Experience This! Travel Industry Insights and Opinions

There are very few investors who focus exclusively on the Experience Economy.Michael Zeisser, Principal, FMZ Ventures, is one of the most prolific and he joined us for a fascinating conversation on his perspective.Michael's background includes the McKinsey ecommerce practice, working as a senior executive at Liberty Media, at the time the controlling shareholders of IAC including Expedia and TripAdvisor, then went to work at for Jack Ma at Alibaba where he lead international investments.He now runs a solo venture fund and is an investor and/or board member at companies including GetYourGuide, Fever, Bla Bla Car, Atlas Obscura, Easol and Reddit.Michael discusses his theory about the Experiences Economy being the next economic sector after the information age and how travel is an important element at the top of the pyramid of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.Show videos are posted on YouTube, subscribe and Like!Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page  (Follow us and Discuss!)Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts:Spotify, Apple, etc. - Subscribe and rate the shows.

A major deal was just announced, with two of the leading reservation technology companies in the world merging. Rezdy, based in Sydney Australia and Checkfront, based in Victoria Island Canada power 1000's of operators around the world. Rezdy also provides connectivity to 1000's more operators with the Rezdy Channel Manager.Co-hosts Lori Timony, Christian Watts and Bruce Rosard are joined by Stephen Joyce, VP Content, Arival and original OG of Restech for the In-Destinations Experiences industry as co-founder and former CEO of Rezgo.There will be a lot more to come on the pros and cons of this deal for the industry, distributors and operators. Experience This! will for sure continue to watch this story.What does this mean for our industry?What does this mean for operators Show videos are posted on YouTube, subscribe and Like!Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page  (Follow us and Discuss!)Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts:Spotify, Apple, etc. - Subscribe and rate the shows.

A timely discussion with a variety of opinions. Many opinions. Lots of problems, not so many solutions.Show videos are posted on YouTube, subscribe and Like!Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page  (Follow us and Discuss!)Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts:Spotify, Apple, etc. - Subscribe and rate the shows.

OTAs are the fastest growing distribution channel for the Experiences Industry. And there are a lot of mixed feelings out there in operator land. In this session we focus on Niche OTAs. Niche OTAs focus on a region, on an activity type, or in the case of our guest Melanie White from Virgin Experience Gifts, a different type of distribution - gifting.This is a really interesting show that we encourage all operators to listen to and come up with ideas for new distribution channels.Arival wrote an article on niche operators with lots of great info, available hereShow videos are posted on YouTube, subscribe and Like!Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page  (Follow us and Discuss!)Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts:Spotify, Apple, etc. - Subscribe and rate the shows.

Pricing, variable pricing, dynamic pricing - which one is right for you? What's the difference between variable and dynamic pricing?We are joined by two experts with strong opinions discussing how the experiences industry has a lot to learn from hotels and airlines. But will the infrastructure support advanced pricing?Show videos are posted on YouTube, subscribe and Like!Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page  (Follow us and Discuss!)Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts:Spotify, Apple, etc. - Subscribe and rate the shows.

Once again, Experience This! features two women who have advanced into the C Suite of travel tech. Susan DeBottis, Chief Growth Officer, Rezdy and Cady Wolf, industry veteran from Travelocity, Switchfly and Sojern and now founder and CEO of consulting firm A23 Advisors and Founder WiTT (Women in Travel Tech) join the Experience This! hosts to continue the discussion focused on womentin travel tech, especially focused on the Experiences sector.Show videos are posted on YouTube, subscribe and Like!Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page  (Follow us and Discuss!)Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts:Spotify, Apple, etc. - Subscribe and rate the shows.

It was pretty big news last week when Airbnb Experiences announced they were putting a pause on adding new experiences on the platform, including for existing experience hosts.Given that Airbnb has had such a big impact on the In-Destination Experiences Industry, there's a lot of talk about what comes next. In 2016 when Airbnb launched Airbnb Experiences that was the beginning of usage of the word Experiences in place of what the industry was then known as, "tours and activities". While the impact has been huge, the sales volume has not. That's the main topic of show #17.Plus we discuss the demise of Heygo, a virtual travel company that raised $20M in VC funds in February 2022.Show videos are posted on YouTube, subscribe and Like!Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page  (Follow us and Discuss!)Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts:Spotify, Apple, etc. - Subscribe and rate the shows.

You're an Experience Creator, you get business with direct bookings and through distribution. Now there's a third funnel that is going to grow exponentially and be relatively low cost. Content Creators, also known as influencers have new platforms to work on to make your job as an Experience Creator easier to figure out who to work with, how to work with them, and what bookings they deliver. This show features two of those platforms, Sally Bunnell, founder and CEO, NaviSavi and Ryan McElroy, co-founder and CCO, Jerne. Lots to learn on this show!Show videos are posted on YouTube, subscribe and Like!Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page  (Follow us and Discuss!)Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts:Spotify, Apple, etc. - Subscribe and rate the shows.

"Old school" chat bots, new chat bots powered by generative AI, what's the difference?Guests Daniel Pino and David Kunze have experience with both and the discussion was interesting as we peer into the not to far off future.Who will benefit most from this first wave of innovation from Generative AI? Experience operators? Restechs? Distributors?Listen in for our perspectives and share  yours on our LinkedIn page.Show videos are posted on YouTube, subscribe and Like!Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page  (Follow us and Discuss!)Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts:Spotify, Apple, etc. - Subscribe and rate the shows.

On show #14 we had two guest stars, Alexi Tabrizi, Senior VP Global Sales, Big Bus; and Tina Kyriakis, found and CEO, Alternative Athens join us to talk about their experience talking to 100s of people at Arival and ITB. We talked about where  the Experiences industry is right now, hint: "Cautious Optimism" , the ever changing but must use Google Things to do, and the extraordinary keynote and follow up breakout session by Marc Mekki including a dramatic case study featuring the AI version of Alan Turing. Show videos are posted on YouTube, subscribe and Like!Comments and discussions on the Experience This! LinkedIn Page  (Follow us and Discuss!)Podcasts available wherever you get your podcasts:Spotify, Apple, etc. - Subscribe and rate the shows.