Experience This! Travel Industry Insights and Opinions

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...

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 th...

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 deli...

"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 s...

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 keyno...

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...

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. Show videos are posted on YouTube , subscribe and Like! Comments and discussions on the Experience T...

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 Show videos are posted on YouTube , subscribe and Like! Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page   (Follow us and Discuss!) Podcasts avail...

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? Show vide...

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 entert...

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. Show videos are posted...

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. Show videos are posted on YouTube , subscribe and Like! Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page   (Follow us and Discuss!) Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify ,...

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 Vand...

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. Show videos are posted on YouTube , subscribe and Like! Comm...

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. Show videos are posted on YouTube , subscribe and Like! Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page   (Follow us and Discuss!) Podcasts available wherever yo...

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...

Co-hosts Lori Timony, Christian Watts and Bruce Rosard introduce the Experience This! Show.  What is it? Why is it? How is it? Including brief introductions and a conversation about ChatGPT in the experiences sector of the travel industry. Show videos are posted on YouTube , subscribe and Like! Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page   (Follow us and Discuss!) Podcasts avail...