In the AI age, you can’t just be a digital service anymore. For the digital only companies this makes it a strategically important task deciding what to do beyond digital. This post is a quick summary of how Viator, GetYourGuide and Google are going physical with three different approaches. Not mutually exclusive of course, but […]

Depending upon your perspective, the big news this week was either the Checkfront / Rezdy shared ownership announcement, or Tripadvisor launching their AI tour itinerary generating service to consumers. Here is how both stories can be viewed from a singular perspective and are relevant to more than just suppliers who use Checkfront / Rezdy. But […]

Along with GetYourGuide‘s recent funding announcements came some interesting leadership quotes that I just have to memorialise for future reference as their statements about unit economics and strategy are significant. Before we cover that, a clarification, GetYourGuide are not THE largest funded in our sector, the autonomous vehicle mobility platforms are funded far in excess […]

Too much AI debate in the sightseeing sector relates to generative AI such as text, image & video generation. This article outlines why we should prioritise addressing other forms of AI first, and how we can incorporate decentralised technology approaches within an overall AI strategy. First, why is everyone distracted by generative AI? I believe […]

Generative AI such as ChatGPT is an era defining technology and it merits the number of articles and videos created on this topic. However we are ignoring one core debate, we need to talk about what happens when this and related AI technologies scale, which they will. This article focusses on this important topic with […]

Niche topic, perhaps only of interest to technologists, however…. lets summarise the case for and against OCTO standards. What are the OCTO standards? When you connect a rez tech with an OTA, you have to make the product data continually align between the two platforms. This is tricky, e.g. on booking cancellation terms, how are […]

I haven’t been to a sightseeing industry conference, physically, for years. I haven’t even travelled outside of the UK for 3 years (!). So it is with some trepidation that I am off to the Arival conference in Las Vegas in October. I will be speaking (more on that below) but beyond that, I thought […]

Consumers love a cheap price and entire sectors of the travel industry are focussed on helping consumers save money. Much of the sector’s advertising is proclaiming how one platform’s prices are better than others. This works where a product is a commodity (like hotels, flights or attractions), but experiences are not commodities, experiences are moving […]

The project to transition bus owning sightseeing tour operators to autonomous vehicles is no more. I published my original industry transition proposal in 2018 and you can still read it. Fundamentally, since then, I have failed to convince any bus owning tour operators to the point of committed action. This article explains the mistakes I […]

2022 summer, by many accounts, seems to be a blockbuster for bookings. However under the surface the question remains, can this booking volume be carried into 2023 and beyond, or is this just a 2022 post COVID phenomenon? Beyond preparing for the market to go either direction, there are longer term issues bubbling away that […]