If you’re someone whose phone eats first, then you already know that a large part of trip planning is figuring out where – and what – to eat. According to MMGY’s 2024 Portrait of American Travelers® “Summer Edition,” it’s the third-most important factor when selecting a destination. And those who consider themselves luxury travelers are willing to pick up large tabs at trendy and renowned eateries – and those travelers are younger than you think.
“Gen Z and Millennial audiences have a higher propensity to book through a DMO website,” says Robert Patterson, SVP of Marketing Technology at MMGY. “Now I think youthful generations are considering super apps that solve everything for them at once.”
When deciding which restaurants to visit on a trip, the average younger traveler scours Google results, videos on TikTok, Reels on Instagram, listicles, and recommendations on OTAs and other travel sites. They turn to travel influencers, friends, family, food journalists … and to ChatGPT.
“People want to get to a nuanced level when looking for food. They want to find a specific dish,” says Patterson. “And search engines aren’t very good at those kinds of results. We’ve been building chatbots for over five years. And we’re ready to move beyond the traditional chatbot. We’re starting to roll out technologies and partnerships with technology providers specific to what we see as the next iteration of AI within websites.”
And that next iteration is here. MMGY is partnering with Mindtrip.ai, an AI-powered travel platform built especially for planning, booking and on-trip experiences, to create a powerful AI experience for DMO websites that can do more than spit out search results. “When people think about travel, they’re thinking more and more about what they’re going to eat,” says Michelle Denogean, CMO at Mindtrip. “At Mindtrip, we understand that the world of travel is both visual and fluid. The Mindtrip platform surfaces much more from the world of travel, showcasing photos, reviews, and maps for each recommendation that the bot makes, and ultimately booking options as well.”
At Mindtrip.ai, users can interact with the bot to create personalized, customizable and shareable travel itineraries – getting trip inspiration and booking all in one place. “We have partnerships with companies like Priceline, Booking.com, Agoda, Viator and more … with the goal of [users] being able to do discovery and booking for not just hotels and flights but also for attractions, restaurants, activities and events,” says Denogean.
While Mindtrip was created as a website platform for the consumer, it quickly became clear that there were additional opportunities in the travel and tourism space for the AI platform. “Most DMOs have an incredible amount of content on their website about their destinations, but most of it is pretty static and not very actionable,” says Denogean. “With a tool like Mindtrip embedded in their site, visitors can start the planning process by customizing recommendations and making them their own.”
Technology integrations like this on DMO websites would create a one-stop shop for travelers – and it would be a shop where they could feel the information they’re getting is vetted and trustworthy. “People don’t trust Google restaurant recommendations – but they do trust DMOs and influencers,” says Sean Bryan, VP of Digital Experiences at MMGY. Bryan works hands-on with chatbots, training them to become destination experts that can assist users on DMO websites.
With this new technology, MMGY and Mindtrip are pioneering a new future for DMO websites – a future that’s awfully close at hand. Just weeks away is the launch of Mindtrip on the website of Origin client Visit Truckee-Tahoe.
There’s a lot of excitement on the horizon for the possibilities of this technology and its integration with DMO websites. “We’ll have this robust tool,” says Patterson. “Travelers don’t have to go elsewhere to find information. They’re going to have the best information available because that AI chatbot is trained on the DMO’s data, and the DMO is the authority on that travel experience.”
What does this mean for users? Better restaurant recommendations. Knowing what else is around a restaurant or attraction for improved vacation planning. Finding that perfect dog-friendly patio where you can kick back with a margarita and taco de lengua.
And what does this mean for DMOs? Patterson and Bryan both stressed the importance of having quality content on destination websites so that LLM chatbots have rich, diverse information to learn from and refer users to. As Bryan points out, “AI chatbots will help you discover a new restaurant, but they can’t tell you what the experience will be like.” These evolved chatbots also create opportunities for co-op program integrations and even better dispersal of visitors through destinations.
“Everybody wants personalized experiences that are tailored to them and their needs,” says Patterson. “The utility of AI as an assistant – a buddy that goes with you anywhere, assists you with whatever you’re doing and is trained on your preferences to give you the most personalized recommendations – that’s the really exciting part about the future of AI.”
Denogean agrees. “We see a future where AI is the front door for everything travel related in our lives … tools we rely on to fuel any live experience we want to have – whether in our own backyard or on a big vacation.”
If you’re interested in learning more about our chatbot products and the upcoming integrations using Mindtrip, contact Robert Patterson (rpatterson@mmgy.com).
