DMO’s are seeing 20-30% organic traffic decline because of AI

An excellent two-part essay this week from the Digital Tourism Think Tank consultancy laid out the reality many in the destination marketing world are living right now.

The first part laid out the reality of around 1/3 of destinations involved in their research.

“A third of surveyed destinations report clear, measurable traffic declines of between 20% and 30%, characterised as a general trend rather than concentrated in specific query types. This represents a fundamental shift in long-established patterns. For some, organic search now contributes roughly 30% to 50% of total traffic, compared with 70% to 80% during peak seasons previously. These are not just minor shifts but rather disruptions to digital strategies that have delivered consistent results for years.”

Traffic is obviously the result of clicks and the report also suggested “Research from the Pew Research Center, tracking nearly 69,000 search queries, found click-through rates dropped from 15% to 8% when AI summaries appeared. Broad queries about “best time to visit” or “things to do” are increasingly answered directly by AI, with users finding what they need without clicking through to websites.”

Interestingly, “Map-related content and pages continue to perform strongly across destinations experiencing declining traffic otherwise. The resilience likely reflects that these pages offer practical, visual content that AI summaries cannot present as effectively as interactive map interfaces.”

This one certainly raised my eyebrows given Videreo actually started life as a way for DMO’s to simply add both maps and videos (also impervious to AI scraping) to their sites for exactly this reason. Given we’ve pivoted away from that, you can work out for yourself what the response was at the time. We just incorporated the maps into our guide product instead.

In part 2 of the essay, ThinkDigital looked at potential solutions. Naturally social media bobbed up here. “Social media strategies are also evolving beyond awareness-building towards traffic generation. This includes broadening activity across social platforms, leveraging content from newly launched ambassador networks for increased visibility and using social channels as alternative tools for discovery, which are less susceptible to AI search disruption.”

We concur. Our recent project with Palau clearly bears this out where we were able to show (prove) that over 450 leads were delivered directly to supplier websites from just two social media posts via a creator with just 142K following whilst on a gifted experience. This came alongside the awareness side of the brief that saw over 325K view the experience and over 2000 read the guide.

Videreo is the place where creator marketing is built for leads, not just likes.

Contact me to learn how we can make this happen for you.

This content is provided by the newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

Google starts adding AI powered “good-to-know” captions onto hotel photos

One eagle eye out there from SEO Round Table noticed this week that Google was starting to add AI powered captions, seemingly derived from real review information, onto hotel photos within its platform.

“This was spotted by Lluc B. Penycate who posted a number of screenshots and videos” which you can view yourself in the link above. Lluc wrote, ""Good to Know" AI description/summary text appearing in photos of the hotels listings on Google Hotels. For both owner photos and visitor photos, but it does not show on all the photos.”

Notably these captions also have a link to hotel prices - in case the caption was just what you needed to get you to the next stage.

Whilst a picture may tell 1000 words, it seems that maybe we need just a few more words on top to get us moving down the funnel?

Where I think this could be instructive to everyone else is: we know AI can write things for us. So where do more words = better business outcomes.

It is obvious to think - oh, we’ll just get more blog content up (see story from Tasmania last week why this doesn’t always work out how you hope) or we’ll add FAQ’s to the bottom of every page - but Google here is thinking more precisely and no doubt testing like mad to see what the result is.

Amadeus drops self-service developers from its API access

This was a topic that really lit up the Everything AI in Travel Slack group this week (see below how you can join). No doubt because of the high propensity of actual developers who are in the group, some no doubt reliant on this info from the Amadeus API for things they have built.

Theories abound as to why Amadeus might be doing this. Some suggested that people may have built AI agents that are just pounding the API and ruining it for everyone else. Others saw it as a protectionist action from a laboring incumbent to keep startups at bay.

We’ve been lucky at Videreo to have a bunch of great and ongoing conversations with some awesome people at Amadeus. From our vantage point I can only see them as both very pro-startup and pro-innovation. In our case they’ve wanted to help and been proactive in booking and turning up to calls, even if we haven’t yet found exactly the right way to fit together. It’s a big company however so who knows what might be happening elsewhere.

The lesson here I think is that access to supply is moat. It is valuable and hard won. It’s certainly not a right that everyone should get equal access, unless that is what the owner wants to provide. Builder beware when building on rented land.

Ads are now live on ChatGPT

As we mentioned last week, ads were coming to ChatGPT and we didn’t have long to wait to see them appear. OpenAI made the announcement themselves this week. their H2 line in the email was: Ads that support free access and don’t change ChatGPT answers.

No doubt a response to the gentle ribbing the crew at Anthtropic have been giving them in their own multi-million-dollar ad spend recently, including a Super Bowl ad.

Eric Lutz from Olive jumped into the conversation on LinkedIn with an emphatic call to do all you can to get into the organic answer because the usual suspects are likely to be the ones with the paid answer just below (Booking, Expedia). Lutz thinks those operating on legacy software are going to get left behind.

The comments section is also interesting.

Meanwhile Booking + OpenAI are joining forces in Europe to help SMB’s navigate this AI inflection point. Not much other detail here - but presumably if Booking is involved then those SMB’s are likely to be accom businesses. Maybe they will teach the SMB’s how to build better listings on Booking or how to navigate the targeting in the new OpenAI Ad Manager which I’m sure will be as deliberately confusing and opaque as all that came before them.

And even more meanwhile, Booking stock took a plunge on AI fears of their own disruption leading to Steve Hafner moving from head of Kayak to an overarching AI role at Booking Holdings.

Joaia add AI guides to Destination websites in Switzerland via Innotour

Joaia are the latest company to help destinations get conversational on their websites.

Through a partnership with Innotour, a number of Swiss destinations were given funding to build out a solution and found a willing local partner in Joaia. Innotour is a national government department that supports innovation in tourism to help evolve the Swiss tourism landscape.

I had a play with Zurich example on my usual bug bear around places for vegetarians who are gluten free and then crossed referenced it with my Videreo co-founder who is based in Zurich. The results were very good!

Great to see this localised innovation happening.

I don’t want to be alarmist but……

This article is out doing the rounds. Your Nan might send it to you when it pops up on her Facebook. Not really the type of thing I’d post about here normally but…

I do think it is worth a read. I do think it is worth being prepared and understanding the moment we are in. Heck, I’ve been banging on in here for 2 years yelling: DO SOMETHING.

The author of the article here is Matt Shumer. He is an AI entrepreneur, investor, and commentator focused on applied generative-AI tools and software development.

He’s best known for:

• Co-founding OthersideAI, a startup that built AI writing tools (including products built on large language models).

• Sharing frequent commentary on AI progress and product releases on X (Twitter), where he tests new models and discusses how AI is changing knowledge work.

• Working closely in the AI-developer tooling ecosystem, especially around coding agents, productivity automation, and model-driven software creation.

His thesis is AI has crossed from “useful tool” to “capable replacement for large parts of knowledge work,” and most people haven’t realized.

The core example he uses is coding - which is the world he is from and a potentially a canary in the coal mine here, because the layoffs have been massive.

The reason I’m sharing it is because I have lived through the coding piece around AI but from the other side.

Videreo, our software business, is totally built by AI. we don’t really bang on about our business being an “AI business” because how client doesn’t care how the sausage is made.

Adrian and I aren’t coders. AI has built and continues to build everything from our website to our client dashboards to the portal through which they access it to 80% of the guides that creators share with their followers (the other 20% of their own unique media and input on recommendations is what stops them being AI slop).

3 years ago, to build this business you would have had to raise money and hire engineers, hire designers, hire UI/UX people. We’ve skipped over that bit. If that happens in other areas of codified white-collar knowledge - then people will be skipping over those bits too soon enough.

Over to you if you want to take that seriously or not.

If you think someone (or everyone) you know or work with could grow from being more informed on the topic of ai + travel (or could use the training above) then please forward this email to them and they can click the button below:

Marketplace Spotlight: Propellic

Brennen Bliss dropped the news (via Skift) that Marriott will start doing hotel bookings inside Google AI.

“Bookings coming to AI Mode... reported by Skift - starting with Marriott.

Quoting the article, '“We began working with Google to design a priority search experience that will help facilitate bookings through Google’s AI Mode,” Capuano said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. “The booking will be processed through AI Mode,” he added.'

This will likely fix the friction users reported in Propellic's UX study (Propellic.com/research) that talks about how users expect the booking info (guest count, dates, room type) to carry over to the hotel website. This will close that loop.”

If you have a B2B business underpinned by AI and looking for people to notice you, you can sign up to the marketplace for peanuts (top right corner, 5 mins, bring your logo).

I’ve priced for bootstrapped startups but also accepting larger companies too.

Productivity doubled

I’m always looking for real examples of AI making an impact in businesses. I think we can learn best and borrow from those slightly ahead of us. This also de-risks the journey a little.

In this article from India (only click the link if really desperate for the details, the site is some popup crazy website like back in the early 2000’s with capability to stop your machine from running smoothly), Abhishek Daga, Co-founder of Thrillophilia explained how its AI salesperson co-pilot is helping drive profitability.

The headline is Fewer calls, better conversions, leaner sales teams. The playbook here is “High-intent leads are routed to human sales executives, while low-intent enquiries are handled by AI agents"

“Daga said this AI feature has already doubled salesperson productivity over the past six months and aims to make each executive five times more productive over the next year.”

I guess a well-functioning CRM could also do this but if you don’t already have that, then maybe this is a playbook you could also use.

Slack Group!

Podcasts and Sponsors

Podcasts now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts:

New podcasts are now showing up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for your easy listening pleasure!

This week I caught up with Jason Bryant from Oracle about his journey from founding Nor1 through to the exit to Oracle and why he thinks that has landed him in the perfect spot for this inflection point in technology.

Tomorrow on the Everything Social Media in Travel podcast, we’ll drop the episode with Madi Rifkin who has just exited her business Mount to Popfly and has a world of practical wisdom to offer.

The special FREE education with Santiago Rodriguez is available if you’ve done very little in your own AI journey to date and you want to get it started. Best to watch and listen so maybe try this one on YouTube. The whole series is there and each episode builds from the last. They are just 15 minutes long each.

Partner with Us

Most clicked last week was the link to the Google announcements (since mainly walked back as above!)

That’s it - you’ve made it to the end of this edition. Happy Thanksgiving to those who are celebrating it! If you’re thankful for this newsletter - you can always buy me a coffee.

I’ll be putting the result of the most clicked post in next week’s edition so you can see where others are focusing. If I’ve missed something, you’ve got a tip or any feedback at all - you can simply reply to this email and it will come straight to me. I’m doing this for You so please don’t be shy to tell me what you think