trends in the Experiences Sector - looking back to Bruce's predictions in 2022 and forward to 2023. Guests Carlee Stellfox Loya, Robin Harnish, and Dan Flores join the discussion.
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Show #42: The Experience Economy, It's About Time Well Spent
06 Jun 2024
00:30:58
In this episode co-hosts Lori Timony and Bruce Rosard are joined by special guest Aransas Savas, Strategic Lead, Meaningful Motivation and Co-host of The Experience Strategy Podcast, as a leader of the Stone Mantel Team. An an Experience Strategist, Aransas helps companies ranging from Fortune 100 to startups integrate coaching principles into their employee and customer experiences, enabling them to have a greater impact on customers, employees, and companies by providing more value.
We talk about the Experience Economy, what it means and how it relates to our world of in-destination experiences. One of the biggest takeaways is Stone Mantel's research (and others) that show that for people who are taking care of their basic needs (food, housing, health insurance, etc.), they put more value on their TIME than their MONEY. What does that mean for our industry and how do we all optimize people's time to ensure they consider their time with our company "Time Well Spent". This is a super important topic that we'll be discussing more here and at Arival, exploring how the in-destination experiences industry can learn from the broader Experience Economy experts, scholars and practitioners.
Aransas brought up the interesting topic of customer journeys. We've all discussed our customer journeys, but are they ever right? How can they be if we don't know what "mode" our customer is in? This is such an important point. Listen to learn more!
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Show #2 - The End of GetYourGuide Originals (for now!)
14 Dec 2022
01:18:43
Co-hosts Lori, Christian and Bruce are joined by Stephen Oddo, President of Walks and Devour Tours and Jose Arozarena, founder & CEO, Amigo Tours to talk about GetYourGuide's decision to end its Originals program.
Program Note: On March 6, 2023 at the Arival 360 Berlin event, GetYourGuide announced that Originals is back in a modified version (which is consistent with what they said when they decided to end the program in Q4 2022.) Stay tuned for an update with Experience This! and more special guests.
Video Link below
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What's up with Airbnb Experiences?
25 May 2024
00:55:59
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, Madi 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?
Enjoy the show!
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New Growth Strategies featuring Sarah Dines, Chief Commercial Officer, Viator
24 May 2024
00:55:20
Viator sells more experiences than anyone in the world, by a wide margin. And they want to ensure they stay in the lead by continuing to focus on their top of the funnel and user acquisition strategies. At the same time, they want to rely less on Google.
Social commerce is in its infancy, but it's going to come soon and it's going to be huge. Social channels and video and platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest are getting closer to being one click away from a booking and Sarah is working to ensure that those bookings end up on Viator.
Once again, our conversation on Experience This! was fascinating!
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Experience This! Show #39, Season 2, Show #9: The Future of Search
30 Apr 2024
00:55:28
Experience This! Show #39 is one of our best yet. Today I heard three 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, 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://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7187875476504293377/
Christian Watts writes in Phocuswire about Gemini, Google Travel and the Threat to OTAs: https://www.phocuswire.com/gemini-google-travel-threat-to-online-travel-agencies
Two part story from Mario Gavira, Vice President of Growth and Brand at kiwi.com, "Preparing Travel for the Future of AI Search" https://www.phocuswire.com/travel-marketing-ai-in-search https://www.phocuswire.com/travel-industry-ai-search
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Building Women Entrepreneurs in the Travel and Tourism Industry
25 Apr 2024
00:46:12
Meet Iris Serbanescu, owner of Wmns Work a Tourism Business Accelerator Program for Women and Non-binary early stage entrepreneurs. Meet Megan Kennedy, founder of Good Trip Adventures and past participant in Wmns Work.
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Season 2, Show 5: Distribution and Trade Shows
24 Feb 2024
00:53:54
The plan was to talk about distribution for the in-destination experiences sector. What's new, what hasn't changed. But the conversation started with discussions of trade shows and again, what's new and what hasn't changed. There were definitely some different points of view, surprise, surprise and our featured guest Peter Muttitt held his own with co-hosts Lori Timony, Christian Watts and Bruce Rosard.
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S2, Ep #20 Patricia Yates, CEO of Visit Britain/ Visit England
10 Nov 2024
00:45:56
Patricia Yates, CEO of Visit Britain/ Visit England fills us in on her recent trip to China, Visit Britain's upcoming launch of the latest "Film Tourism" campaign "Starring Great Britain" and how DMO's should consider the challenges of regenerative tourism
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S2 E.19. Erika De Santi of We Road
27 Oct 2024
00:48:39
Erika De Santi of We Road, Co-Founder and Chief of People Experiences joins Lori and Bruce to discuss We Road's secret sauce behind the companies highly successful growth strategy. Learn about how they are building communities one trip at a time.
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Season 3. - Episode 2: TikTok About To Go Dark / AI Update
18 Jan 2025
00:54:55
The plan was to have an AI update with Tahnee Perry from A25 featuring a discussion about her toolkit (115 and counting!).
But since this is the week (January 17 to be exact) that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to uphold the U.S. ban on TikTok, we pivoted to also include Madi Rifkin, founder and CEO, Mount for her perspective. As a Gen Z entrepreneur with an "army
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Season 3. Episode 5 - Jessie Fischer - GuestOS
06 Mar 2025
00:44:34
Get introduced to Jessie Fischer, Founder & CEO, GuestOS. Jessie got an early start in the hospitality business, starting when she was 12 years old, working at her family's motel near Yosemite National Park
GuestOS is an AI-driven concierge platform tailored for the hospitality industry, aiming to enhance guest experiences through personalized, 24/7 multilingual support. Founded in 2023 by Jessie, the company leverages AI to automate and enrich guest interactions.
Personalized Guest Interactions: Offers tailored recommendations based on guest preferences and behaviors, facilitating seamless communication via SMS and voice.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines hotel operations by managing reservations, itineraries, and guest data, allowing staff to focus on direct guest services.
Emergency Response Initiatives: Developed AI-powered hotlines during crises, such as the California wildfires, to provide real-time information and support to affected communities.
GuestOS positions itself as the first AI-native concierge for hotels, focusing on unlocking new revenue streams beyond room bookings by managing the discovery, booking, and payment process for onsite experiences.
For more information, visit their official website: guestos.ai.
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