Explore how destinations can create more connected, personalised and engaging visitor experiences by integrating digital infrastructure, data and technology into product and experience design, while emphasising the importance of collaboration across the tourism ecosystem.
As travellers increasingly seek meaningful connections with the places they visit, attention is turning to the hidden data layer that supports the experience economy. How can destinations strengthen the relationship between digital infrastructure, visitor journeys and product development? Technology in tourism continues to advance at pace. However, its value increases more when systems are connected with data, digital tools and local experiences in a way that helps visitors fully engage with a destination.
Our recent live discussion with James Berzins, Managing Director at TXGB, raised an important point about how enabling visitors to access all parts of a destination can encourage deeper exploration and more meaningful engagement. This shift requires a renewed focus on product and experience design at the destination level. Developing a strong technological ecosystem, underpinned by storytelling and data-driven design, ensures that tourism experiences are immersive and engaging.
Connecting the Tourism Ecosystem
Tourism operates within a vast and fragmented ecosystem. On one end of the spectrum are the billions of people seeking to travel and explore. At the other end are the experiences, accommodation providers and countless other tourism products, encompassing over a thousand distinct categories within the experience economy. Between these two ends lies a complex value chain made up of intermediaries and booking platforms, each using different technologies to bridge the gap between supply and demand.
This intricate network presents a core challenge of aligning data and systems in a way that allows for seamless connectivity across the entire booking journey. Visitors use a variety of channels to plan and book their trips, but the underlying infrastructure often struggles to keep pace. In many cases, fragmentation in the value chain inhibits growth, restricts access and prevents destinations from fully meeting the needs of today’s travellers.
TXGB recognises this gap and is focused on building an infrastructure that strengthens collaboration across the tourism ecosystem. By enabling destinations to connect demand with supply more effectively, this approach creates new opportunities. It also makes it easier for campaigns to convert inspiration into action, helping travellers discover, plan and book more easily.
AI is rapidly becoming an essential tool for tourism. It holds enormous potential to enhance experiences, streamline operations and unlock entirely new ways of engaging visitors. At the product and experience level, AI is already demonstrating its value. Operators, whether running a local tour, a small hotel or a major attraction, are using AI to improve internal workflows and create more engaging visitor journeys.
In our live discussion, James shared an example from the Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, where AI was used to give the exhibition a voice. By using AI to enable the animal displays to speak and respond to people, the museum has made the experience more interactive and immersive. This approach adds a new dimension to storytelling and makes it easier for attractions to evolve and stay relevant.
Data plays a fundamental role in the success of AI. Without data, AI lacks context and effectiveness. When trained on destination-specific data, the potential to create intelligent and responsive tools increases dramatically. TXGB’s focus on enabling better data flows across the ecosystem supports this shift. By structuring and connecting data more effectively, it opens the door for AI solutions that respond to real visitor needs and reflect the true character of a place.
DMOs play a pivotal role in how AI is data-trained. With deep local knowledge and an understanding of the types of questions visitors ask, DMOs are well positioned to use AI strategically. From conversational tools to intelligent trip planning, AI can help DMOs deliver more personalised experiences, which are rooted in the authentic stories and insights that only local voices can provide.
In today’s tourism landscape, a great experience is shaped by the seamless integration of every touchpoint, extending far beyond what the visitor sees. While user journeys and omni-channel strategies are essential in shaping interactions, service blueprinting takes things a step further. It focuses on the mechanics of delivery, helping to ensure that a good idea translates into a well-executed reality.
Service blueprints provide a structured view of the processes, people and technologies involved in delivering an experience. They offer a way to visualise how services are layered and connected and where potential gaps exist. By mapping these elements, destinations and operators gain clarity on what needs to happen behind the scenes to ensure consistency and quality across all channels.
This approach supports a deeper focus on operational design, highlighting areas where value is created and identifying weak points. With a clear blueprint in place, it becomes easier to track what success looks like, not only in terms of campaign results, but in how the entire service is provided — from inspiration to booking and arrival. Service blueprint enables better decision-making around technology investment, resource planning and long-term visitor satisfaction.
Social Commerce and the Future of Travel Conversion
Social commerce is rapidly reshaping the way younger generations engage with products and brands. Platforms like TikTok Shop are turning inspiration into bookings, while influencers continue to shape consumer behaviour through trusted recommendations. Within the travel sector, this space remains largely untapped for direct conversion. There is an opportunity to rethink the top of the funnel, shifting from passive inspiration to active decision-making through social-first strategies.
In this evolving consumer-to-consumer landscape, every trip becomes a story that has the potential to inspire another journey. There’s growing interest in enabling travellers to package their own itineraries, which others could then book. While there are regulatory considerations, patterns are beginning to emerge that could support this kind of user-generated itinerary sharing. Destinations are beginning to explore how to build systems around this, allowing personal stories to become bookable experiences.
Technology plays a key role in enabling this shift. It can streamline the process of creating, sharing and booking travel plans. The power of personal recommendations remains central. When content is authentic, personalised and delivered by trusted voices, it drives stronger engagement and significantly improves conversion. Influencer trust, combined with platforms that guide travellers with clarity and authority, creates a powerful feedback loop that turns inspiration into travel decisions.
As technology and visitor expectations continue to evolve, destinations have an opportunity to strengthen the links between digital infrastructure, product development and visitor journeys. A connected approach through which data, technology and storytelling work together helps destinations create more accessible, personalised and engaging experiences. By focusing on collaboration across the ecosystem, improving data flows and embracing tools like AI and social commerce, destinations can better meet visitor needs:
Strengthen Tourism Connections: Tourism operates within a fragmented landscape, with a complex value chain linking travellers to a vast array of experiences and services. To meet the needs of today’s travellers, it is essential to align systems and data for seamless connectivity across the booking journey. By building infrastructure that bridges gaps between supply and demand, destinations can unlock new opportunities, enhance collaboration and turn inspiration into action.
Empower Experience Design with AI: AI is rapidly emerging as a strategic tool in tourism, improving ways of engaging visitors and streamlining operations. By combining AI with destination-specific data, DMOs can create more immersive experiences. Supporting better data flows across the ecosystem unlocks AI’s full potential, enabling personalised storytelling and more meaningful visitor journeys rooted in authentic local insights.
Blueprinting for Seamless Visitor Journeys: Service blueprinting goes beyond user journeys, focusing on the processes, people and technologies that ensure seamless service delivery. By mapping out all the elements of an experience, destinations can identify gaps, improve operational efficiency and create a consistent visitor experience from inspiration to arrival. This structured approach supports better decision-making on technology investment, resource planning and long-term satisfaction.
Drive Travel Conversion with Social Commerce: Social commerce is transforming how younger generations engage with travel brands, turning inspiration into direct bookings. Destinations can tap into the power of user-generated itineraries and personal stories, enabling travellers to create and share bookable experiences. Technology, combined with authentic and trusted content, enhances engagement and drives higher conversion rates.
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As travellers increasingly seek meaningful connections with the places they visit, attention is turning to the hidden data layer that supports the experience economy. How can destinations strengthen the relationship between digital infrastructure, visitor journeys and product development? Technology in tourism continues to advance at pace. However, its value increases more when systems are connected with data, digital tools and local experiences in a way that helps visitors fully engage with a destination.
Our recent live discussion with James Berzins, Managing Director at TXGB, raised an important point about how enabling visitors to access all parts of a destination can encourage deeper exploration and more meaningful engagement. This shift requires a renewed focus on product and experience design at the destination level. Developing a strong technological ecosystem, underpinned by storytelling and data-driven design, ensures that tourism experiences are immersive and engaging.
Connecting the Tourism Ecosystem
Tourism operates within a vast and fragmented ecosystem. On one end of the spectrum are the billions of people seeking to travel and explore. At the other end are the experiences, accommodation providers and countless other tourism products, encompassing over a thousand distinct categories within the experience economy. Between these two ends lies a complex value chain made up of intermediaries and booking platforms, each using different technologies to bridge the gap between supply and demand.
This intricate network presents a core challenge of aligning data and systems in a way that allows for seamless connectivity across the entire booking journey. Visitors use a variety of channels to plan and book their trips, but the underlying infrastructure often struggles to keep pace. In many cases, fragmentation in the value chain inhibits growth, restricts access and prevents destinations from fully meeting the needs of today’s travellers.
TXGB recognises this gap and is focused on building an infrastructure that strengthens collaboration across the tourism ecosystem. By enabling destinations to connect demand with supply more effectively, this approach creates new opportunities. It also makes it easier for campaigns to convert inspiration into action, helping travellers discover, plan and book more easily.
AI is rapidly becoming an essential tool for tourism. It holds enormous potential to enhance experiences, streamline operations and unlock entirely new ways of engaging visitors. At the product and experience level, AI is already demonstrating its value. Operators, whether running a local tour, a small hotel or a major attraction, are using AI to improve internal workflows and create more engaging visitor journeys.
In our live discussion, James shared an example from the Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, where AI was used to give the exhibition a voice. By using AI to enable the animal displays to speak and respond to people, the museum has made the experience more interactive and immersive. This approach adds a new dimension to storytelling and makes it easier for attractions to evolve and stay relevant.
Data plays a fundamental role in the success of AI. Without data, AI lacks context and effectiveness. When trained on destination-specific data, the potential to create intelligent and responsive tools increases dramatically. TXGB’s focus on enabling better data flows across the ecosystem supports this shift. By structuring and connecting data more effectively, it opens the door for AI solutions that respond to real visitor needs and reflect the true character of a place.
DMOs play a pivotal role in how AI is data-trained. With deep local knowledge and an understanding of the types of questions visitors ask, DMOs are well positioned to use AI strategically. From conversational tools to intelligent trip planning, AI can help DMOs deliver more personalised experiences, which are rooted in the authentic stories and insights that only local voices can provide.
In today’s tourism landscape, a great experience is shaped by the seamless integration of every touchpoint, extending far beyond what the visitor sees. While user journeys and omni-channel strategies are essential in shaping interactions, service blueprinting takes things a step further. It focuses on the mechanics of delivery, helping to ensure that a good idea translates into a well-executed reality.
Service blueprints provide a structured view of the processes, people and technologies involved in delivering an experience. They offer a way to visualise how services are layered and connected and where potential gaps exist. By mapping these elements, destinations and operators gain clarity on what needs to happen behind the scenes to ensure consistency and quality across all channels.
This approach supports a deeper focus on operational design, highlighting areas where value is created and identifying weak points. With a clear blueprint in place, it becomes easier to track what success looks like, not only in terms of campaign results, but in how the entire service is provided — from inspiration to booking and arrival. Service blueprint enables better decision-making around technology investment, resource planning and long-term visitor satisfaction.
Social Commerce and the Future of Travel Conversion
Social commerce is rapidly reshaping the way younger generations engage with products and brands. Platforms like TikTok Shop are turning inspiration into bookings, while influencers continue to shape consumer behaviour through trusted recommendations. Within the travel sector, this space remains largely untapped for direct conversion. There is an opportunity to rethink the top of the funnel, shifting from passive inspiration to active decision-making through social-first strategies.
In this evolving consumer-to-consumer landscape, every trip becomes a story that has the potential to inspire another journey. There’s growing interest in enabling travellers to package their own itineraries, which others could then book. While there are regulatory considerations, patterns are beginning to emerge that could support this kind of user-generated itinerary sharing. Destinations are beginning to explore how to build systems around this, allowing personal stories to become bookable experiences.
Technology plays a key role in enabling this shift. It can streamline the process of creating, sharing and booking travel plans. The power of personal recommendations remains central. When content is authentic, personalised and delivered by trusted voices, it drives stronger engagement and significantly improves conversion. Influencer trust, combined with platforms that guide travellers with clarity and authority, creates a powerful feedback loop that turns inspiration into travel decisions.
As technology and visitor expectations continue to evolve, destinations have an opportunity to strengthen the links between digital infrastructure, product development and visitor journeys. A connected approach through which data, technology and storytelling work together helps destinations create more accessible, personalised and engaging experiences. By focusing on collaboration across the ecosystem, improving data flows and embracing tools like AI and social commerce, destinations can better meet visitor needs:
Strengthen Tourism Connections: Tourism operates within a fragmented landscape, with a complex value chain linking travellers to a vast array of experiences and services. To meet the needs of today’s travellers, it is essential to align systems and data for seamless connectivity across the booking journey. By building infrastructure that bridges gaps between supply and demand, destinations can unlock new opportunities, enhance collaboration and turn inspiration into action.
Empower Experience Design with AI: AI is rapidly emerging as a strategic tool in tourism, improving ways of engaging visitors and streamlining operations. By combining AI with destination-specific data, DMOs can create more immersive experiences. Supporting better data flows across the ecosystem unlocks AI’s full potential, enabling personalised storytelling and more meaningful visitor journeys rooted in authentic local insights.
Blueprinting for Seamless Visitor Journeys: Service blueprinting goes beyond user journeys, focusing on the processes, people and technologies that ensure seamless service delivery. By mapping out all the elements of an experience, destinations can identify gaps, improve operational efficiency and create a consistent visitor experience from inspiration to arrival. This structured approach supports better decision-making on technology investment, resource planning and long-term satisfaction.
Drive Travel Conversion with Social Commerce: Social commerce is transforming how younger generations engage with travel brands, turning inspiration into direct bookings. Destinations can tap into the power of user-generated itineraries and personal stories, enabling travellers to create and share bookable experiences. Technology, combined with authentic and trusted content, enhances engagement and drives higher conversion rates.
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