I'm making a conscious effort this year to step outside the echo chamber of advertising conferences and instead go where the actual brand-side marketing conversations are happening. Yesterday, that took me to Visit California's Outlook Forum in Los Angeles.
While the adtech conferences host their umpteenth panel on "the promise of AI," destination marketers are deploying solutions that drive measurable outcomes.
I watched a mainstage panel discuss AI's rapid penetration into tourism marketing. National and regional tourism groups tend to be very conservative marketers. New "tech stuff" is not always welcomed with open arms, but things are changing.
The end of the generic travel itinerary
Despite billions spent on destination marketing, 70% of travelers still find trip planning "extremely frustrating."
When a panelist was discussing AI with an 18-year-old traveler who admitted to using ChatGPT to plan her entire Dolomites trip, it highlighted the wins and fails of travel AI. The itinerary hit all of the expected highlights, including the most massively overly crowded spots in the area. It was a mess.
Generic AI is already having massive impacts on travel marketing...sending everyone to the same Instagram-worthy spots whether we like it or not.
On the positive side, Costa Rica's AI-powered road trip planner, developed with MMGY Global, has seen 3x higher engagement than traditional chatbots. Why? Because it moves beyond generic recommendations to hyper-personalized itineraries that leverage the destination's proprietary data.
