Sharing a short essay that arrived in my inbox today, courtesy of Dense Discovery — a newsletter about design, tech, sustainability and urbanism curated by Kai Brach, based in Melbourne, Australia. Do we travel for transformation or validation? It's always interesting to hear what thought leaders "outside" the travel industry have to say about the state of tourism, so I'm sharing Kai's article with his permission. There's a few good points in this piece, including how touristic travel (e.g. mass tourism) can import more culture to a destination than it exports. I also agree that seeking validation on social media is drowning out good quality travel content. There's some truth to Kai's point about escapism. Consider this: the biggest competitor to a travel agent is the electronics shop, where consumers can instead buy a new 50" flatscreen TV. In this scenario, which "escapism" is worse? Buying a new TV or booking a trip on a cruise ship? 😅 However, I don't believe that all trave...

I tried www.copy.ai today — an artificial intelligence content generator. I've been sceptical about such tools and this is the first time I've tried one out. I was shocked at how good the results were! It was almost impossible to think that the content was created in just 10 seconds by an AI tool. And it made me think what does this mean for the travel writing industry... 🤖 Do you think AI-based content generators are going to replace travel writers and storytellers? Curious to see what you think. Do you use an AI writing tool in your content creation process? Or are you completely against them?

Hi, my name is Benoit and I'm passionate about how technology can disrupt the travel industry and ultimately lead to a better end-user experience. I have been conducting numerous interviews over the past few weeks to gain insights into the way people curate, organize and share travel content, with the final objective of identifying opportunities to innovate in this space. I intend to share my preliminary findings across a series of discussions on Travel Massive to engage with the community. The first topic relates to the main information channels used by travellers to discover a specific destination and learn about where to go and what to do. Below a summary from the interviews: - Friends / Family: For 67% of interviewees, friends and family’s word-of-mouth play a significant role in picking the next destination and 42% rely on their recommendations to know what to do on the ground. - Social Media: 75% of interviewees mention social media, and specifically Instagram, as as key ...