Two memories from Arival Valencia 2025 – tour pricing & AI keynote

At the end of April, I headed to Valencia for Arival 2025 — the flagship European conference dedicated to the sightseeing and experiences sector. These may not have been the most significant events of the week, but they’ve stayed with me — enough that, a month later, I want to publicly memorialise them.

Pricing breakout

Stephen Joyce asked me, “Why are you here?” — referring to his breakout session, “What’s Your Experience Worth? The Essentials of Pricing,” that I was attending.

Fair question. The innovation view — one I’ve often voiced — is that experience pricing trends toward zero where the marginal cost is zero. When you ask Google Maps for directions, no one charges you 5 EUR for navigation instructions — because it costs nothing to deliver that digital interaction at scale. The same logic is starting to apply to certain types of sightseeing delivered by AI. So why, then, attend a pricing session?

Because Stephen is one of the best CEOs of our era. You always learn from Stephen.

My esprit d’escalier response — which I wish I’d said at the time — should have been: why aren’t more CEOs at this conference in that room? Pricing is the battleground. You attend everything on this topic, even the early-stage sessions.

Keynoting was fun — and intense

I spoke six times: mainstage keynote, a keynote panel, and four back-to-back AI workshops with the same content. I left exhausted.

The key idea I tried to get across? AI isn’t a distribution change like the last 20 years. It’s a product change, the first major change in the last 150 years. Reztech providers have nothing to offer.

In the same way Airbnb introduced a new mechanism to access personally owned beds — a fundamentally different product model from hotels — AI assistants are introducing a new way to access experiences. It’s not just cheaper; it’s structurally different. And that makes it hard to compete against. If your product can be replaced by an AI with zero marginal cost, it probably will be.

They can be an alternative to traditional tours, offering new formats for how consumers spend their time in a destination. Or they can be a direct substitution at a lower price point. Want a food tour? Fine — AI will deliver that.

Where we go from here

I left Valencia with mixed emotions.

Yes, it was a privilege to keynote and help shape the conversation.

But I also left with a sense of despair — like we’re entering the final era of vinyl. Some like myself can already see the CDs coming. After that, Napster — the peer-to-peer disruption. And then Spotify where it is all about personalisation at scale. Others are holding on to the belief that human connection is what will save them. It’s important — but perhaps not decisive. Or perhaps that connection can now be delivered digitally, well enough to shift behaviour at scale.

Some still say, “boy who cried wolf,” or roll their eyes at what they see as yet more AI hype. But the wolf is here. And it’s not just hype — it’s hardware, distribution, and consumer behaviour shifting in real time.

Google (via Waymo) is, by some measures, already the fastest-growing tour operator in the US — with autonomous vehicles delivering local experiences in San Francisco and beyond. [See 2025 Tourism Impact report]

OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) is reportedly building hardware to support 100 million AI companions — many of which could deliver tours, guide walks, provide local storytelling. [See Mashable report]

We should be in panic mode. I am. I have a counter-plan — a path for the Arival community of local tour operators — but I can’t compete with OpenAI, Google, and the rest on my own.

As I said on stage, if you think this is still just hype, look to China — where this is already happening at scale. They’re ahead of us in the West.

Finally

I’m now writing more over at Cyborguide, a multi-author blog I edit, where we are focusing on the future of digital experiences. If you’ve enjoyed these DestinationCTO articles, please do subscribe and follow along there, either via email or following on LinkedIn. Will still write here but less often than before.

Image: OpenAI