Experience This!

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.

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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?

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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.

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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.

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

Bruce's annual review of top trends for in-destination experiences with critiques from co-hosts Christian Watts and Lori Timony.

Bruce's list includes the most important things for the in-destination experiences industry to be paying attention to.

Here's an article Bruce wrote on these top trends going into 2024. 

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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?

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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.

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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?

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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.

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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?

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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.

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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 

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

A timely discussion with a variety of opinions. Many opinions. Lots of problems, not so many solutions.

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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?

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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.

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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.

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

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!

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)

"Old school" chat bots, new chat bots powered by generative AI, what's the difference?

Guests Daniel Pino and David Kunze have experience with both and the discussion was interesting as we peer into the not to far off future.

Who will benefit most from this first wave of innovation from Generative AI? Experience operators? Restechs? Distributors?

Listen in for our perspectives and share  yours on our LinkedIn page.

Show videos and more information at ExperienceThis.travel

Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page (Follow us!)

Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts (coming soon)