A word from our sponsor!

What are the big opportunities for tourism businesses now Google has backtracked on its announced removal of 3rd party cookies? Propellic CEO, Brennen Bliss lays it out for everyone in this piece on PhocusWire this week. 

Want to take advantage of those opportunities but not sure how? Check Propellic out for yourself here.

(A big thanks from me to Propellic who have extended their sponsorship of this newsletter through Q3 - great validation & much appreciation).

Visit Estes Park show the way on how innovation gets done 

This isn’t a super new piece of news but it is something that didn’t really get the pick up it deserved when first released, and it should have. A little while back the team at Visit Estes Park, a destination marketing organisation out of Colorado released their report in their “journey in generative AI solutions”

This was a brave, warts and all, piece of reporting on how even a fairly modest organisation can get involved in the bleeding edge of innovation. As CEO Kara Franker put it “We’re investing in AI because we want a competitive advantage. And we’re hoping to provide an enhanced visitor experience as we learn more”.

Their approach was strategic and had 4 parts to it:

1. Fail forward, fast, and drive strategic, agile innovation

2. Collaborate and share our journey to lessen the intimidations and

   misconceptions surrounding AI

3. Redefine our KPIs

4. Elevate our efficiency and effectiveness while empowering and upskilling our team

So how exactly did a modest DMO navigate their way to the cutting edge? They partnered with startups in proof-of-concept trials & beta programs. In short they took a leap of faith in others and in return got the opportunity to shape the products in how they could work best for them.

And (whilst it isn’t specifically mentioned in the report) - I’m sure got themselves a much sweeter deal on those tools than those who followed in late because that is generally the quid pro quo in collaboration arrangements like this. The helper gets helped too.

It wasn’t all roses. Innovation often isn’t but because of their first strategic principal of failing forward - that was also OK. “We’ve had board members try Rocky Mountain Roamer and ask the tool about their businesses, but the AI didn’t know a thing about them. Oops.”

Their experiments gave the team new knowledge and also reinforced old paradigms. “DMOs must create strong partnerships and management plans with their local, featured businesses. A community engagement strategy is critical to maintaining the accuracy of the content and the AI’s long-term success”

True dat.

Tony Carne joins Videreo as Co-founder with Adrian Villabruna

The first announcement for the day is that I’m joining Adrian Villabruna at Videreo. For nearly 30 years I’ve been lucky to pursue my passion, not only for travel, but for a certain type of travel. My love of the industry is in the grassroots. The people we actually meet along the way when we are ‘out there’ are the ones I want to see get their fair share of the benefits for the work they do.

“Travel” as an industry often puts this feeling on a pedestal with its “world’s largest employer” and “10% of global GDP” catchcries’ but in reality most of the people I come across in my world, actively work to disintermediate the share that hits the ground. I want to do work that changes the paradigm here.

Lots of my past work such as with Intrepid Travel and Urban Adventures have certainly been moves in the right direction on this front but for my next act - I really wanted to find something that could scale and have more winners than just the lucky few chosen to participate. And with Adrian we think we’ve found a great way to make that a reality.

Videreo is a tool that umbrella groups who sit above groups of suppliers (think DMO’s; Travel Agents; Chamber of Commerce; Hotel Chain) can use to create a unified video marketing platform for both themselves and those suppliers. As the name suggests, we think the core unlock here is video, as it is the new core tool for research in travel. Social media has both trained the audience to expect the ability to browse via video and also ensured that just about every supplier of any size has already created at least some video content. Despite this, hardly any destination or tourism websites are catering well for this video experience and yet video is the best storytelling medium we have! At Videreo we bring these aspects together.

Here is how it works:

1. The umbrella organisation signs up for a license

2. They invite all their suppliers to upload their best existing video content - what we call Supplier Generated Content (SGC); our spin on UGC - and also add their direct booking link to the product associated

3. We leverage AI to reformat videos, deeply tag the content and create keyword rich captions - the hard stuff gets done automatically.

4. Everyone in the chain gets a display tool for their owned media. This will allow a “Stories” style experience on any website consisting of a row of ‘Story’ circles which when clicked by the user, open to a full screen vertical video scrolling UI, as well as map view to search. The suppliers get this tool FREE as a gift for their own site from their umbrella org - thereby strengthening the bond between the groups. The “What have you done for me lately?” question faced by all DMO’s is now solved! The DMO only needs to approve the videos for their own feed (if they wish to). They can also download the best for their own social feeds if they like. Never get stuck without inspiring content again. We’ve got the widget running on our homepage at Videreo so you can see how it works (pro tip - check it on mobile, that’s where most of your customers will be looking at it!). This is low touch. To activate you need to just drop a single line of code onto the site.

5. The tool has huge SEO benefits for all the owned media properties and the global feed of all videos is available as an API for others to build on top of. This then drives new FREE traffic back to the other parties. 

6. Finally, our deep tagging sets the scene for the next evolution which is deep personalisation of each visitor’s feed ensuring the traveller finds exactly what they are looking for and the supplier gets found by the right customers. Stay tuned!

You can take a look at our demo here which shows how it might look for a NTO; a CVB and also a Supplier - if you want to see the segmented view. (Hint check it out on mobile for the full experience).

For every top tier client we sign up with, we are also offering to onboard the National Tourism Organsiation from a country who sits below 0.6 on the UN Human Development Index absolutely FREE so that for once, those with least can be among the first, not the last. This is the type of legacy I want to build and encourage in our industry.

We are ready right now to take on destinations that have the Visit Estes Park mindset from the article above. If the only problem you have is in finding the opportunity - now that problem is solved too. Please shoot me an email or hit me up on LinkedIn. I’d be happy to share more and of course, we will have very favorable terms for those taking the early leap with us.

There will be no changes to your weekly newsletter here as I will continue along with it as it (and you) are my other work passion. I will however be moving out of active roles in some of the other projects I have been running.

Wish us luck! Or even better, let all your friends at DMO’s or Travel Agencies know! 😀 

Everything AI in Travel launches its new marketplace!

Announcement number two is that Everything AI in Travel now has a new home on its own website complete with marketplace.

In the first 7 or 8 months of starting this newsletter, I would get daily enquiry from awesome people in our industry wanting to know more. What was this AI thing all about? What do you think it might be able to do? How can we put plans in place to capitalise?

The last 4-5 months those enquiries have both changed almost totally and exploded. Now I wake up to an inbox and notification list full of specific problems and people looking for vendor recommendations to solve those. Whilst I’d like to have a chat and reply to everyone, that has just not been manageable - so instead I’ve launched a marketplace full of tools, consultancies and services you can access to find what best suits you.

If you have a tool you want to add, please just sign up on the right top corner and load in your product (note there is a fee). For everyone else, no log in, no sign up - just search for what you need and find the best!

If you think someone (or everyone) you know or work with could grow from being more informed on the topic of ai + travel (or could use the training above) then please forward this email to them and they can click the button below:

Slack Group!

How to work with Tony

As you can probably tell from the announcements today - I’m pretty busy! Well not right this second - I’m actually just finishing up a week on an island in Indonesia - but will be back fresh next week to go headlong into all the exciting challenges I’ve announced today.

Right now the best way we can work together is if you want to list something on the marketplace (its self serve - instructions above) or you are a DMO or other umbrella organisation like a Chamber of Commerce; Tourism focused shopping center or Travel Agency - then lets set up a call and get you into our Proof-of-concept for Videreo.

That’s it - you’ve made it to the end of this edition. Regular programming will resume next week! I’ll be putting the result of the most clicked post in next week’s edition so you can see where others are focusing. If I’ve missed something, you’ve got a tip or any feedback at all - you can simply reply to this email and it will come straight to me. I’m doing this for You so please don’t be shy to tell me what you think