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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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