Puerto Rico is a small island, but it is home to seven ecosystems, 78 distinct municipalities—and unique, homegrown tourism businesses that travelers may never find.
Discover Puerto Rico, the island’s destination marketing organization (DMO), aims to change that through a partnership with artificial intelligence (AI) technology provider Satisfi Labs.
“What we're building with Satisfi is an AI that listens for what a traveler or planner actually wants and then it connects them to the Puerto Rico businesses best equipped to deliver it,” Storm Tussey, chief marketing officer for Discover Puerto Rico, told PhocusWire.
General-purpose AI tools tend to focus on popular tourist spots, while smaller, family-run businesses can be overshadowed by larger resorts, Tussey said.
“My favorite fishing tour guide on the island, the only way that you can find him is if you go into a fishing store and they like you enough that they’ll recommend him,” Tussey said.
Additionally, AI agents like ChatGPT or Claude are “not really looking at your intent signals or the reasons why you might be asking these questions,” she said. “So then it can't ask you more detailed questions to help you find something that could really drive that excitement and joy.”
Tussey reached out to Satisfi Labs with her vision for an AI platform tailored for Puerto Rico that could more effectively surface the island’s diverse experiences and businesses based on traveler intent.
According to Dan Flores, head of tourism at Satisfi Labs, the project stood out because Discover Puerto Rico had a clear vision for what it wanted the technology to accomplish and was prepared to do the work needed to support it.
The quality of the underlying data is critical to developing customized AI agents, and Discover Puerto Rico understood that, said Flores.
He told the DMO, “I will build everything else that you need—the plumbing, the piping—that makes sure all these things talk, including them being able to talk to the large language models in an agentic, agent-to-agent way.”
Building the knowledge base
The first step for Discover Puerto Rico is building a detailed database of tourism businesses across the island’s municipalities, including operators with little or no online presence.
Two people can type ‘a beach day’ and want completely different things. One wants quiet and no crowds. The other wants the music, the food and the scene.
Storm Tussey, Discover Puerto Rico
“We’ve got roughly 30% of the businesses on the island in our index, and then I have two team members right now working to get the remaining, and so this will be a continuous work,” Tussey said.
The organization has developed a taxonomy framework that will index every hospitality business on the island, she said.
To ensure it only recommends qualified businesses, Discover Puerto Rico is verifying that each has the appropriate insurance and certifications.
Businesses provide basic information about their products and services. The DMO’s partnership team then links them to the intrinsic motivators that might draw travelers to those experiences.
Most travel tech matches on what someone asks for, such as a beach, hotel or restaurant, Tussey explained. “We want to understand why they're asking.”
“Two people can type ‘a beach day’ and want completely different things. One wants quiet and no crowds. The other wants the music, the food and the scene,” she said. “Same words, different businesses, and getting that right is what turns a good trip into one people talk about for years.”
Drawing from consumer psychology and neuroscience, Discover Puerto Rico identified 27 descriptors of what people seek from vacations. These descriptors were then grouped into nine core travel motivators, which the AI matching platform will be built around.
For example, travelers motivated by biophilia are drawn to nature and might enjoy El Yunque or exploring Puerto Rico's rivers, reefs and wildlife. Those motivated by distinctiveness might seek out attractions such as the island's bioluminescent bays or “chinchorros,” casual spots serving local food and drinks.
Each business in the DMO's index is assigned one primary motivator and two secondary ones. The platform will weigh these against traveler input to recommend relevant experiences.
Putting the data to work
Next, Satisfi Labs will connect these underlying data sources and build the AI agents that use that information to interpret travelers’ requests and match them with relevant businesses. The DMO will retain control of its knowledge graph, conversation data and traveler intent signals.
The platform is expected to launch on Discover Puerto Rico’s website in the first quarter of 2027, initially serving two audiences: leisure travelers and meeting and event planners.
“Our leisure travelers match to experiences, hotels, paradores [small, locally operated inns] and businesses based off of their interests and really what fills their cup,” Tussey said. “And then the meeting and event planners are matched on program needs, the venues, the hotels, the logistics, the destination services.”
Tussey said the platform could also help meeting planners source products locally rather than shipping materials to the island.
“You can actually work with some of our local providers and have it custom created for you, so you get a true Puerto Rican experience,” she said.
Qualified referrals to local businesses will serve as an initial measure of success, with Discover Puerto Rico using Satisfi Labs’ Agent Performance Console to track how effectively the platform generates those connections.
“For me, success in stage one is making sure that it is getting a booking in a place you would not have found without us,” Tussey said.
Beyond the website
The partnership also aims to make Discover Puerto Rico’s verified information accessible to external AI assistants and travel-planning tools.
“[Satisfi Labs’] job is to build the agent-to-agent infrastructure to make it very easy for that information to be pulled directly from the most trusted source of truth, which should be Discover Puerto Rico,” Flores said.
[Satisfi Labs’] job is to build the agent-to-agent infrastructure to make it very easy for that information to be pulled directly from the most trusted source of truth, which should be Discover Puerto Rico.
Dan Flores, Satisfi Labs
In subsequent phases, the DMO plans to integrate the agents with its marketing channels, allowing travelers who click on an advertisement to enter a conversation tailored to their interests.
Tussey also sees potential to use travel data from travelers’ interactions with AI agents to identify gaps in the island’s tourism offerings and inform economic development.
Providing an example, she said, “We see high interest in this, but we have a gap in outfitters or a gap in product, so that then we can work with our economic development team to find programs that can help solve for those gaps.”
Longer term, Discover Puerto Rico hopes to use insights from the AI agents and small businesses to guide tourism investment and help manage visitor flows across the island.
But for Tussey, the goal is ultimately to help travelers discover local experiences they might otherwise miss.
She described a small inn where guests wake up to freshly picked starfruit and homemade juice.
“If I can help you find that farmer, then I am doing the farmer a favor and giving you an experience that you’ll never forget,” she said.