XDW 2026 · Brussels · 2–4 June

The Programme

Four topics across two days, followed by a focused Implementation Lab. Every session follows the same five-block rhythm so you always know what is next.

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01
Day one · Internal Transformation

AI Inside your Organisation

2 June 2026 Tuesday
Morning · 09:00–14:00

AI Readiness, Workflow & Knowledge Systems

Most organisations are experimenting with AI, but few have truly embedded it into workflows. This session moves past the tactical phase and examines what AI readiness actually looks like across tools, skills, workflows and structure.

At a glance
09:40
Keynote
10:00
Talks & Panels
10:55
Coffee
11:15
Breakouts
12:00
De-Brief
09:00
30 minutes
Break
Breakfast and Networking
No items found.
09:30
10 minutes
Welcome
Welcome to XDW 2026
Nick Hall
Founder & CEO
Digital Tourism Think Tank
09:40
15 minutes
Keynote
How Fast Should We Move with AI
Two years into widespread AI adoption, most destinations are still in the tactical phase: experimenting with individual tools, running small pilots and finding workflow shortcuts. This opening keynote sets out what AI-readiness actually looks like when tools, skills, workflows and structure are treated as one connected idea, and why the tactical phase has a ceiling that most organisations are closer to than they realise.
Nick Hall
Founder & CEO
Digital Tourism Think Tank
10:00
25 minutes
Talks & Panels
Supporting Industry AI Transformation: Creating the Change Tourism Austria Platform
As destinations look to scale AI adoption, national platforms have a critical role to play in translating capability into shared momentum. Teresa Karan from Austria Tourism outlines how the DMO is championing AI transformation through the Change Tourism Austria platform, a community-first initiative designed to help Austrian tourism businesses innovate, collaborate and integrate AI into everyday workflows. This fireside chat will examine how routinely sharing AI trends and tips provides the necessary knowledge to enable SMEs to realise the benefits of AI, how curated use cases and start-up spotlights create tangible reference points for experimentation and how hackathons are being used to accelerate innovation.
Teresa Karan
Head of Digital, Innovation & AI
Austria Tourism
10:30
25 minutes
Talks & Panels
Integrating AI Into Workflows
The sticking points for AI adoption tend to be internal. This session brings together Tomas Andersson from Stockholm Business Region and Panos Kokkalis from Marketing Greece to explore the process of building leadership confidence, creating the conditions for strategic thinking and equipping teams with the knowledge to move theory into practice. They'll share the reality of internal AI transformation, the legal approval processes for AI tooling and the approaches that have helped shift organisational culture. Discover the importance of operational feedback loops to shape ongoing development, offering a grounded perspective on what it takes to build AI capability.
Tomas Andersson
Manager Corporate Communication and Digital Development
Stockholm Business Region
Panos Kokkalis
Digital Product Manager
Marketing Greece
10:55
20 minutes
Coffee and Networking
No items found.
11:15
45 minutes
Breakouts
Pick your Zone
No items found.
Strategy Room
Becoming AI-Ready
Most organisations are waiting for clarity before committing. This session works in the opposite direction: identifying the one or two moves that unlock everything else, the foundations that need to be in place before anything can scale, and how to build internal momentum without a perfect strategy. The conversation centres on getting early wins that create confidence and bringing employees along with you while the picture is still forming.
The Lab
Building a Working Knowledge Base
A live working session where participants learn what project knowledge is, what you can put into it and what it enables. The session demonstrates the logic of MCP connections through a clear illustration. By the end, participants leave with a functional knowledge structure they can replicate immediately.
Debating Room
AI's Impact on Teams & Content
Is the real barrier to AI in destinations people, not technology? Is AI just producing more content, but of low quality? These questions will be argued from both sides through a devil's advocate style questioning to drive deeper thinking. The format pushes participants to consider whether a training day actually changes anything, if and how AI slop is harming destinations and what it says about your brand if your AI content is indistinguishable from everyone else's.
Advisory Clinic
Submitted Cases on AI-Readiness
A focused advisory session built around cases submitted in advance by participants. Facilitators identify common patterns across the submissions, typical failure points and what good looks like in practice. The format is structured and designed to give participants concrete next steps for their specific situation.
12:00
30 minutes
De-Brief
Facilitators Report Back
A facilitator from each zone shares the outcomes, tensions and unresolved questions surfaced in their session. The de-brief brings the room back together before lunch with a shared sense of where the conversation has reached.
12:30
1.5 hours
Lunch
Afternoon · 14:00–16:45

AI Governance & Strategy

Governance is the most misunderstood word in AI — moving from compliance fear to strategic clarity. The same five-block rhythm as the morning, applied to a different challenge.

At a glance
14:00
Keynote
14:20
Talks & Panels
15:05
Coffee
15:30
Breakouts
16:15
De-Brief
14:00
15 minutes
Keynote
Governance is the Most Misunderstood Word in AI
Governance has been framed as compliance, oversight, friction. A destination without a clear AI governance position is one operating without a strategic anchor. This keynote sets out what governance actually contains in practice — policy, accountability, transparency, data standards and procurement — and why August 2026's EU AI Act enforcement makes this an urgent strategic issue, not just a legal one. The DTTT AI Transparency Framework frames the discussion as a starting point to decide what AI means for your organisation, which decisions stay human and how you build a disclosure culture.
Nick Hall
Founder & CEO
Digital Tourism Think Tank
14:20
20 minutes
Talks & Panels
Building an AI Governance Strategy
The process of establishing AI governance for a destination is a journey that aligns technological integration with regional policy, stakeholder trust and sustainable tourism goals. Maas van Drie and Sherry Bidgood, Aruba Tourism Authority, will sit down with Nick Hall for a fireside chat to walk through the work they did together to design Aruba's AI strategy. The conversation will cover the audit that opened the process, the readiness questions it surfaced and the role that governance played in shaping the strategy. We will focus on what this looks like once it is in place, how it gives teams the confidence to use AI well and the boundaries for AI use that keep the destination's outputs ethical, accurate and trusted.
Maas van Drie
Chief Financial Officer
Aruba Tourism Authority
Sherry Bidgood
Global Digital Manager
Aruba Tourism Authority
14:45
20 minutes
Talks & Panels
Exploring Governance Strategies in Practice
AI adoption inside large public organisations rarely follows a straight path. This session features Alfred Wagenius from Visit Skåne who will provide an honest account of what governance and integration look like in practice, from the first steps taken to embed AI into workflows, to the creation of disclosure policies. Alfred will explore the tensions that emerge when mandated tools and preferred tools don't align, how manual workflows can protect data security within closed IT environments and what it takes to move beyond early experimentation. Discover how ongoing governance shapes the next phase of AI efficiency and what that journey really looks like from the inside.
Alfred Wagenius
PR Manager
Visit Skåne AB
15:05
25 minutes
Break
Coffee and Networking
No items found.
15:30
45 minutes
Breakouts
Pick your Zone
No items found.
Strategy Room
Building Your Governance Framework
A working session on how destinations move from individuals using AI tools to an organisation with clear rules and standards. Participants work through the accountability question — who owns AI-generated content, who approves it, how this changes team structure — and map where their own organisation sits between phase one (using AI for efficiency) and phase two (using AI to reinvent what the organisation actually does). Output is a clear sense of the single biggest thing stopping the move from one to the other.
The Lab
Stress-Testing Your AI Policy
A practical session structured around the DTTT AI Transparency Framework. Participants use the Framework on a real piece of work to generate a disclosure card, then stress-test a draft governance document through structured ethical review using the DTTT Ethics Tool. The session closes by drafting a one-page AI policy covering approved tools, accountability for outputs, data handling and disclosure. Participants leave with a working draft they can take back and implement.
Debating Room
Innovation or Protection
Does governance slow AI adoption or make it sustainable? Do AI Governance Committees need ‘AI sceptics’ as a check against the ‘AI champions’? Arguments from both sides, with a devil's advocate pushing harder questions — does your audience actually read disclosure labels, should AI guidelines be shared openly with destination partners and communities or does transparency about reliance on AI create more problems than it solves?
Advisory Clinic
Submitted Cases on Governance
A focused advisory session built around governance documents, AI policies and framework drafts submitted in advance by participants. Facilitators identify the most urgent gap between each organisation's current AI use and a responsible, disclosed approach, and help participants understand which of the four DTTT models and 3 organisational instruments matter most for their context.
16:15
30 minutes
De-Brief
Facilitators Report Back
A facilitator from each zone shares the outcomes, tensions and unresolved questions surfaced in their session. The de-brief brings the room back together at the end of Day 1 with a shared sense of where the conversation has reached.
02
Day two · Competitive Positioning

How your Organisation Faces Outward

3 June 2026 Wednesday
Morning · 09:00–14:00

AI Discoverability & Presence

Shifts in consumer and search behaviour, AI overviews, and how content is surfaced.

At a glance
09:40
Keynote
10:00
Talks & Panels
10:45
Coffee
11:15
Breakouts
12:00
De-Brief
09:00
30 minutes
Break
Day 2 Breakfast and Networking
No items found.
09:30
10 minutes
Welcome
Welcome to Day 2
Nick Hall
Founder & CEO
Digital Tourism Think Tank
09:40
15 minutes
Keynote
Evaluating the AI Visibility Question
Search behaviour is changing fundamentally. AI Overviews and conversational interfaces are reshaping how people find, evaluate and choose destinations. This keynote opens with a clear-headed demystification of the terminology (GEO, AEO, AI Overviews, schema mark-up) and walks through the shifts in consumer and search behaviour driving them. The session sets out the strategic principles that matter — content depth, speed, social authority — and why the destinations preparing now will define the visibility landscape for the next decade.
Nick Hall
Founder & CEO
Digital Tourism Think Tank
10:00
20 minutes
Talks & Panels
Destination Marketing Without The Map: AI and the Future of Destination Visibility
Destination marketing is being redefined as travellers move away from traditional search and toward direct and AI-driven answers. Toby Morris of Tiki will open the session with a scene-setter on the shift from traditional search to AI and GEO, framing what destinations are now navigating without the familiar markers. The conversation will move into the factors shaping whether a destination stays visible in this new channel, exploring the tactics that have started to make a difference. The session will close on what this shift asks of destinations now and the choices that will determine who stays on the map.
Toby Morris
VP, International Destination Strategy
Tiki
10:25
20 minutes
Talks & Panels
The Impact of AI on Destination Discoverability
As the travel planning journey fragments across social search and generative AI, destinations are pivoting their content production to prioritise short-form video for human inspiration and structured data for machine discovery. Johannes Auer, from Oberösterreich Tourismus, will share how their "In Unserer Natur" campaign used AI to build a cast of animal reporters, which were designed to raise awareness of mindfulness and respect for nature, showing what AI-led content can do when it carries an authentic and local voice. He will be joined by Stewart Howe, from Discover Peterborough, who will talk us through the "Dinosaur City" campaign, which connects AI-generated characters of dinosaurs to real exhibitions, trails and museum experiences. The conversation closes on what this shift means for destinations when they move from informational content into experiential, character-led storytelling that gives them an authoritative voice and a distinctive brand presence.
Johannes Auer
Digital Strategy
Oberösterreich Tourismus
Stewart Howe
Co-founder
Discover Peterborough
10:45
30 minutes
Break
Coffee and Networking
No items found.
11:15
45 minutes
Breakouts
Pick your Zone
No items found.
Strategy Room
Going Further on GEO and AEO
A strategic working session on how to take GEO and AEO further. The conversation covers cross-platform and multi-author content approaches, the choice between depth and volume, and the harder strategic question of when to set the narrative versus respond to demand. Participants leave with a clearer view of where their destination sits between accessible and commanding brand authority and what to do next.
The Lab
Putting GEO and AEO Tools to Work
A hands-on session in two halves. The first puts leading GEO and AEO tools to a specific destination challenge, with participants evaluating and sharing findings. The second uses Claude in Chrome or ChatGPT in agentic mode to log into analytics, benchmark competitors, run technical checks and come back with detailed strategic recommendations.
Debating Room
Being Tactical with AI Visibility
Should destinations align AI visibility with strategy or with demand? Strategy means setting bold objectives and increasing awareness in new markets. Demand means showing up when visitors are searching. Arguments from both sides, with a devil's advocate pushing through a series of important questions. Does writing 'hidden gems' content help or harm the destination? Does GEO make overtourism worse?
Advisory Clinic
Submitted Cases on AI Presence
A focused advisory session built around discoverability cases submitted in advance by participants. Facilitators identify common patterns across the submissions, where destinations are getting tripped up, and what good looks like in practice.
12:00
30 minutes
Breakouts
Facilitators Report Back
A facilitator from each zone shares the outcomes, tensions and unresolved questions surfaced in their session. The de-brief brings the room back together before lunch with a shared sense of where the conversation has reached.
12:30
1.5 hours
Lunch
Afternoon · 14:00–16:45

AI Interfaces & User Experience

How AI is changing the way people interact with destinations. From conversational interfaces to predictive personalisation.

At a glance
14:00
Keynote
14:20
Talks & Panels
15:05
Coffee
15:30
Breakouts
16:15
De-Brief
14:00
15 minutes
Keynote
Designing Functional AI Interfaces
AI is increasingly the functional layer between inspiration and booking. This keynote walks through how AI interfaces are evolving across websites, social, apps and in-destination experiences, the global variation in AI acceptance shaping where this matters most and the harder strategic choices destinations face: native integration versus plug-and-play, text vs voice and the essential brand safety question.
Nick Hall
Founder & CEO
Digital Tourism Think Tank
Jess Humphrys
Marketing and Communications Executive
Digital Tourism Think Tank
14:20
25 minutes
Talks & Panels
Building AI-Mediated Destination Experiences
The most useful AI experiences for visitors are built on more than generic models. This session brings together Aleksandra Jerebic Topolovec from the Slovenian Tourist Board to explore the DMO's role in connecting deep destination knowledge with partner content, industry data and real-time inputs, creating something more strategic than standard LLM outputs. She'll share the practical work behind Alma, Slovenia's AI travel guide, including the technical and editorial optimisations made to the site, how these feed the assistant with trusted local context and the wider benefits seen in AI discoverability. Discover how the integration layer between destination, industry and visitor is being designed in practice through an honest discussion on the DMO's role in an AI-mediated visitor journey.
Aleksandra Jerebic Topolovec
Web Manager
Slovenian Tourist Board
14:50
15 minutes
Talks & Panels
Closing the Visibility Gap
The destinations being cited by AI systems are rarely the ones with the best stories. They are the ones whose content can be machine read. This session brings together Mark Merrywest, Founder of Selfe, to address the visibility gap facing DMOs and the industry, focusing on how missing schema and poor machine readability shape where destinations are positioned and discovered. He'll share the technical foundations that determine whether a destination shows up in AI interfaces, the common gaps slowing DMOs down and the practical fixes that move the needle. Discover how technical decisions connect to the wider question of presence across AI interfaces and what it takes to close the visibility gap.
Mark Merrywest
Founder
Selfe
15:05
25 minutes
Break
Coffee and Networking
No items found.
15:30
45 minutes
Breakouts
Pick your Zone
No items found.
Strategy Room
Investing in AI Interfaces with Longevity
A strategic working session on how destinations should be investing in AI interfaces given how quickly the technology evolves and becomes outdated. The conversation works through the harder questions: what KPIs actually matter for AI interfaces, how to measure ROI when an AI platform doesn't connect directly to visits, when to pull the plug, and how to balance AI with traditional interfaces when AI deters certain audiences. Participants leave with a framework for evaluating their own digital experience investment against AI-aware design principles.
The Lab
Vibe Design or Vibe Code
A hands-on session comparing two approaches to building AI experiences: vibe design on Stitch versus vibe coding on Claude. Participants work through both methods on a real destination challenge, then debate the skills implications. Does AI replace the need for designers and UX managers, or does it make those skills more important than ever? The conversation closes on the strategic question of whether treating AI as a digital assistant will change the traditional balance between in-house development and working with external agencies.
Debating Room
Deciding What to Build
Should destinations build AI platforms and interfaces themselves, or focus on providing high-quality data for others to build on? The conversation moves through real examples and surfaces the harder strategic questions. What is the desired set of solutions? How to avoid hyper-fragmentation if every destination builds the same thing separately?
Advisory Clinic
Submitted Cases on AI Interfaces
A focused advisory session built around interface and experience cases submitted in advance by participants. Facilitators identify common patterns across the submissions, where destinations are over-engineering, under-investing, or missing the point, and what good looks like in practice.
16:15
30 minutes
De-Brief
Facilitators Report Back
A facilitator from each zone shares the outcomes, tensions and unresolved questions surfaced in their session. The de-brief closes Day 2 with a shared sense of where the conversation has reached.
03
Day three · Policy & Frameworks

A Focused, Intimate Working Day

4 June 2026 Thursday

A focused Roundtable Day examining the policy implications shaping AI use across destinations. The day opens with a dedicated policy session and continues with a Workstream on the DTTT AI Transparency Framework.

Capped at 40 participants
Morning | 09:30 - 13:30

DMO Policy Implications of AI

An opening session bringing the policy questions raised across Days 1 and 2 into focus. What regulations are already shaping AI use? What is on the horizon? How should destinations be preparing?

View workstream →
Explore the workstreams
Afternoon | 14:00 - 16:45

AI Transparency Framework Workstream

A working session and committee meeting on the DTTT AI Transparency Framework. Strategic conversations on what can be added, improved and operationalised.

View workstream →
Explore the workstreams