Hear from Saigon Travel Massive co-leader, Natalya Wissink (@natalya) (and founder of Secret Experiences) on the Techtonic Lounge podcast, hosted by Serge Yurovsky.
In this episode (E24), Natalya shares her insights on:
• How hotels are using VR and video content
• How tour companies are adopting AI chat bots to answer common questions
• How travel tech can help overcome "overtourism" and bring travelers to less visited destinations
• How tech and personalisation can help improve destination marketing
• Travel tech startups to try: Tripsy and NaviSavi
Listen in to Natalya and Serge's discussion to learn how tourism businesses are adopting new technology.
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Comments
Great to hear from Natalya's thoughts about technology and tourism, with her perspective a founder of a successful tour company in Vietnam!
🎧 Podcast link at podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/techtonic-lounge/episodes/E22-Travel-Tech--Innovation--Personalization-wNatalya-Wissink--founder-of-Secret-Experiences-e2q85n7
Thanks for sharing this interesting and highly relevant podcast Ian. I found Natalya's comments on virtual reality (VR) as a tool to showcase destinations appropriate but she missed mentioning that VR cannot replace the full sensory experience that physical travel offers, like touch, smell, and taste.
Relating to this topic, although from a travel marketing perspective, I've started using AI to promote a clients online tour operator business. Although it's too early to tell how successful these are, I'll share a few AI marketing tools I'm trying out; Trendgram.io to grow Instagram followers (Basic Plan at $59/month to gain 100-1,500 followers/month - the Pro Plan at $79/month claims to gain 2,000-3,500 followers/month), and Taplio (powered by GPT-4) to increase LinkedIn reach, engagement, and followers with some automation features thrown in (Standard package at $49/month).
Hey Desmond, I don't think Natalya suggested that VR would replace travel, but rather there were use-cases for tourism businesses such as hotels to showcase the guest experience before people booked their travel.
Thanks for sharing your AI marketing tools. Are you concerned that if everyone uses these kinds of services that we'll drown in AI generated comments, likes, etc? I am actively considering banning AI-generated comments here on Travel Massive because I don't find chatgpt-generated content to be a positive contribution to online conversations.
Hey Ian, I think that AI tools are handy for quick content generation and marketing strategy assessment. However, I am finding that the auto-generated content still has to be edited for coherence and accuracy. AI seems to struggle with tasks requiring creativity, abstract reasoning, and understanding human values and emotions. Anyone thinking of using AI should be aware that Google's algorithms devalue website rankings when AI generated content is detected, so human editing is essential for relevance and authenticity.
thanks for sharing!