Travel Trends with Dan Christian
#1 B2B Travel Podcast. If you are looking to stay ahead in the travel industry, this new podcast hits all the highlights! The Travel Trends Podcast is where industry leaders converge to share & shape the future. Whether you're an emerging entrepreneur, a seasoned industry executive, or a dedicated travel professional, you’ll be able to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Uncover valuable insights, innovative strategies, and meaningful connections that will elevate your travel business or career to new heights.
Travel Trends with Dan Christian
Viator: Powering 400,000+ Experiences Around the Globe
Discover how Viator became the world’s go-to platform for in-destination experiences. Viator is transforming how travelers discover and book more than 400,000 unique activities worldwide. In this episode, Laurel Greatrix, Viator’s VP of Marketing, takes us behind the scenes of this powerhouse and its rapid rise.
Laurel reveals how Viator’s acquisition by TripAdvisor turned into one of the industry’s most successful partnerships, blending TripAdvisor’s massive audience with Viator’s unmatched supply network and fueling a staggering 200% growth in the first year of post-pandemic recovery.
We also dive into eye-opening insights, like why 80% of experience bookings still happen offline, the decade-long surge of food tours, the lasting appeal of outdoor adventures, and how AI is reshaping the traveler journey. Laurel offers a forward-looking view on India as the next major growth market and the rising demand for authenticity — balancing mainstream attractions with the niche, personalized moments that make trips unforgettable.
Whether you’re a travel professional, an experience provider, or simply passionate about discovering the world in meaningful ways, this conversation delivers a rare inside look at how technology is rewriting the future of travel experiences. For more information on Viator, please visit viator.com.
👉 Listen to Viator: Powering 400,000+ Experiences Around the Globe Now
🔥 Special Thanks to our Season 6 Title Sponsors for their Support: Holafly, Propellic, PayCompass, Kaptio, Civitatis and WeRoad
The #1 B2B Travel Podcast Globally. Over 100 Episodes. Listeners in 125 countries. New Episodes Every Weds.
https://www.traveltrendspodcast.com/
When you're leading a large team and you're leading a large revenue stream, you can't only be looking inward. You need to understand the environment that you exist in. It's really important to be looking. My job as a VP is to be looking two years down the road, not two weeks down the road. So I wake up every morning and I listen to five or six podcasts and I make sure that I'm getting a really broad view of international and American news. So probably the most important thing I listen to is the FT, which makes sure that I am getting outside of American news and really understanding what's happening in the world.
Speaker 2:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Travel Trends Season 6. This is your host, dan Christian. Everyone, and welcome back to Travel Trends Season 6. This is your host, dan Christian, and today we're going to continue our deep dive into In-Destination Experiences, part 2, which is kindly sponsored by our friends over at Pernod Ricard, who share our passion for authentic experiences and shaping the future of immersive travel. You can find out more information about all their brand homes at pernodricardcom.
Speaker 2:Now, on's episode. We are moving from one of the most revolutionary in-destination experience companies in Meow Wolf that you heard from last week to the largest global marketplace for in-destination experiences, with the VP of marketing for Viator, laurel Greatrix. Now, next week, we're going to have the founder of GeoTourist, which is an app that augments the in-destination experience, to round out this series, and we also have several tours and activities providers lined up for our AI Summit October 28th and 29th. So make sure that you register to join us. You can find out more information at TravelTrendsPodcastcom, and that's where you can also find a special promo code to join us and the team from Viator and TripAdvisor at Focusrite in San Diego in November. The promo code will give you $250 off your ticket and it guarantees you a feature in our event spotlight. Now let's welcome another captain of industry to Travel Trends, laurel Greatrix, the VP of Marketing from Viator. Welcome, laurel, it's so great to have you on the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I really wanted to have you as part of this opening series of Season 6, as part of our Captains of Industry. You and I have met a number of times and gotten to know each other. I've been so impressed with what you've accomplished in your career and, obviously, the success trajectory of Viator, and I think most of our listeners certainly are familiar with Viator. So today's conversation is really going to be about your career and Viator, because I see the two very intertwined and you always stood out to me as someone that, despite various changes in the organization, just continue to deliver, and I think our audience has seen that from the results of Viator. So in many ways, I see you as the unsung hero of Viator and I think that you've got so much to offer our listeners and people in the industry, also as a strong female executive and the first female executive.
Speaker 2:That's a part of season six, and when we talked about the captains of industry theme as a team, that was something that was so important for us is that we didn't want captains of industry to be like look like male pilots, like that's what people picture of captains of industry. That's not my view of the industry and obviously I'm really keen to have this conversation with you. So let's, let's give all of our listeners a bit of background. Tell everyone I know you're in London today and kindly joining us for this recording, but you're based in Boston. But you're actually also Canadian. You're an undercover Canadian living in the US. So tell us a little bit about your background, how you got into travel and how you ended up in Boston.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, thank you very much for that introduction. I think you're probably, maybe other than my dad, the first, last and only person to describe me as a captain of industry, but I will take it. Thank you very much for such a warm intro. Yes, so, as you said, I am Canadian and I now live in the US. But I got into travel very, very intentionally.
Speaker 1:As a kid I didn't travel much. You grew up in Ontario, so you'll know how it goes, but I spent most of my childhood vacations being piled into a minivan and driving from Average Beach to Average Beach. So by the time I was graduating university, I was just like bursting with desire for adventure. So I ended up leaving the country, canada, for Taiwan two days after my last final exam and I never really came back. I mean, I came back for periods of a couple of months, but I've really lived abroad since I was about 22 or 23. So, as I said, I went to Taiwan for a couple of years, I did some backpacking and over that time I worked out that I really, really wanted to work and travel. So I got what was a truly, truly dreadfully paid job working at a PR agency in London on hotels and DMOs and airlines and travel tech, and I was able to afford lunch maybe twice a week then, but I loved it and I never really looked back.
Speaker 1:So I was in the agency world for a couple of years and then I ended up in TripAdvisor in the 2010s and that was really where my career changed quite a bit. I was never really on the core business. I got sort of immediately put into the growth categories. So I was in vacation rentals at the time that Airbnb was making a name for itself or was like really kind of completely reinventing the category, and then I got into Viator.
Speaker 1:The moment that experiences really exploded, and so our teams back then were pretty small. It meant all hands on deck, for everything that we were doing took way outside of my roots in comms and marketing and it really was a combination of yes, hard work, but there was a lot of right place, right time, amazing people, amazing product, and I look back on it now. I'm still in it and this is a professional experience I never would have imagined back when I was writing listicles in a PR agency that I would just be so deeply ashamed to review again today. But it's yeah, it's been just an unbelievable trip at TripAdvisor and Viator. I've worked with unbelievably intelligent people on really, really cool problems and I am just really grateful I've gotten to do what I've gotten to do and, as I said, never would have expected that this is how it would have all panned out, but it did and I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, that's fantastic and I certainly one of the things we hear as Canadians is like the world needs more Canada and I think you're a great example of that, because you left and never came back, and I think the travel industry is certainly better for it. And, yes, the listicle era that you lived in London, like this, is why you know I find it really interesting your career trajectory because you have worked your way up and I think that is something that especially our younger listeners that instantly look at someone like yourself and are like I want that job. That looks incredible. It's like well, actually there's about 15 years of really hard yards that you have to get to that position that give you the credibility, the experience and everything else to be able to drive a team of like 80 people that you're now running and I do feel like it's you're like and you're like sometimes not allowed to say that that a lot of it really does come down to hard work, but a lot of it really did just come down to extremely long working days and working weeks.
Speaker 1:And, you know, not everyone needs to be putting in 60, 70 hour weeks, but the thing I found that really worked for me was that I was always doing things I really loved, and so, yes, the working weeks were long, the hours were long, the days were long, the travel was extensive, but you know not to sound too cheesy I always really, really enjoyed it and that made the hard work feel a little bit less like hard work. But yeah, it's a kind of an unpopular take, but putting in the hours really was pretty, pretty important to moving on up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more and that's why I wanted to emphasize that, because I was at Lonely Planet when you were at TripAdvisor and we saw the world at that time as sort of those were the two arch rivals. You had editorial content against user-generated content and there was sort of the battle between the CEOs at the time. We kind of know how that played out, with Lonely Planet being acquired TripAdvisor and then TripAdvisor ultimately buying Viator. And this was another part that I think is really interesting about your story and background is that you were at TripAdvisor for nearly 10 years before you then moved over to Viator.
Speaker 2:So tell us a little bit, I guess, for our listeners if anyone's not familiar with TripAdvisor and Viator, just give everyone a little bit of like an overview of those two organizations and how that transition came to be for you. Because I'll just highlight one thing is that from the TripAdvisor Viator acquisition and it really became the jewel in the crown and it's been driving a lot of the success, growth and profitability. And now that's been kind of revealed and now everyone knows that. And there was you four, four years ago transitioning into that role and then seeing the comeback from the pandemic. But yeah, give everyone a little bit of an overview, if you would mind, of those two organizations and then what, what your role is yeah, so um, trip advisor and viator I mean, trip advisor has been around since 2020 or, sorry, since 2000.
Speaker 1:Viator since I think it was 1995, but I think it was 2012 or 2013, might have actually been 2014, when we acquired Viator and the thinking at that time was that TripAdvisor had this unbelievable traffic asset half a billion people a year using TripAdvisor to plan their trips and we had all of these things to do pages but there was no or I shouldn't say there was no there was very little commercial oomph or commercial power to them. So we looked at Viator and at the time experience was growing. It wasn't growing like it is now, but Viator had this amazing supply asset. I say that now. I think it had 10,000 or 20,000 products when we acquired it and now it's 400,000. So that tells you where this has gone. But back then we looked at this and thought that's amazing. Let's acquire Viator. We will take this growth asset, or rather this traffic asset and the supply asset, we will smash them together and magic will be made. And that is kind of not exactly what happened right away. So we acquired Viator, we did sort of quite immediately integrate it, but the magic didn't happen as quickly as we thought, and sort of what we realized is that there was a lot of power in the Viator brand name and in the Viator traffic asset and so, as much as we thought supply was the magic of Viator, it was actually the whole product. So in those initial years, what we did was we really focused on selling experiences through the TripAdvisor point of sale, and this was around the time that Airbnb entered. The category Get your Guide was growing really quickly. Clute came to be and what we started to learn was that these single vertical OTAs really did speak very, very well to travelers. So around this time we thought, okay, certainly TripAdvisor has this amazing traffic asset, but probably there is an unsung hero in the Viator traffic asset as well. So we started reinvesting into the Viator brand, building our supply and using both points of sale, both TripAdvisor and Viator, as well as our partnerships, to really grow the business, and I think that was the point that things really really took off. It was 2020 or 2021.
Speaker 1:Post-pandemic, we came out, we had these two assets and we were just able to absorb so much of the post-pandemic bounce. I think we grew something like 200% the first year of the pandemic. It was like 200, then 150, then 50. And it was just year after year after year. As a result of this, god, I really hesitate to use the word synergy because it sounds so US corporate, but that's kind of what it was.
Speaker 1:It was just the power of Viator, this single vertical experiences of OTA combined with TripAdvisor and this, you know, massive traffic asset, this exclusive partnership, that gave us and our operators access to hundreds of millions of travelers that the competition would, you know, love to have access to.
Speaker 1:And it was a combination of these things, combined with the partnerships, that really and amazing execution by the teams, but that really that really saw us come out of the pandemic with, with, with so much power.
Speaker 1:So that's, that's been the story over the last few years, and then, I think, as time goes on, we see more and more the advantage and the, the, the power and the partnership of TripAdvisor and Viator. I think it's got to be one of travel's most successful partnerships. And the thing we're looking at next is how we take that even further, how we can combine our marketing functions and our product functions to really make sure these two products are learning from each other as much as they can. And then the data part's really interesting, where we just have so much access to what travelers are doing because of what they're doing on TripAdvisor and really leveraging that to serve them as best, as best we can and and you know make the most of that competitive advantage for sure, and I definitely want to get into that because, as you mentioned, with the competitive landscape has increased with companies like Get your Guide and Kluk, as you called out, and Get your Guide for our listeners.
Speaker 2:I just heard from TauTau last week and now they're having a chance to hear from you and most of our listeners would have also heard from a friend of yours, rod Cuthbert, the founder of Viator.
Speaker 2:And one of the things I wanted just to call out too is that when I had spoken to Steve Coffer after they acquired Viator, I was speaking to him at the SCIF conference in New York and one of the comments he made is that we are still digesting the acquisition of Viator at the time because there had been some challenges initially.
Speaker 2:Just after the acquisition happened, there was a bit of a data breach and there were some issues and all of a sudden, like things went a little bit quiet and then Viator has been this building, building, building, not producing some of the earnings reports and all of a sudden, once they do, everyone's kind of oh my god, this is the best kept secret, secret within Trip trip advisor, to the point where there's been people calling to spin off viator and go public on its own and like so unlock this value. So it's, and and the reason I wanted to highlight that to all of our listeners as well is because the opening conversation of season six with was with chris hemeter uh, one of the biggest VCs in the industry, of course and he highlighted in our conversation that there's never been a better time to be investing in travel, and so what I find really fascinating about Viator being acquired for 200 million now you guys are doing over a billion in sales is that, and what the next five years?
Speaker 1:look like Quite a bit more than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's amazing the growth and the potential. But I want to keep on your experience, because one of the things I discovered getting to know you over the last year was that we both went to the same university. We were like I actually went to Western, so you finished Western and left. We never met while you were there. But I think it's really cool that you have that background and experience.
Speaker 2:So, as a Canadian that has that background and experience, one of the things I've often heard from other fellow Canadians that go on to international success is that they actually have a global view, and so the fact that you actually wanted to go to Asia and then to London, like there's a strong desire for international travel and to really know the world and to have a global perspective I'm very curious to know is that part of your background, upbringing? Is it just a natural instinct for you? But what? Why did you gravitate to? You know being in such a global role? Because clearly you thrive on it. So what do you think is behind some of your success besides hard work?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I honestly I don't really know where the travel bug came from. I certainly didn't grow up with it. I mean, the first flight I got on, I think I was maybe 12 or 13. And it was Thunder Bay, ontario. So it's not like I was. I was jet setting doing all these amazing things. I was, I don't know, maybe 16 or 17 when I first left the country and maybe it was the lack of that that got me so interested in it.
Speaker 1:But from from the moment I left, I it's not that I love Canada and I'd be honored and delighted to live there again, but I just sort of knew that I would probably spend my life going from place to place. So it's really hard to say what got me there. But once I was there I knew I really really wanted to do it. So when I was living in Taiwan, I knew I was going back to Toronto to do my postgraduate. I didn living in Taiwan. I knew I was going back to Toronto to do my postgraduate. I didn't even consider looking for an internship in Toronto. I found one in London and then, once I was in London, there was a lot going on in the Singapore office, so I asked for the move to Singapore and I got that, and then the business is moving back to Boston.
Speaker 1:At that time it was vacation rentals and that seemed like another really interesting opportunity. So, more than anything, I would say it was almost that I didn't have a plan. I just sort of said yes, and I never really had a destination in mind. I never thought I want to be the VP of marketing, I want to be the VP of comms, I want to be head of strategy. I just thought I want to keep doing interesting things and that was such an easy thing to come by at TripAdvisor in the mid 2010s.
Speaker 1:There was so much growth, we had all these global offices and I just I said yes to kind of everything that came my way. That looked interesting, and I didn't think too much about where it was taking me, as long as I knew it was advancing my thinking and my career and I was getting access to really interesting people. So I would say, probably more than anything, it was just like a strong sense of adventure and at the time I didn't have a child, so it was. It was quite easy, quite a bit easier to do then than it would be now with a very particular six year old until wherever I go, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's interesting you mentioned that say yes to everything, because it was actually one of the themes of our Vanessa, who I worked with in Australia. She's gone on to incredible success living in Dubai and last time I saw her post on the weekend she was flying in a private jet and commenting about her vision board and if anyone wanted to know like but she literally was her approach post-pandemic was say yes to everything. Her approach post pandemic was say yes to everything, and her so. I even think that that mentality, which is very much a growth mindset, is obviously key to success, like finding interesting things that you want to do, you know, working hard at them and showing results, and then you keep getting better at your craft.
Speaker 2:So but but tell us a little bit so your role at Viator, tell us a little bit about your function in the business, because the reason I want to highlight that is because you know I've known some of the CEOs at TripAdvisor, who've all been terrific, and I know some of your quite a few of your colleagues, of course and everyone greatly respects and admires you. And the reason I say that is because you know Papine is now the head of Viator, who's going to be a great new leader for the business as well, but he's, you know, he's coming in from his experience with bookingcom. You're one of the people that has come up in TripAdvisor running Viator, and so we see all this success and we see some of the other executives on stage, but you're the one driving the marketing campaigns and a lot of the initiatives. That keeps the engine really running.
Speaker 1:Oh, I mean as much as I'd love to take credit for everything you just said, I really really cannot. There's a whole group of us probably five or six of us, who've grown up together and have worked together for years, and as much as I am running marketing now, we're all very much in each other's business and it really is like a true partnership with a core group of us who've been together for quite some time. So, thank you, it's a lovely thing to say, but I cannot single-handedly take credit for that. In terms of what the role is, it is, yeah, my team and I lead marketing for Viator, so it's everything from what is the value proposition to how do we say that in words and images. So what do we look like and what do we sound like, to the channels we executed in.
Speaker 1:So all of our distribution Retention is the part where there's crossover between us and R&D, so that's probably the handoff point. We lead CRM and customer value management, but at that point, that's where the partnership really sees us hand the customer off to the team that runs the storefront and then, in addition to that, we have the functions that enable you to run a marketing organization at global scale and produce everything you need for it, so communications, analytics and content. So it's a large, global, incredibly talented team that I feel very lucky to work with and sometimes I actually can't believe anyone trusts me with it, but it's going very well so far. Great bunch of people and, as I said when we started, I just kind of sometimes can't really believe I'm here and I feel so lucky to get to do what we do and to work with the people that I do.
Speaker 2:Well, one thing you obviously highlighted and again like this is you're absolutely right about the team and the people you bring together. That and so rightly, obviously, to acknowledge everyone that you've worked with for many years that have established this strong team that keeps producing these exceptional results. And I think one of the things you know as a marketer, and certainly from my experience, is that if you have a great product and especially a great user experience like the stars have to align as well you can't be successful in marketing, or at least for very long, if the product doesn't stand up. People are having lousy experiences and like it's never, it's not sustainable, it's not going to work. So you're absolutely right that you know the entire organization needs to be. You know you need to be firing on all cylinders for marketing to be as uh, as powerful as it is.
Speaker 2:So tell us a little bit about Viator. One of the things I always like to ask travel companies is like competitive advantages, what are some of the things that are? You know, your USPs, unique selling propositions. That's truly unique about Viator, and the reason I also wanted to ask you that question is because I've often over the years used Viator as a site to compare to with other companies in terms of, you know, 24 hour cancellation or the customer service commitment that you're offering the selection, like the things that you call out as kind of the core USPs for people who are just trying to understand. For example, my father in law recently was trying to book a sumo experience in Japan on his trip.
Speaker 1:That is a wildly popular experience, by the way.
Speaker 2:Well, and in this instance he booked it. And then he was like he was nervous that he was it wasn't. And he was like have you ever heard this company called get your guide? And I was like, yeah, so I'm like you should ask me, like just ask me. There's like, yes, you know about Viator, do you know? Like so it's amazing how many travelers are just not familiar with OTAs and where they should be buying these experiences. So tell us a little bit about what differentiates Viator against a much more fierce competitive set. I know you guys have been around longer, you have many experiences globally, but what are some of the attributes that you, as a marketer for that brand, tend to focus on and how you approach your marketing and messaging?
Speaker 1:tend to kind of focus on and how you approach your marketing and messaging. I think it's really easy to look at OTAs in any category and say they're all a little bit similar and they're not that differentiated. But there actually are some pretty big differences. Probably the biggest one or not probably definitely the biggest one is our catalog. We have 400,000 experiences all over the world. So you know, it's everything from the kind of mass market walking tours, hop on, hop off, to really niche stuff like perfume making in Paris, to high adventure stuff like canyoning and caving. So it's, it really runs the gamut. So we have everything that's the really kind of new niche experiential stuff, all the way through to the stuff that there's no way you would go know. Go to paris and not go in the eiffel, go up the eiffel tower or or take a sun river cruise. So I'd say it's the breadth of inventory is one like by quite a margin we have more inventory than anyone else in the market. So vitor's catalog is really quite compelling, quite unique, quite different, um, and it is probably our biggest competitive advantage.
Speaker 1:The second thing I would say is the TripAdvisor partnership. So from a supply perspective, I mean what I talked about is what I just talked about on catalog is what's great for travelers In terms of what's good for suppliers? It's the partnership with TripAdvisor. We're the exclusive partner to TripAdvisor. We are able to distribute our partners on this absolutely vast and beloved travel website. That really expands the audience that they can access alongside our partnerships program, which is also very broad. So the TripAdvisor partnership for our operators huge competitive advantage, enormous benefit of distributing through Viator. And then, in addition to that, on the TripAdvisor partnership, there is the sort of like 360 degree view of a traveler that we have that others may not. So we, you know, we probably know before others in the market where a traveler is going, what their dates are, how long they're going for, and that allows us, or should allow us, to really personalize and make highly specific recommendations in a truly competitively advantaged way.
Speaker 1:And then the third thing I'd say is just market experience. We've been in the US, We've been leading in the US for such a long time. We have a really, really deep understanding built on a foundation of, you know, 20 years of experience in the US, and that allows us to serve the American consumer very, very well. And of course it's. You know, diversification is a thing. It's not necessarily that difficult to launch in a different market, but it is easy to underestimate the experience and the muscle a company builds after that long leading in a market, and that is something that truly differentiates us.
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Speaker 2:And now back to the show, one of the things I wanted to understand with product. So you are so critical to so many suppliers around the world. So many companies rely on Viator as their main source of business, and so those relationships I know is so important. David King, who's a good friend of mine and a great colleague of yours and friend of yours, I'm sure also, but who's based in Chicago, he's obviously so critical to the supply chain and bringing on new partners and getting them on boarded onto the platform, and so that's so tell us a little bit about.
Speaker 2:As you mentioned, people are always going to want to go to the Eiffel tower, but there is also this strong desire, with concerns, but over tourism, about going to off the beaten path destinations, and literally that was lonely planets, usp for all that time. But the reality and I still laugh at this because you and I, both being marketers, like people, love the idea of off a beaten path destinations but once it's in a Lonely Planet guidebook, it's no longer off the beaten path, it's literally on the path and all of a sudden it's going to get overwhelmed, and that's what often happens in tourism. So how do you, how do you, look at bringing on new destinations, especially as a marketer. When your team is looking at new destinations to expand to around the world, how do you make sure that you have a really not only just comprehensive but really compelling offerings, and especially things that are unique.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really tough question. I think the answer is probably we let the traveler tell us what they want, so we always ensure that we're offering what travelers want, and for us, that is almost always a combination of yes, the really unique products that get all the attention, like the perfume making in paris, but it's also the core stuff, like getting up the eiffel tower and getting on the sun river cruise. So there's two ways really in how we do this, and the biggest one is that a lot of this stuff happens organically at a scale like ours. It it, it comes together organically because we built ourselves that way. We are an open marketplace, and if you are a guide or an operator and you've got a product that meets our quality and listing standards, we will list you, we will put you on Viator, we will put you on Trip Advisor, we will distribute you through our partners and from there we let basic economic principles of supply and demand, or capitalism or however you want to look at it, we let it do its thing. If you are a great product that people want, it will move up, sort, it will get more exposure, it will get more bookings and it will attract competition and you will start to see that category pick up steam.
Speaker 1:I think a really good example of that is food tours. Food tours were growing and everyone loved a food tour, but around the mid 2010s they became such a big thing it was, you know. There was interest in it and nearly all of our top destinations. We went from maybe two or three products in a destination to 10 or 20 almost overnight, and that you know that is that is what you see happen. The market tells you hey, these food tours are awesome. People start listing their food tours. They start doing very well. The market starts seeing that these things are doing well and more and more products start to crop up. And now we're 10 years on from that and food tours for our last 10 years have been amongst our fastest growing category. So maybe that's a slightly unsatisfying answer, but honestly, capitalism solves for a lot of this and we have built a marketplace that can respond to that.
Speaker 1:However, we don't always just leave it to market forces. We do do some things proactively. So we look at our own data, which we have a lot of between TripAdvisor and Viator, and we also work, as most OTAs do, very closely with Google. So we look at what destinations and categories are popping and if we think there's something happening in the market that we don't have an answer for, we will go out and proactively build that supply. And that is part of what Dave's team does they go out and make sure that if there's trends popping up that aren't sort of like market forces are not forcing them into the ecosystem, we will go and find that demand and, yeah, from there again. Even when it's proactive, we will go and find that demand and, yeah, from there again. Even when it's proactive, we go out and we let the market do its thing. As reviews and great experiences pile in. A product will earn more exposure through great performance, and the more travelers it pleases, the more attention it gets, and it's a bit of a flywheel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's fascinating, and this is where someone like yourself, who has access to that data, not only you know you're obviously looking at Google search data, but the data that you have on your platform is just so powerful to be able to understand what people are searching for right. It is a huge incumbent advantage, especially in the age of AI. You've got a great brand and you've got access to lots of data and those things can obviously really propel you forward to be able to customize, personalize. And so the one thing I wanted just to talk about as well, given we were highlighting some of the emerging trends, as you have called them out I was actually going through your travel trends report for 2025 before our call and to underscore your point about food tourism, because that certainly has been on the rise, especially post pandemic.
Speaker 2:There's a question I definitely have for you there, but when we think about food tourism, what I found really interesting is that, on your top five best rated experiences, chocolate tours and cooking classes are right up there within the first five.
Speaker 2:And then things like crafts, like things that people like, and then dance lessons, and like one of the big trends that I've certainly, um, post pandemic is this idea of passion travel, that people are traveling based on their interests. So people had that time to figure out what they're going to do if they're home alone, and and then yoga, various things, and then they've gone back out to the world and they've sought out these experiences. So tell us, because what are some of the biggest trends you've been seeing and what stood out to you from that report? Because there are certain things where I'm like, of course, japan and then, of course, scandinavia, like there's certain destinations, but there's specific things in there that I'm just like, oh, that's really interesting, that Like the concerts, the fact that you guys sell all these Christmas concerts, and so tell us a little bit of some of the trends that you are paying attention to, given what information you have access to.
Speaker 1:There are a couple of trends that just dominate over the years. There's two, exactly two, two trends that have dominated over the years. The first is that the bread and butter of this category, as much as we say all this experiential stuff, is growing so so, so quickly. It is, but the bread and butter of this category is the quite traditional tours and activities. Tourism so famous things to do in famous places will always maybe I shouldn't say always, but at least for now dominates as absolutely the biggest part of the category and the thing that people want most. The things that are growing fastest are really quite different and that's what you're referring to. So passion tourism, I think, is a great way to put it, but the very, very sort of like personal experiential things cooking classes, dance classes, lessons, crafts, art all of these things are the categories that are growing the fastest and have been growing the fastest for probably the last four or five years. And I think the clearest one coming out of the pandemic is outdoor experiences. So in 20, I can't remember what year it was now 2020 and 2021, we couldn't Viator's old business, our old business, our, you know, pre-pandemic we were sending Americans to Europe. Americans could not go to Europe in the year 2021. So they started doing different things and they could stay in America, but they couldn't go inside. Everyone was doing things outside, and so what we found that has really hung on is Americans are traveling more around America now than they did pre-pandemic.
Speaker 1:And some of our fastest growing top rated categories and destinations are things that allow you to get outside. So we see a lot of growth in destinations like Alaska and Utah, but beyond that, we also see growth in the categories that those destinations serve really well. So hiking, biking, walking, anything that gets you into the great outdoors and then, on top of that, they are also our top rated category. So, in general, experiences are already very highly rated. Average score is about 4.6 out of 5. But when we look at these categories, they're all getting like 4.85, 4.9 out of 5. So people are choosing these experiences. They're going to destinations where they can do it and they are having a really, really great time and delivering absolutely rave reviews.
Speaker 2:One of the things that you highlight there is that during the pandemic, people's behavior shifted. They were stuck at home and they started exploring their own backyard. But the part that I find fascinating is that people continue to travel. They find new destinations and they find interesting new things to do. One of the things I'm keen to know from your perspective is what sources you pay attention to outside of travel, because I often find that some of the most valuable information is not looking at what our competitors are doing, but it's looking at geopolitics and understanding interest rates and pressures on consumers. So what are some of the other things that you gravitate to? Leading a successful company to ensure that it is a durable space and that people will still continue to travel or choose Viator despite other concerns they might have?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's really important. When you're leading a large team and you're leading a large revenue stream, you can't only be looking inward. You need to understand the environment that you exist in Like really important to be looking. My job as a VP is to be looking two years down the road, not two weeks down the road. So I wake up every morning and I listen to five or six podcasts and I make sure that I'm getting a really broad view of international and American news and really understanding what's happening in the world with you know, like, how might this impact the source markets that we look at expanding into? How might we look at these things as we consider diversification? Is there like an FX issue coming up? All kinds of things anyway.
Speaker 1:So I really really really prioritize understanding what's going on in the world, because travel is just so highly exposed to the macro. You need to know how comfortable consumers are. You need to know what destinations they may not be going to. You need to understand what's happening in search and is Google catching up to open AI in terms of LLM experiences? So incredibly important to pay attention to the world around you and I think the more senior you get, the more important that gets and, as I said, it is my job to look two years out, it's probably the director's job to look one year out and it's the team's to be looking two weeks, three weeks, four weeks out. So everyone are doing everything you can to understand the environment you're operating in so you can build a business that can withstand whichever headwinds might be coming your way.
Speaker 2:For sure, and to make that point obviously, just to add to that, rather is that one of the big developments is Airbnb, reintroducing experiences. And so you have to think and I'm sure you guys have had these same conversations or're in a similar viewpoint is the fact that you know, when you look at the pressures of a company like Airbnb, they are constantly looking for growth and they're under pressure in the accommodation sector, given some of the concerns about over-tourism and some of the pushback they're getting, and they can see the results of other companies like Viator in this space and how experiences, and obviously they struggled with their first iteration. And so and I have some views on that and I'm keen to get your take as much as you can say, because obviously I know they're a competitor. But at the same time, I asked Tao Tao this question because I know our listeners.
Speaker 2:I'm always being mindful of what our listeners, because they'll text me afterwards to say you didn't ask Laura about Airbnb and so I definitely need to ask you about it for our listeners. But I'm also genuinely curious to get your take on it, because what I said to Tao Tao, as our listeners heard, is that when another my background in, like touring and river cruise and like if another player enters the market and start saturating the airwaves with advertising, it lifts the category, like it expands the category and I've seen some of the great new Airbnb commercials and some of the branding they're doing and although they struggled the first time, they're also very committed to making this successful in their second pass at interesting experiences. What is your take on them reentering this space?
Speaker 1:I think you can look at Airbnb and Google in similar ways. So both have made big plays at experiences beginning about a decade ago and both, just like the OTAs, have really struggled to find their perfect footing. So I think what we take from this is yes, there is so much opportunity in this category, but it is not a foregone conclusion that just because you are big and successful and you have funding, you will succeed. Airbnb has changed their value proposition a couple of times, google has changed their value proposition a couple of times, and what you conclude from that is there is a lot of opportunity. It is so worthwhile going after, but it's also just not that easy. So I think what I would say about Airbnb is, yes, it points to the challenges of the category. It also points to the opportunity of the category. This is, you know, like a $350 billion category. There is room for a lot of different value propositions in here, and that value proposition is different. It's very unique. It's very niche.
Speaker 1:Where we sit is we are a product or we are a storefront that, if you are going anywhere in the world, you can do the things that you absolutely would have on your list. So if you are, I suppose the example I keep pointing to is Paris. If you are going to Paris for the first time, there is no way you are not going up the Eiffel Tower, there is no way you're not taking a Sun River cruise. We will offer you that and we will also offer you the niche experiences that are similar to, I'm sure, the conversations you've had recently, but we will offer the dessert-making classes and the perfume-making classes, making classes and the perfume making classes. So it's kind of the full experience that we offer, which goes back to our true competitive advantage of catalog.
Speaker 1:No matter who you are or where you're going, we have the greatest breadth of selection and we can really serve any trip. So that's, I think, what sets us apart. But what I would say about players like Google and Airbnb entering the category is yeah, it is. It points to what is such a vast opportunity and it also points to what is such a vast challenge and you also make a very good point about this category is still like four out of every $5 on experiences doesn't touch the internet yet and having entrants like this who are advertising, reminding people that you can come online to book these things and there's a single place to search and sort and book. Competition is not all bad. Bringing attention to the category is a very, very good thing, especially when you have the confidence that Vitor has, which is that we know we offer a great solution and as more travelers come online, we feel pretty good about our ability to serve them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's really interesting about what you say there is like operations and product, which are obviously two critical aspects to Viator in terms of the platform, but also the operators you work with, the relationships and one of the things I just call out to our listeners, one of the things that I have spoken about and when I've talked on stage about Airbnb experiences or been asked about it you know one of the big challenges when you look at a company like them entering this space with the success they had with hosts as a concept within accommodation that worked perfectly. You had a host or super host that would, you know, manage one or multiple properties and it doesn't apply. That model is not easily replicated in travel because it's difficult to scale. So it's one thing to have people stay on your couch or, you know, in your spare room, but it's a very different thing to take someone to do sword making in Tokyo, because that sword maker may only be available twice a week and can only take eight people and it's like that. So there's also the frustration and disappointment you and I both know from working in travel for many years. It's about your ability to scale and be profitable and be able to have consistency that there's 12 tours running every day and you can pick the time that works for you and there's a consistent experience with the delivery of each of those, and that's what consumers are looking for. So that's one thing I definitely see as a big challenge for any of those technology companies entering the space that are like literally saying we're a technology company, not a travel company.
Speaker 2:It's like, well, you kind of need to understand hospitality and all the different aspects of yeah, so one one other thing I want to ask you on the same topic is AI, and I'm not I'm not just throwing out AI, because, of course, yes, we need to talk about it, but the reason I wanted to bring it up, as it relates to what we're discussing now, is because one of the biggest disruptions that I certainly see and I'm sure you have some strong views on this as well is that the consumer journey is changing by virtue of AI. So that whole concept of people doing search, like Google results, going to websites and then doing their research and then booking, even though, as you said, only $4 to $5 are spent online, which is a whole other thing for connectivity but at the same time, consumers are now using open AI or chat, gpt or any number of these generative AI platforms to do research. The numbers are astounding, which is why we're doing our AI summit to really understand how consumer behavior is now changing in the face of AI. And I see that the intermediaries are more likely to be disrupted than the operators Because, at the end of the day, you still need to find that operator or go up the Eiffel Tower. That experience at the end of the line is still the same how you found out about it, how you learned more about it, how you booked it. That whole consumer journey is definitely going to change.
Speaker 2:So, viator being a pipe, if you will, for all of this amazing 400,000 tours, that's a huge competitive advantage that you have and it's part of what I'd say is the moat around Viator, that you have all that product so you can make it available through any means for consumers to find it, discover and book. But one of the things I do see is like with TripAdvisor people used to do their research, but people are still gonna validate the hotels. They're still gonna validate. They want reviews from other people to give them the confidence that this is going to be a great experience. But very keen to know what your view is. With AI coming in so strongly, how do you think that's changing the user journey? And, I guess, how are you factoring that into how you and your team are approaching this new technology?
Speaker 1:We think about it all day, every day. I mean it's no surprise that the travel industry is like very much in bed with Google Travelers, by and large, no matter what, the trip will almost always touch Google at some point. So almost all of us market heavily on Google and we've all been talking about the shift to AI surfaces on Google. So AI is an AI mode, as well as chat, GPT, perplexity et al. Over the last year or so. What is actually really surprising is it is not changing as quickly as you think it would. And when I think about this, I think about two parts of the travel journey. So I think about upper funnel and research, and then I think about lower funnel and conversion. Upper funnel and research absolutely. Aios are showing up. They're looking on AI surfaces, they're having long conversations, they're getting their research done. Up. They're looking on AI surfaces, they're having long conversations, they're getting their research done and their needs met in ways that are just so much better than the old 10 blue links. I actually you know you look back on that now is only a year ago, but I actually can't believe that as consumers, we all accepted that experience for as long as we did. It's just really not good, so that that stuff is very much shifting to AIOs, to AI services now, and what we find, though, is that as much as some of that demand is being absorbed into AIOs and in every industry, probably there's going to be pressure on traffic there. When that traffic lands on your site, they convert hard and fast, they are ready to book because their questions have been answered so much better than they would have been answered by surfing around through 110 different links as they would have done a year ago. So, yeah, there's probably going to be pressure on traffic there, but there's a trade-off in that your consumer now, when they're reading that they get to you, they are so highly educated and they are ready to book. So that's one part of it.
Speaker 1:The second part is where we see demand with really clear and commercial intent. That demand is still flowing unobstructed into SEM, and it's SEM being paid links. It's not really hard to imagine why. I mean this is like Google's bread and butter Hundreds of billions of dollars. It's like the GDP of our medium-sized country goes through these ads, and they are probably going to protect that with their life. And so, where demand is clear and commercial and it's very low funnel and people are ready to convert. We see that coming straight through on SEM, kind of just as it always did, and that comes through in our earnings. So where the rest of the world is actually quite pressured on consumer sentiment and consumer spend, you see that in earnings on Target, Starbucks, McDonald's, whatever it is Growth year over year it's quite pressured for those categories.
Speaker 1:For experiences, it's still growing quite quickly. We were double digits on items last quarter. We are still seeing that demand. So I think we see two things. One is that demand for this category is extremely durable and resilient and even in times of economic headwinds people will still choose to spend here and Google is not getting in the way of that right now. All of that demand is still coming through on SEM, which is how travelers are quite comfortable shopping for experiences.
Speaker 1:Will it always be that way? I mean, it's hard to say. I'm guessing absolutely not, but probably what will happen is that there is a lot of commercial demand that comes through search and while it might not look the a little and things might look quite different, but it's easy to assume that search will continue to be an important part of the travel experience going forward and we really do obsess over this and we are scenario planning and have 10 or 12 different outcomes in mind and we monitor the signal to see which way it's going. So far it's still looking quite strong, but we will be as ready as we can be for whatever comes next. And it's an incredibly quite strong, but we will be as ready as we can be for whatever comes next and it's an incredibly interesting time to be in marketing.
Speaker 2:We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2:And now back to the show. When it comes to Viator and some of the other technology and some of the advancements you're making, I'd love if you wouldn't mind sharing us kind of what's on your roadmap in the next six to 12 months. And I know you're a publicly traded company, so I know you need to be mindful of and I'm not asking for any forward projections in terms of what you can share about what's coming up with some of the leveraging, some of the technology, because, as you highlighted, it's never been more exciting to be a marketer giving the tools and technology we have. You and I obviously have a great friend in common named Brendan Bliss, who runs Propellic. He's a great supporter of our podcast and has been really since the beginning, and he's a great friend as well, and him and I have terrific conversations, as you do with him, about what's the state. He's literally transformed his business from an SEO agency into an AI optimization agency in quick succession. He's having great success and full credit to him because he's helping companies navigate.
Speaker 2:This exact challenge is that your SEO traffic has fallen off. And how do you optimize your discovery and exposure for Gen I, gen ai platforms? And this is this is a business unto itself now and it's really I couldn't agree with you more. It's so exciting. So, given all of these shifts, what are some of the things you guys are looking to build out on the platform? What are some of the things we can look forward to via tour rolling out over the next six to 12 months?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think I mean the most exciting innovation is the value proposition in and of itself. As we talked about earlier, $4 to $5 in this category is still spent offline, which is crazy in the year 2025. So the real innovation is taking a highly fragmented shopping experience, in which a consumer couldn't or can't really get a handle on what's on offer in their destination, and giving them a clear read via Tor, being that clear read with a really simple path to booking that experience. So that probably is the most exciting thing that we're doing, which is, you know, I'm basically saying the whole business, but it's like it's getting the catalog right and making it as accessible and bookable as possible. Whether you're like going kayaking down the Colorado River, taking a Harry Potter walking tour in London, whatever it may be, making sure that you can find what you want. You know that it's right for you, it's right for your destination, we can book it really quickly.
Speaker 1:The R&D work, or the marketing work that is underneath all of that is, dare I say, incredibly unsexy, because it's about taking that very uh like innovative value proposition and making it simple, and simple is pretty unsexy. So this is work that's like about smoothing out the shopping process. It's about having flexible traveler policies without removing friction from the booking flow, getting clear on logistics, getting clear on cancellation policies. It's not like one big swing. The big swing is taking this highly fragmented shopping experience and making it accessible.
Speaker 1:And then it's all these little things that are underneath it that really are as I say. I mean, they are kind of unsexy, and I think the lesson there is that piling up you know we're reaching a point of maturity here with this business but piling up these small incremental wins and having a real focus on solving consumer problems that range in size from small to medium, it can be extremely powerful. And if you listen to our earnings polls recently, you'll hear Matt and Mike talk about the conversion wins that we've had, and there's nothing more powerful than that. Conversion is your consumer telling you you've met my needs. Thank you very much. And all of these small things are contributing to that. So the big swing is the value proposition. And then there's a hundred small projects between our marketing team and our R&D team that are all aiming at one thing, which is take problems out of the flow, and they're doing that very well.
Speaker 2:Well, one thing I think you guys would have a clear incumbent strength in is matchmaking, given not only the trip advisor but just Viator on its own, even the fact that you know what people have booked before and you can serve up recommendations to him, and this true idea of personalized one to one messaging that you and I have kind of grown up in the industry, attempting to reach that holy grail where you can actually speak to someone directly, rather than sending out a generic newsletter to say here's a bunch of stuff that we think a few 100,000 people might be interested in learning about, as opposed to having something that's truly personalized. Something else you said that's also really insightful and I just wanted to make sure all of our listeners took that away was the fact that when a gen AI traffic gets to your site or gets to reach your business, they're going to, they're ready to convert, they've done their research and travel AI One of our partners as well, travel AIcom John. John Leotia has been on our podcast. He continually posts on LinkedIn and he's willing to share this information despite the fact in many ways he'd rather just keep it to himself and benefit from this knowledge, but he's been open about sharing it because he wants to see if this is other people's experience as well that we're seeing a dramatically higher conversion rate.
Speaker 2:So you've kind of got this thing where new customers are coming to you knowing exactly what they want to buy and you also have existing customers that you know a lot about and can make recommendations. So I'm genuinely curious when you look at that matching problem, because this is one of the things to bring up Airbnb again with Brian Chesky. One of the things for sure I totally agree with him on is that we don't have a search problem, we have a matching problem, and so the idea of trying to match people's interest to specific travel opportunities. So just generally curious, given you're such a smart, clever and experienced marketer, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this challenge that we have today and how companies can start to realize it and what maybe you guys are doing there to better match offers to consumer interest.
Speaker 1:It's an absolutely massive challenge and it exists both offsite and onsite. So offsite, I think we're actually getting quite strong at that and a lot of that is down to how quickly ad tech has progressed in the last few years. So advertising on Meta a few years ago I mean it wasn't great. The returns were pretty tough to swallow, but the targeting is getting much better, the tooling you can put against that to speak to consumers on a one-to-one basis rather than a one-to-one million, and you can do it in real time. I mean you can change, you can respond to a traveler behavior and serve them up a different image, a different value proposition and a different call to action. It's really come a long way and we see that in our numbers. So off-site, between our capabilities and just how good ad tech is getting, we're making a lot of progress there. On-site, we're also making a lot of progress. That is where it gets pretty tricky.
Speaker 1:400, competitive advantage, which is combining TripAdvisor and Viator data to have this real 360 view of the traveler. We are actively building that out now and trying to figure out how we can better predict and serve what they're going to do next in a way that others in the category might not be able to because they don't have the benefit of being a part of a multivertical OTA with more information on the traveler. So that's the kind of way that we're looking at matching there is, obviously, once you're inside the Viator environment, we can take stuff to serve you really well. But we have this huge competitive advantage in TripAdvisor data, which tells us more about a traveler than others might know, and we should be able to personalize and serve and convert quicker and faster than others. And we are only just scratching the surface of that and that's something we're pretty excited about.
Speaker 2:That is really exciting and this certainly highlights just how much disruption and that's why it's definitely an exciting time for us to be in a space and for our listeners to be solving some of the latest challenges with technology and marketing and messaging and coming up with really innovative solutions. And I think most organizations now Bookingcom being a great example with Glenn Fogle very focused on AI because they're a technology business and they can be disrupted by any number of startups, especially ones that can compete in the user journey, and that's very much open competition now. So, one of the things, if we look forward, I know some companies have their 2030 view, like Intrepid and others and some of our partners, and you guys have, as you mentioned, you're always very forward looking at least kind of two years out. Give us some guidance of where you think what the industry will look like in the next few years, and what I mean by that is obviously it's one of those things.
Speaker 2:I know the old cliche saying that you're very familiar as well. Like people underestimate what's going to happen, they overestimate in the short term and underestimate the long term and and certainly there's always these things that like as much as we have these innovations, human behavior. Will you know, people will still want to go to r and New York and Paris, right, that's just like yeah. But again, here's a fascinating stat that, like, in 10 years, 80% of homes may have humanoid robots in them. Like, so it's like what? What does that? What does that mean for our livelihood? So, like, things are going to change as companies like Tesla rolled them out and you know you can. They're now available in China for 8,000 versus 30,000. And so I, you know there's so many things that are very difficult to predict that certainly could play a role. But what are some of the things that you're paying attention to or thinking about about how the industry will evolve in the next few years?
Speaker 1:let's say, yeah, I think in the nearer term, something we're probably all coming to terms with is that the industry and the experiences category is not moving online organically as quickly as we thought. So we're probably going to need to take some steps to move that along. And maybe part of this is that we've all been looking at the SAM the serviceable, addressable market as the whole thing as saying, like this 300 and some odd billion dollar category, we should be able to access all of that process, all of that. But I think we took a really sort of tech company heavy view to that, assuming that if we made the booking process simple, travelers would come online. And I think kind of something we all forgot about is that and there's hubris here from the tech companies we all sort of forgot that travelers or consumers are not always solving for simplicity. Sometimes other things are more important. Like we don't all use Instacart because sometimes we want to make sure the avocado is not as hard as a brick before we buy it and even though it would be so much easier to get it delivered. There is something else you're optimizing for, and so I think part of it is that we assumed every dollar could be brought online. I would suggest, now that there's some spontaneity that travelers really want to retain, or some flexibility. You want to work around your cranky toddler, you need to account for a hangover. You don't want to be scheduled up to your eyeballs when you go on vacation. You want to leave some room for flexibility. So I think we probably need to accept that the whole thing's not going to come online and it's not coming online as quickly as we thought it would. There's a lot of growth it's moving pretty quickly, but we probably need to better understand what happens in a destination and to start disintermediating some of those behaviors and doing what we can to bring them online. Otas are fighting OTAs right now and there's a whole huge world of offline bookings that we need to better understand and figure out how to better serve. I do truly believe there's a chunk of them we'll never access, but $4 to $5 are still spent offline and I think we've got to look outside the growing pool of OTAs and start to figure out how to make that organic process well, I guess, make it non-organic, how to make that process move a little bit faster. So I think there's got to be more done on the in-destination traveler and figuring out what is going to drive people from offline to online and probably stop assuming that it's all going to happen organically. I think that that's the near term, one Medium term, I guess, probably not specific to experiences, but like you see at the conferences now, people are talking a lot more about India as the next big market than they are talking about China.
Speaker 1:We all spent the last 20 years talking about China, but India is just such a fascinating market Inbound, they have really supportive travel policies. It's an incredible country and it's getting progressively easier to move around, so I think we'll start to see that as a much more popular destination. But more interesting is outbound. You've got a really fast growing middle class with money to spend again, really supportive policies on travel and outbound, on moving people around. And I think it's going to be a market we all obsess over and try to figure out, and probably a lot of us will not do it very well because we all know American companies are not great at internationalization. But I think that'll be. It already is. I think that's going to be the big thing that we're all talking about at conferences from now until I don't know, let's say, 2035.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it'll be interesting to see who does really well at it.
Speaker 2:For sure. No-transcript, because I got another question I want to ask you, but I want to understand that first. So what percentage of travelers are booking in destination versus booking in advance of their trip?
Speaker 1:It's growing. So I mean we've got selection bias because we've got like, by nature, people who use Viator are planners. The in-destination group is growing very, very quickly. I don't know the numbers offhand, but it's a large and growing number. The majority are planning quite far in advance and the degree to which they plan in advance really is very closely correlated to how far they're going and how much they're spending. So Americans traveling within the US typically book two or three weeks in advance. Americans traveling to Europe typically book 30 to 40 days in advance and beyond that they're booking like two, three months in advance. So very closely correlated to what they're spending and how far they're going. And the in-destination group is large and growing.
Speaker 2:Interesting and obviously I'll have a look to, because one of the things I've seen you guys do quite effective marketing in destination, like when I was in London. You guys have people on the street promoting selling Viator tickets and like it's. So it's a real clever way because so many people are in London and they're trying to decide what they're going to do. They ask their concierge or they happen to see the hop on, hop off buses and so obviously you want to know people in destination can also book with Viator. You don't have to have booked before you traveled. But the reason I wanted to ask this specific question because we can make this kind of the last big point we discuss and then I've got a few rapid fire questions for you that I'm also keen to ask and finish off on but I think this is a really interesting topic for all of our listeners. Thinking about where they can grow their businesses in 2025 and beyond, or 2026 and beyond now really is that when you look at destinations you mentioned India One of the other ones that stands out to me is Africa.
Speaker 2:We had a gentleman on our show, charles Shima, who runs a company called Torafik really fascinating guy. He's Rwandan, canadian and his whole business model is based on the idea that people are going to start to feel more comfortable traveling to Africa as independent travelers and booking experiences. Rwanda is one of those destinations you would not today, as a with someone with a little experience or knowledge, fly into with the hopes of trying to figure it out as you go. You'll do that to Europe because you know you're going to find a place to roam, like it's set up, the infrastructure's in place, so I'd love to hear your take on that. So you mentioned India, as opposed to cause. China obviously is a huge outbound market that still hasn't fully come back. This is where, like, oh, it excites me so much when you think about all these different moving factors. So, yeah, so in terms of in destination booking experiences, where do you see? So India and potentially Africa, at least for Africa is a really interesting one.
Speaker 1:I'll send it to you after this.
Speaker 1:I just listened to a podcast on this the other day from Bloomberg on the luxury market and how quickly it's growing in Africa, and the argument they're making is that it's growing incredibly rapidly, but this is a segment that's paying like $20,000, $30,000 a night, and I think it's making the point that you just made, which is that the reason this is happening is because the infrastructure isn't there yet.
Speaker 1:So it's these huge brands that are going in and effectively building the tourism industry there and once that's set up and these are companies that have the money to build the infrastructure that's not in existence yet once that's set up, we'll then start to see mid-range, budget-range travelers going. But I'll send it to you. It's really interesting and it does seem like that's the way it's going. There's a huge spike in interest for luxury travel in Africa and that will then give rise to mid-range budget range and probably in the next five or 10 years we'll start to see more happening there and probably people coming down from $10,000, $20,000 a night to just the average traveler and Africa becomes one of the next big destinations.
Speaker 2:For sure, and there's one company called Cloud Safaris that we've had on our podcast as well, and this is where I find it so fascinating. We have large organizations and startups and learning from each other and shaping the future of our industry, where they're kind of betting on the fact that more people also will be comfortable just booking direct with suppliers in Africa, as opposed to it just being a destination for ultra high net worth individuals that go and stay at these incredible game lodges like and so there is a market there, but I'm excited to see the independent traveler break out in places like india and in africa.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, it'll happen like I think. I remember going to vietnam when I was in my early 20s, my parents being amazed like to them, yeah, because of when they grew up they could not have ever imagined ever going to Vietnam. And there I was going, booking it on my own, with my 22-year-old best friend, having the time of our lives. It just takes a bit of time for these economies to become accessible to the average traveler, and maybe we're 10 or 15 years off from that in Africa. But the same way, my parents were totally blown away when I was going to Vietnam. Maybe my daughter, nina, will be heading off to Namibia when she's 25. And I'll be completely amazed by it.
Speaker 2:Or Iraq or Iran for example like those are like you know that because I was recently going to do a trip to Iraq and the operator, like, was assuring me of like the safety and other guests that have gone, and I couldn't believe how much travel there actually is to Iraq already, that you don't even hear about that, like you know.
Speaker 2:But so some of those intrepid travelers, you're absolutely spot on. I couldn't agree more with Thailand, vietnam, the whole Southeast Asia. 20 years ago was a completely different experience and having gone back more recently, you can see it's just, you know, it's, it's. The prices are comparable to most, um, you know typical popular destinations and you know, for me, then, I gravitate to places like Colombia, which are, I see, as a destination that you know, look, like Thailand did 20 years ago, where, like it's, the infrastructure is more or less in place, the people are lovely, the costs are so reasonable, like, so, so. On this, this is actually like literally the very first rapid fire question I had for you, which is, laurel, based on all your experience and exposure, personal travel, and, you know, seeing all the data, what do you think is actually the most underrated travel destination?
Speaker 1:Can I give you overrated instead?
Speaker 2:Perfect, give me both.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I'll give you overrated and I feel like this is super controversial and I'm going to offend a lot of people. I hate going to New York. I think I could love living there, but I find the intensity of it so exhausting and I am always so happy to leave when I go, so that would be my overrated Again. Could live there, but as a traveler to New York I find it tough.
Speaker 2:So I genuinely do love New York and so I'll balance it out for, uh, our listeners, because I do love new york. But the interesting thing is new york holding up as one of like. Despite tourism to the us being down from international destinations, given some of these geopolitical factors, new york has been holding up. It was literally looking at some of the data. It was the only us city that was still had growth figures. So the fact, as far as being overrated, like like, people still want to go.
Speaker 1:They want to go to New York. You can't, you can't help but marvel at it. It's amazing, but my God, I just want to nap for four days and I get back from New York.
Speaker 2:Fair enough.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:So underrated. What's, what's, what's below the radar that you're going to say right now and all of a sudden, um, easy jets going to open up a direct flight and uh, and totally.
Speaker 1:Oh, do you know what? I don't think I have a good answer to underrated. Can I go back to you Of?
Speaker 2:course you can. Yeah, so my underrated is definitely Columbia. Like it was. Like you know, I still hear people like because of the perception of a destination. To your point about Vietnam, people still identify like FARC guerrillas and narcos and it's like I see it hanging over the heads of the people that promote Columbia as a destination that people are like the first thing is it safe? Isn't it like where all the cocaine comes from? Like it's just like. And literally I had been to every country in South America almost with exception of Columbia, and I finally got to Columbia I was like, oh my God, I've been missing out, so that for me, is underrated.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm very glad to hear that because I'm thinking about going next year.
Speaker 2:Perfect. I've got some suggestions for you, so we'll not only will we share some things with each other, we'll also make sure all of our listeners, the articles you share with me and some of the places that you can find out more about Viator's research. I'll be sharing that at the end of the episode, but I've got a couple more rapid fire questions and then we'll close off for our listeners. But I've been so enjoying this conversation. So the next rapid fire question what's the one item you would never travel without and this is not I've obviously your daughter whenever you can, but like, let's go business travel. So you're in London right now. What's the one item when you were going out the door that you would not leave without?
Speaker 1:The sound of snoring makes me incandescent with rage. So if I'm taking taking an overnight flight, I have a sleep mask that has little speakers in it, that like lie over my ears because no one wants to sleep with airpods in, that lie over my ears and I put on background noise, like a river or a stream or a babbling, whatever it is, so that I cannot hear 20 people around me snoring.
Speaker 2:That's a good tip can't live without it. Cannot live without it yep, okay, good live without it? Yep, okay, good, good tip and totally unique favorite travel app, like, besides Viator or anything that's within your you know current remit. What else do you use when you're traveling? What's a handy tool or an app that you love?
Speaker 1:I won't be super cringe and say TripAdvisor. I will say I'll say Airbnb, mostly because nothing. There are a few things in life that give me more joy than being able to do laundry on holiday.
Speaker 2:Exactly that's. I'm sure Airbnb will be thrilled to hear that and that's where, like, I feel like in our industry, there's certain people that just that, like they're not. I mean you're, you work at Viator, you've got this great role there, but, like, the reality is, we use all sorts of different platforms and we we'll continue to so. Like I'm glad, I'm glad that you mentioned that, because it's not like a hard. You know Airbnb. I love traveling with Airbnb as well, but I also love luxury boutique hotels when I can. Like I'm like I saw, I'm a huge fan of boutique hotels. All right, now, if you weren't working at Viator, if your life trajectory did not go the way that you, you know you weren't in Boston at Viator where do you think you'd be and what might you be?
Speaker 1:doing. I'd be a journalist, I think, if they would have had me, but I I love reading and writing, Very interested in the world. Listening to the news is one of my greatest passions. I would, I would be delighted to be a journalist, or would have been delighted to be a journalist.
Speaker 2:And then last question I know you've got a young daughter and you're based your husband's English, and so you've got this international perspective based in Boston. But when it comes to your next personal trip or your next, the next place you desire going I know we just talked about Columbia, but what's at the top of your, your short list of destinations you're very keen to get to?
Speaker 1:Well, my daughter is quite obsessive about volcanoes and American Thanksgiving is coming up, as discussed. I'm Canadian, so we don't we don't do a ton in the US. She'll be out of school. I am taking her on a mother daughter holiday and I think we're going to do a self drive for six days around Iceland, and I am just really, really hoping that I don't find myself changing a tire in Arctic freezing temperatures at two o'clock in the morning with nothing around for miles. I'm a little nervous, but it'll be great. So, iceland, iceland is the next place that I'm going. Very cool.
Speaker 2:You're absolutely gonna love it. Iceland's an amazing destination. I definitely have some suggestions for you there. I've been there a few times and I've got some great friends and colleagues there at the company at Capdeo that I work with closely with a K. They are based in Iceland, ragnar, and yeah, I've got a huge fascination with Iceland and if you want volcanoes, that's definitely the place to go, so your daughter's going to love it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, we want volcanoes. We talk about volcanoes all the time. We'll see YouTube videos on volcanoes.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. One last question and then we'll wrap up is that you know, given our conversation started with your career and again calling you out, which I firmly believe, as a captain of industry I know you're not comfortable with that term, but there are certain people that and this is when I created this podcast to speak to people who are myself from like 1520 years ago, when I was working at Lonely Planet and coming up in the industry the people I wanted to listen to, learn from and then apply in my role. So if you could say to your younger self when you were just working at that PR agency in London doing listicles and not knowing what the future hold, what advice would you give to yourself now in your career that might be valuable to other listeners?
Speaker 1:I wish I'd learned much earlier on to care so much less about what people think of you.
Speaker 1:I was afraid of my own shadow for the first 10 or 12 years of my career, and when you're a junior those instincts are probably quite helpful because you know the thing.
Speaker 1:Telling you maybe don't speak up sometimes is probably right, but I was just I was so I was so nervous, I was so afraid to speak my mind, and sort of what I've realized over the last 10 or so years is like they're not paying attention to you. Really, we could all just really benefit from caring a little bit less about what people think. No one has sat there watching you, monitoring you, and even if they are, you are in a job, you have a point of view, you are probably an expert on what you're about to speak about, and bad if they are. You are in a job, you have a point of view. You are probably an expert on what you're about to speak about, and bad things are not going to happen if you just speak your mind. So I think I would have told my younger self to be less fearful of having a point of view and start sharing it earlier on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really valuable. I couldn't agree with you more, and a number of people have commented to me on the podcast. They're like I love this new Dan Christian 2.0. Like I remember you and you're in the corporate world, but you now seem to have a real, authentic voice and I was just like. This has always been me, but I've never been as comfortable and natural and I think one of the things that you're clearly able to do that in a corporate role but I never quite was able to speak in my own voice. I always felt like I needed to speak in my corporate voice or in my role.
Speaker 2:So this conversation to me has been so refreshing and I'm sure it's been delightful for all of our listeners as well. I obviously I'm thrilled that we know each other and I'm looking forward to seeing you in Orlando in a few weeks depending on people are listening to this and arrival likely after that. So I look forward to seeing you in person, laurel. I value our friendship and I look forward to seeing your continued success. So thanks so much for joining us on the podcast and I can't wait to see you in person soon. So thanks so much for joining us on the podcast and I can't wait to see you in person soon.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you so much for having me and thank you for all of the very, very kind words. I feel very undeserving, but I'm very grateful.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for joining us on our latest episode of Travel Trends. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Laurel Graytricks, the VP of Marketing at Viator. You can find clips and highlights from our conversation on our social channels Instagram, youtube and LinkedIn at Travel Trends Podcast. And we have one final episode in our In Destination series, part two, which is brought to us in partnership with our friends at Pernod Ricard. You can learn more about their brand homes at pernod-ricardcom.
Speaker 2:Our final episode is going to feature the founder of the app, geotourist, to talk about how technology is changing the in-destination experience. And, speaking of technology, we have our AI Summit coming up at the end of October, the 28th and 29th. You can find out more details at TravelTrendsPodcastcom and register to join us and sign up for our monthly newsletter, where we send a roundup of all the latest episodes from the month and our travel plans for the next month. And you can find out where we're going to be on our events page, which includes the Focusrite conference in San Diego in November, where, if you purchase one of our tickets through our promo code, which will not only save you $250 off a ticket, it will also guarantee you a place in our event spotlight episode, so we hope that you will join us there. Until next time, safe travels.
