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The Impact of AI on Destination Marketing featuring Visit California
Manage episode 514049675 series 3474086
In this second episode - part of a 3-part mini-series with Mindtrip exploring how AI is transforming destination marketing - we sit down with Lynn Carpenter, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Visit California, to unpack how a how a $157.3B tourism economy is being reimagined through AI, data, and human storytelling. Lynn shares why engagement now matters more than traffic, taking us from the dot-com era to today’s AI surge and revealing how her team built an advanced content platform designed for both humans and machines. Think California industry led RAG architecture, a massive digital content library, and editorial processes that add what the web can’t know yet: local nuance, future packages, and timely insights.
The results are eye-opening. Visit California’s new road trip hub offered three planning paths - quiz, human-curated, and AI-assisted - and the AI option has now surpassed curated links in click-throughs. Visitors entering via AI spend an average of nine minutes on site, a strong signal of intent for a property designed to hand off to California travel partners for booking. Lynn breaks down how international offices inform market strategy, how multilingual search became a hidden growth lever, and how her team draws a direct line from owned content to more than a billion dollars in incremental tourism impact. For more information, please visit industry.visitcalifornia.com.
Join us next week for the final episode in this mini-series, featuring Discover Puerto Rico CMO Storm Tussey and Mindtrip CMO Michelle Denogean, as we explore what’s next for destination marketing in the age of AI.
The #1 B2B Travel Podcast Globally. Over 100 Episodes. Listeners in 125 countries. New Episodes Every Weds.
https://www.traveltrendspodcast.com/
Chapters
1. The Message Isn’t Enough (00:00:00)
2. Series Setup and Guest Intro (00:00:21)
3. Lynn’s Tech Origins and Netscape Era (00:02:02)
4. Hype Cycles, Lessons, and Curiosity (00:05:38)
5. From Silicon Valley to Ski Slopes (00:07:14)
6. Visit California’s Mission and Model (00:10:49)
7. Brand Building to Advanced Storytelling (00:14:06)
8. Website’s Role and Billion-Dollar Impact (00:17:05)
9. AI as the “New Internet” Interface (00:20:24)
10. Roadmap, Guardrails, and Mindtrip (00:24:05)
11. RAG, Content Libraries, and Partners (00:27:05)
12. Data, Discoverability, and Stakeholders (00:31:18)
13. Traffic Down, Engagement Up (00:33:56)
14. July Milestone: AI Overtakes Curated (00:36:12)
15. Nine-Minute Sessions and Deeper Queries (00:38:22)
16. Crossing the Chasm: Adoption Advice (00:40:35)
17. Collaboration, Vendor Flood, and Focus (00:44:14)
18. Closing Reflections and How to Connect (00:46:18)
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