The burgeoning tours and activities sector is ripe with opportunity, with major players now looking to stake their claim.
When asked about recent moves by Tripadvisor and Airbnb, Nick Whitfield, founder and CEO of CityUnscripted, said the situation is “not great” at first glance, but there’s more to the story.
“It feels like it’s getting more commoditized, but at the same time, with AI and other changes in search behavior, I think players like ourselves have much more opportunity actually,” he said during an interview in the PhocusWire studio at The Phocuswright Conference.
“If you go on to some of these OTAs, it’s like you’re overwhelmed with choice. It all looks very similar. People copy other people—what're you actually buying?”
And while human touch has been widely discussed amid the rise of digital experiences, expert-guided tours aren’t going anywhere, and they may actually be a new kind of luxury.
“Human connection is everything,” said June Chin-Ramsey, CEO of Context Travel.
“There’s so much talk about ‘what is luxury’ and ‘how is the definition of luxury changing’—it’s not about thread counts or necessarily having the ... penthouse suite. Really, it’s about meaning, and it’s about the experience, and for me, I actually think that luxury in travel is becoming the rare gift of human attention.”
According to Chin-Ramsey, having an expert lead you through a city is not something that AI or augmented reality can replace.
“They’ll augment it, but they’ll never replace it,” she said.
Whitfield and Chin-Ramsey further explored the role of AI in the sector, fragmentation and more.
Watch the full conversation with PhocusWire’s Morgan Hines below.
Rethinking tours and activities distribution