Why Experiences Are the New Currency of Gifting with Spur Experiences

People don’t just want to go somewhere anymore, they want to feel something. That emotional shift is powering the experience economy and changing how we celebrate love, milestones, and meaningful moments. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we sit down with Cody Sudmeier, co founder and CEO of Spur Experiences, to explore why gifting moments is quickly overtaking gifting things and how shared experiences create connection, joy, and memories that last far longer than anything wrapped in a box.

We trace Spur’s origin story back to wedding registries, where modern couples were outgrowing traditional houseware lists and craving something more personal. From there, Cody walks us through what makes experience gifting actually work in real life: instant booking, non expiring vouchers, and simple swaps when plans or preferences change. He also explains the psychology behind why experiences win, with happiness showing up three times over through anticipation, the moment itself, and the memories that follow. From food tours and hot springs to doors off helicopter rides and once in a lifetime access, we explore the categories people love most and how Spur helps match the right experience to the right person.

The conversation moves from consumers to companies, where experience gifting is reshaping employee recognition and retention. Flexible access to concerts and sporting events, wellness essentials like spas and retreats, and annual experience stipends are giving teams rewards they genuinely use and remember long after a bonus is spent. We also dig into the technology making this all easier, including AI powered recommendations, market gap insights, and influencer driven discovery that increasingly guides purchase decisions, especially for younger audiences.

Whether you’re looking for a Valentine’s gift that feels thoughtful and personal, planning a wedding or milestone celebration, or designing a corporate rewards program people truly value, this one’s for you. 

Visit spurexperiences.com to learn more.

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Transcript

Why Experiences Beat Stuff

SPEAKER_03 0:04

It's interesting because you do have an established preference towards gifting or spending money on experiences instead of products. But we just have in our industry, it's really just an awareness challenge of just saying this is available as an option. You already know that you would prefer an experience, but most customers don't know, okay, what do I do with that? Where do I gift somebody an experience through? How does it work? All these things.

Meet Cody And Spur’s Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:46

I'm joined by the founder and CEO of Spur Experiences, Cody Sudmeyer, and his company was built with this very powerful idea in mind that experiences create more value, more connection, and more meaning than things ever can. And as we started 2026, I have been very focused, as our listeners know, that this is the year of transformational travel. Given Joe Pine's Langmark book, The Experience Economy was published more than 25 years ago. And not only are we very much in the experience economy, we are now in this new world where people are prioritizing transformational travel experiences. And the reality is that people aren't just traveling to go somewhere anymore. They're traveling to feel something, to connect, and to create memories that actually change them. And that same shift is showing up in how people gift, celebrate milestones, and even how companies reward their teams. I know that's the way we approach things at Travel Trends. We're always focused on having great experiences together as a team. And those are always the incentives I want to reward our team with because those are the ones I value the most. So in today's Spotlight episode, Cody and I dig into why experiences resonate so deeply compared to traditional gifts, especially wedding gifts, which I talk in detail about from my experience and what actually makes an experience emotionally meaningful and how different generations think about memories versus possessions. We talk about the types of experiences that have a lasting impact and why shared moments often matter more. We also break down how experience gifting is evolving in some very practical ways from the instant booking experience for wedding registries to everyday consumer gifting and even corporate rewards. We explore how personalization and technology help match people with the right experiences and how removing friction around scheduling and redemption, something that frustrates me a great deal in the loyalty space, makes gifting moments easier than ever. So if you're interested in where travel, gifting, and human connection are headed and why experiences are quickly becoming the default over things, then this conversation is for you. And you can find out more information at spur experiences.com as we have this conversation with Cody. But Cody, let's bring you in. Welcome to the Travel Trends Podcast. Thanks so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Well, so great to be here today. I'm so excited to talk about travel and um just kind of what our little slice of that world is.

Origin Story And The Wedding Problem

SPEAKER_01 3:10

For sure. And I think people got a good idea from that introduction about spur experiences and the conversation that we're gonna have today. But I think that one of the things I would love to start off with, first of all, I'm keen for everyone to know where you are in the world and um tell us a little bit about your background before you started Spur Experiences.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

So I live and the company is uh headquartered in Denver, Colorado. So I'm right downtown. I spend a lot of time in the mountains, though. Love to ski, love to uh get up and hike and do that kind of thing uh in the summertimes. Um yeah, and for me, I uh I've been an entrepreneur now for about 20 years. My uh my origin story is kind of funny. I out of college I did uh consulting for a big firm for about four years. And uh about four years out, I was passed up for promotion and just uh sometime went home and probably somewhere in a bottle of Jack Daniels. I found the courage to go back to work the next day and and tell them I'm leaving. And it was my uh my Jerry McGuire moment where I was like, I'm taking the goldfish and I'm getting out of here. And I uh started my first company back then, which was a consulting firm, uh, co-founded it with the one person in the office that decided to walk out with me and did that for about 10 years, uh, built that to about 50 consultants. Uh, so it was pretty successful. It just got to a point where I was needing something that was a more interesting and more compelling industry to be involved with, and so got out of very uh corporate America telecom consulting and and got into uh this much more fun industry that's that touches on travel.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yeah, well, it's interesting, obviously, being that's one of the reasons I wanted to highlight where you're located because I've got a lot of great friends that live in Colorado, and clearly it's one of the places that if you're into travel, adventure, the outdoors, it's one of the most incredible places in the world to be based. I mean, you've got such access to incredible mountains and geography from Denver. So there's a clear connection between where you are and what you decided to do, being inspired by that uh beautiful natural scenery, but also the fact that you had this corporate background before, which I always find interesting about an entrepreneur, you know, that you had the consulting experience because consulting experience is so highly relevant to being able to create a successful company. You've been advising other companies, and especially as a young uh executive, you know, you're often advising companies that are much larger than companies you've ever worked on before. And then you went out and created your own firm. And as people heard, the introduction, you've been running Spur Experiences now for over 12 years. You started it way back in February 2014. But so tell everyone a little bit about the, I guess, the origin story of Spur Experiences. So after you were, you know, running Agility Solutions, um, tell us a little bit what actually brought on the idea of creating Spur Experiences.

Demographics And The Experience Shift

SPEAKER_03 5:59

You know, so when we first launched, we were exclusively a wedding registry for experiences. So it was just very narrowly focused on this niche of weddings. And the way that came about was I had, I think by the time you get to like your, I don't know, younger mid-30s, you've been to enough weddings that you just kind of start to see what you like, what you don't like, what drives you crazy. And there was this one summer where I went to two different weddings. The first one that I went to was uh this couple that's super cool. They lived all around the world, very adventurous. And I'm terrible with being a procrastinator with buying wedding gifts or any kind of gift, really. So I was literally on the way to the wedding and I stopped by Crate and Barrel to get whatever was left on their wedding registry that I could buy. And there weren't a lot of options, but one of the remaining options was like a$150 set of salt and pepper shakers. And it just felt so crazy to me that this couple that like this isn't typically how they spend their money or what they prioritize. And so that really sat with me for a few months. And then later that summer I went to the separate wedding. In this case, it was a little bit more what I thought aligned with this couple. They they had a few things on their wedding registry, one of them included swimming with dolphins on their honeymoon. And I was like, right on, this is this is right up my alley. I can give them some kind of experience, uh memory. And as I was going through the checkout at the time, you could tell you weren't actually buying them an experience, you were literally just sending them a PayPal transaction. And so that caught my attention, but I just rolled with it anyway. And they go on their honeymoon, you know, we're getting drinks after they come back, and I said, Oh, I can't wait to hear about the honeymoon, had a blast at your wedding. Um, tell me about swimming swimming with the dolphins. Did you guys have a good time? Did you take any pictures? And they said, Ah, you know, weddings are expensive. Uh, we just used it to pay the tab for the wedding kind of thing. And it really felt like, I don't know, maybe I paid admission to a wedding. And I it just started to formulate this thought that so many of the gifts that are given around weddings is either this kind of antiquated uh household items, your linens and toasters and those kinds of things, or it's just money. And that doesn't feel I mean, money is always useful. I'll never argue against that, but it's not the most connected kind of gifts to give somebody. So that's what said, hey, what's another category that we can launch with gifting real experiences that people can use either on their honeymoon, about 50% of our customers in the wedding space use it on their honeymoon. The other 50%, you know, we have a tagline, keep dating after I do. Like the first year you were married, you have cool date nights or adventures, weekend getaways, those kinds of things. So that's how it all started, strictly with weddings.

unknown 8:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Well, it's interesting. You mentioned about weddings, and one of the things that stood out to me when as I was preparing for our chat today, and I was you know, looking at your website, the fact you have wedding registries is a key part of it. And of course, you work with companies like The Knot or Zola. And um, but it's it's interesting to hear that is so core to the origin story and thinking about the time frame, is because you know, we've seen this massive shift for uh the experience economy. And of course, as we're having this conversation, I did write an article to start off this year about this is the year of transformative travel, and it was one of the reasons I was keen to have this conversation with you and to be able to do this spotlight episode, because this is also the year that uh Joe Pine has published his new book about the transformation economy. He's the guy that coined the term the experience economy. And if we look at you know, the zeitgeist and what changed, you know, um when I was speaking uh to Rod Cuthbert, the founder of Viator, one of the things he highlighted to me was that they really created Viator when the Zeitgeist had shifted towards experiences over things, that we moved away from this like 80s-90s mentality of Wall Street greed is good, and people, you know, and he who dies with the most toys wins, that sort of mentality. That given that you and I are both of similar uh uh life experience, that uh we we we went through that. So we saw that transition and the fact that people are experiences. But the thing that stood out for me when I look at like your company is that I've been to those weddings, people in their 20s um uh and 30s that are you know starting off in their life. They're you know, yes, okay, you might want some nice uh flatware or some and you might be getting encouraged by that uh aunt and uncle to make sure you're register for China. And I still remember going through this with my wife and like, do we really need this stuff or why why do we need a registry? Like we we did like nine weeks of traveling through Europe, but it wasn't even an option for us then to just say bias experiences, but that's what we wanted. Um, so tell us a little bit more about how the business grew as a result of that. Is it like you recognize there was an opportunity here for people getting married, which is like the uh this industry has only exploded in the last 10 or 15 years since you've created this company. Um so tell us a little bit about how important that was to get this company off the ground and how and how important it still is to the business today.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

Yeah, it's it's really fascinating from a demographic perspective because if you rewind to, you were talking about you know the 80s and 90s, if you go even further back to like the 50s, uh the average age for somebody in their first, they uh classify this as their first wedding for a US man was like 22 years old. And for a woman, it was 20 years old. Fast forward to today, and that's like 32 and 30. And again, that's first weddings. Um, not that we are endorsing people having too many weddings, but you know, whatever. Do your do you do you?

SPEAKER_01 11:22

No, I was gonna say, what is the average age for a second wedding then?

SPEAKER_03 11:25

That's a great question. I don't I don't have that data or first divorce kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Uh I guess these are all situational, but yes, first wedding, no matter when you're getting married now, whether it's in your 20s or 30s, but more likely in your 30s, you're still looking for experiences. So yeah, so you are but you are onto this early, but yeah. Yeah.

Solving Gifting Friction And Breakage

SPEAKER_03 11:43

Yeah, more so because it when you were getting married at 22, you didn't ever live on your own before. So there really was a purpose at the time for having this wedding registry that was like fill your house. You know, but when people are getting married after the age of 30, really both sides of the equation probably has most of their goods, and it's more of an effort of consolidating town, you know. Do you want your uh blender or do you want to keep my blender? We don't need a third blender. Uh so it's just one of those things where almost society changes before a lot of the um pillars around it change with it. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of data that shows generally as consumer preference towards spending money on experiences has I mean, decade after decade continues to go up relative to products. And you brought up something else that I thought was really interesting because we talk about this dynamic too, is the keeping up with the Joneses. So it's not a healthy thing that's comparative, you know, is my life better than the next person. But you're absolutely right. Like keeping up with the Joneses, when you and I were younger, we um it was all about who has the nicer car and who has the bigger house and you know, things like this. That same kind of competitive, unhealthy mentality exists today, but it's a lot more the Instagram culture of who's traveling where and who's got front row seats for the concert or you know, who's at the big game, whatever it might be. And and again, I'm not endorsing that you know it's good to be comparative, you should not do that. But it is interesting to see that that plays out now as experiences are the things that people are trying to gather as opposed to um, you know, a bunch of household goods or whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yeah. So let's I want to I'm keen to actually explore uh how that's evolved in that you know the 12 years and as you know, having this conversation in 2026 and looking at the next five years, because from my perspective, the future couldn't be brighter for us working in travel, working experiences, demographic shifts, aging population, because and the the fact that you actually work in an interesting space that you know started with wedding registries, which was the idea of giving a gift, but now by and large, even when it comes to the holidays and birthdays, and it's just like it's not just weddings, which is clearly something you you know have caught on to, is that people want to give the gift of experiences because it is all about experience. So, what do you think? I mean, obviously, demographics is one, and clearly you know your numbers there. What um what what uh what other factors do you think have been has been driving this shift? And why do you think specifically it has exploded so much in the last decade?

SPEAKER_03 14:17

Great question. It's you know, there's a lot to point to. I I think when we first founded this, we thought it was certainly the younger generations are gonna, you know, be more interested in experiences over products. I mean, that was our big thing is oh, you know, you look at some of these people in their young 20s, and that seems to be all they care about these days. And there is some data that supports that. I think I saw uh 78% of millennials uh prefer a gift of an experience over product. That goes up to 90% when you get to Gen Z. So there are some generational kind of categorizations, but you're really seeing it across the board. We get um older generations, Gen X and baby boomers, that you get to a certain point in life where you just realize that you know a lot of this stuff doesn't matter. You know, at the end of it all, I'm gonna think more about the people I spent the time with and what we spent that time doing, where we went, those kinds of things. So I think there's just something that's deeply human connecting about it all. But then just to talk specifically about the last 10 years, I mean, the the pandemic was a very big driving factor. So you had uh, you know, experience spend growing and growing and growing, and then all of a sudden you couldn't travel anywhere. And and these tour companies couldn't operate. And I think this did a few things. I think one, it ended up creating this like pent-up demand to just do stuff, go places, uh, this pent-up demand for experiences. But I think also like we talked about having a bucket list, which is I I love that term, but a bucket list becomes a lot more tangible when you're going through a pandemic and you're like, oh man, I I don't know how much longer I've got. So you see, like across generations, um, a lot of people really started shifting their priority spend towards, hey, I don't know how long I got, let's let's take that trip.

Designing For Emotional Impact

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Yeah, for sure. And I that's something that, you know, even the genesis of uh the Travel Trends Podcast was very much post-pandemic, how has travel changed? And I really do believe very strongly that travel has come back different, even though the exception, of course, is that you know, when we were tracking consumer behavior post-pandemic, a lot of people were rushing out to do the trip that they weren't able to do beforehand. So like we actually saw a return to some of the things you'd expect because they needed to, they they still wanted to do that trip to Europe and they wanted to check that off. And I think the the idea of the bucket list is still relevant in the sense of you know people being aware of their mortality, but it's not just the older generation, which we know um, you know, the baby boomers are aging, and you know, half of them are retired and half of them will retire in the next five years. So that's a a major demographic shift that most investors are paying attention to and understanding why travel is uh is growing, um, even when there is concerns about the economy. That was one of the things that always used to stand out to me in my you know 20 plus years in the travel industry is always this correlation between the stock market performance and travel. And as soon as the stock market, if it was, you know, people were getting concerned about their investment portfolio, they'd they'd start traveling less. But you know, we're no longer seeing the same correlations because people are just prioritizing it more and more. So like the the idea of them traveling more and spending more on experiences, and it's it's as you're pointing out, it's not just um I I look at it more as a psychographic than a demographic because you know it doesn't matter what age you are, you're gonna want to have uh experiences. But some of the things I'm I'm really keen to get into with you, Cody, is like the types of experiences that people are choosing. And um and when I was preparing for our conversation, one of the things I always, you know, uh being an entrepreneur as well myself, I'm an eternal optimist. So I'm always, you know, uh approaching things from um um, you know, a very optimistic point of view, but at the same time, I always try and look for kind of pain points or like, you know, why someone wouldn't use it. And one of the things I think about when I give gifts is am I picking the type of experience that I know they're gonna want? Because everyone assumes for like, for example, with me that I would be, that I would love doing um uh like I'm a snorkeler, but I'm not a scuba diver. And people are like, and I'm like, because I'm not comfortable being that deep underwater, I'm not a strong swimmer and I'm a little bit claustrophobic. So like um people are like, oh, if you like everyone assumes I'm a scuba diver. But like, so one of the things that stood out to me when I was preparing for our chat is looking at all the different experiences. And I know you've got more than like, you know, 4,000 different experiences, but also um some of the pain points do you address really up front about giving gifts, which is like you can swap an uh one experience for another, you know, the vouchers never expire, some of these things that like if I'm gonna give someone the gift of a spur experience, I want to make sure that like 90% certain this is what they want. And if it's not exactly what they want, they can get something else. So tell tell us a little bit about how you came about this, the the how the model kind of evolved into what we see today.

SPEAKER_03 18:48

Yeah, it some of these things are absolutely essential that you bring up because you know, uh typically what might classify as gifting an experience is somebody might buy a gift card for a restaurant or for a specific activity for the one rafting company or whatever it might be. And that can go south in a in a variety of ways. You know, the restaurant closes its doors and you're left with a gift card that you can't use. Or, you know, the person that you're gifting it to moved across the country and now they can't use for this very specific tour. So I think that really is a big value add for Spur, but also any any of these companies that are kind of aggregating different experiences as gifts, is the ability to very quickly swap it one for the next. Saw this recently with this couple that had recently gotten married, and they were a very adventurous couple. And one of the things that they received as a gift was bungee jumping. I think in New Zealand, bungee jumping. And they subsequently found out that they were pregnant and were like, yeah, don't want to bungee jump when you're pregnant. And so they said, Hey, we we saw that in our hometown that we there's some kind of couples massage that has like a prenatal aspect to it. Can we swap it for this? And it's just systematic, super easy to do. I think that's just important is that you know, you do your best, you do want it to be personal. You you hope that they're gonna use that, but you don't ultimately want them to be locked into using that. It needs to be really easy to swap one for the next, and we make that very simple. We have um close to a 90% utilization rate of experiences that we sell within the first year of um getting that experience, which a lot of the gift card industry is closer to like 50%. Um, so that ultimately that's what we want is people to go on these experiences, to buy another experience, to gift other people. Um, but you have to make it easy for people to go on them.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Yeah. Well, you bring up something else. Actually, that's an um an important point just to highlight, because I'm actually keen to know the difference between gift cards and gifting experiences, because one of the things that certainly gift card companies rely on is breakage. And so it's another one of those things that's just like to me, that's heartbreaking, the idea that like there is a you know um a solid percentage of people that will never either go to that restaurant or choose to use that gift card to make a purchase. And that's one of the things I've never understood about the traditional gift card market myself, is because I just give someone cash. Like, why give you a hundred or two hundred and fifty dollars in a gift card for somewhere that you might want something for, as opposed to, you know, the the most but but the experience to me suggests that you've given it some thought, some consideration, it's more meaningful. Um, and you also want to do something that uh will uh uh uh create a greater bond and connection to you and that individual because maybe this is an experience that you've had that you want someone else to realize, like you've been bungee jumping, you've heard someone else talking about it, you want to give them that gift. Um so yeah, tell us a little bit about more about some of the the motivations you've seen for uh for gifting. And then I I really want to get into what are how what have been some of the most uh successful experiences you've introduced and and and where you see the most uh also positive feedback where people are just like, I got this. Gift from this company that I hadn't heard from before called Spur Experiences. I went to this trip, and now it's like I'm getting that for everyone I know. That's like, and I'm sure that happens to you guys. It's like I got a Spur Experience gift, and now I'm gonna get it for 10 other people, and that's what I'm gonna do for uh from all my birthday gifts this year.

Personas, Curation, And Top Categories

SPEAKER_03 22:14

Yeah, we we, as you mentioned earlier, we partnered with some really big retailers in the wedding space, the knot, Zola, Joy, three different companies that have like they pretty much own the wedding planning uh space. So couples that are getting married, they'll put on these wedding sites that it's uh, you know, this is where the hotels to stay at, the sketch you know, scheduled events, that kind of thing, and now they're wedding registries. And what we found is it's generally easier to just for the couple to just sell through these big platforms, so it's kind of a one-stop shop. We see that in other cases as well, where um we're on a company called Sendozu, and I know we'll get into it, but with the corporate gifting side of things, where we get a lot of our customers initially through other retailers, so they're just kind of being handed to us, and then it really is our job to make you know, we say um we aim to be a great experience gifting and booking great experiences, so that entire user experience side of seeing what's available with real-time availability, booking it, but then once you go on it, we really think about that post-redemption process. Um, how do we try to get reviews as much as we can? Um, but one of the things that I'm most excited about is the social component because ultimately that's what gifting is, is like the social connection between two people. We've got um this pretty cool uh feature where after you go on it, so if you gifted somebody an experience, they go on it, uh they're sent a reminder that says, Dan gave me this experience. Um, would you like to send him a quick thank you? And the two of them on the food tour together can take a picture, send it your way, and give you that just positive feedback loop that we think creates, you know, more positive relationships, but then selfishly makes it more likely that you're gonna just feel the positive feels there and give somebody else that experience in the future.

Corporate Gifting And Ticketing Flexibility

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yeah. Well, let's get into some. So um, as we're talking about some of those experiences and what ultimately has, I guess, the strongest emotional impact in the case of recipients. Because one of the things that I think about when the difference between giving a, you know, using the example of a wedding gift, going back to our conversation started, and thinking about, you know, examples from my own uh wedding and things you keep in the house, right? Like, and it's just like we and we had a very traditional wedding in a church, and and and part of that was, you know, getting all the gifts to kind of set you up in your home. And I even remember at the time I was kind of pushing back against it, but I was kind of being reminded that that's what people want you want to buy, and they all want to figure out like what you don't have yet. And I definitely still have things that we've not used 20 years later that you know are in a cabinet, um, some crystal glasses that I like, I think one year I decided, like, you know what, this is the year we're gonna use them. Like, let's just start using them because we haven't touched them yet. Yeah, exactly. So there's there's this element. Someone got me a great gift uh last year. It's actually Brendan from Propelic, who's one of our partners over at Travel Trends, and he he he gave me this lovely handwritten card and he gave me a uh one of those photo frames that you know allows you to change the different images, right? So it like, and for me, that was actually a meaningful gift because it really actually for me highlights what I want to share, what I want to see myself, which is all the places we've been. And it's also what I would like my guests to see or like company or family to see, because that's where I put most of my time, energy, money, and focus. So I'm like, I'm happy to for people not only to see them, but also make them conversation pieces, right? So, like, you know, at my house it's covered in images of our travels or um some of the souvenirs we've brought, like handcrafted souvenirs from our travels. So um tell us when it comes to the experiences themselves, what people are like so for me, I guess uh just just to finish on that thought, is that I would way rather give the gift of an experience over a physical good for like and I and one of the reasons I think that would be advantageous, and again, this is your area, not mine, but one of the things that I've certainly learned in my experience in the travel industry is that, and I'll use the example, uh Cody, of uh there's a technology company that works with hotels and they enable them to sell activities. And one of the things they realized on this journey was that initially they were trying to sell hotels on the idea of additional revenue that they could generate as a result of offering activities. What they actually realized is that people who book an activity, in addition to staying at a hotel, end up giving a much higher rating and a review for that hotel because of the halo effect of the fact they stayed at that hotel in London, but they went and had this incredible experience. And then overall they come away from that trip feeling far more joy, satisfaction, and and look more positively at the hotel experience. And that for me is sort of a profound uh marketing idea for businesses to tap into. And I I I I guess so there's a part of me that wonders, Cody, if that applies to someone that you're trying to impress with a gift that like someone's gonna not just look at that piece of China, they're gonna look at the fact they're gonna remember what you gave them and be like, you know what? That was that was you. That was that was one of the best gifts I've ever got. So um to tell us about those gifts themselves. Like, what are those gifts that people have given that have had that type of impact?

SPEAKER_03 27:13

Well, and and just briefly to talk, I mean, you bring up such a good point with the uh importance of the memory on it. So there's a lot of psychology behind experiences. And um, unlike a product as a gift where you're, you know, you might get a little bump in your whatever. Um with experiences, we see happiness at three different points in the process. So one is just like the planning phase, so like in anticipation of it. So when you're planning your travel, you're getting excited about it. Work gets a little bit easier because you know you've got this trip coming up or whatever it might be. Um, but you're getting excited, but you're also uh connecting with whoever you're planning on going on that trip with. Uh, you know, like, hey, I can't wait till we do this, that kind of thing. Um, the second piece is in the moment, like on the experience. It's a blast. Um, but the third piece is um in the memory of it. You just file that away in your memory bank, it shows up on your digital photo that you just kind of mentioned, and it's something that you just kind of keep forever. And so it's experiences are very differentiated from product gifts in that you're getting these like three different times where you're driving up happiness. Um, so that's the first piece. Uh, if I think I may be a little biased, so much of it is so individual, and and it's hard to figure out like how much of this is just my own lens versus everybody else's. But I tend to think that the experiences that are completely new to somebody are the ones that they remember the most. Um, and it doesn't necessarily have to be super expensive. I recently went on one where it was very humane. If we do anything with animals, we make sure we triple check everything. But we we just uh I had a date where we went on a uh feed baby kangaroos. We got to like meet these baby kangaroos and bottle feed them, and that's something I'll never forget. And so I think it's just the uniqueness of it. Um, another really popular one that I got to go on, visited Kauai. One of my favorite experiences of my life is there's a doors-off helicopter tour that we have that takes you by like the Jurassic Park waterfall, if you remember that from the movie. Um, but it's just thrilling, and and kawaii is so beautiful. Anyone that goes on that experience, they are very likely to keep using Spur. And it's it's kind of the halo effect we we aim for as well, is we have thousands of individual operators that are delivering great experiences, and and that's the aim is that they deliver something and then our customers come back to us because they've experienced that themselves.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

Well, and when I think about it, it's interesting you mentioned that example with uh Hawaii because my um producer of the podcast, uh Zach, who many of our listeners know, runs dinosaur trips. So for sure he's gonna he's gonna like that part. And I got him um some dinosaur gifts for um uh for his his his last birthday. And like this this is when you're trying to figure out right who to get what for. That's one of the things that I I was also when I was navigating your website. I'm sure many people, as we're having this conversation, will be on spur experiences.com and just you know uh um checking out some of the things we're talking about. One of the things that stood out to me is like, you know, you have the types of experiences, so like things from like animals uh to like health and wellness, like uh even water sports, like so to trying to figure out what is it that you know someone is is into. And and for me, um and then the kind of gift ideas, like I'm not an adrenaline junkie. I know that's a big, you know, when people think of adventure, they often think of what we think what we often refer to in the industry as like hard adventure as opposed to soft adventure. I'm much more, you know, I'm much more into the experience and cuisine and community, and so I'm much more of a a globetrotter or even a foodie. And I know you have those sort of classifications as well, as far as trying to figure out you know what you're gonna give for. What what do you see as being like the kind of your you know your big three or big five that people tend to gravitate towards and have the most positive feedback?

Milestones, Bucket Lists, And Timing

SPEAKER_03 31:03

Yeah, you're absolutely right. We have like 150 like specific categories of experiences, and that gets to be just a little difficult to shop through because it's just so specific. So that's things like kayak tours or beer making experiences, like highly specific. And so what we started to find is it's really important to think about again, there's such a human element here. What is the persona? What is the identity of that person that likes these different things? So we identified like eight different personas. Um, you mentioned a few of them. I think um Globetrotters is definitely one of them. We get people that love travel and they just want to experience culture, food, um, whatever it is to be to see and to experience when you go to those places. So that's a huge one. Uh adrenaline junkies is another big one, but I think foodies, and we kind of uh classify people that you know love wine in the foodies category, but we have some really great food tours. I know some of my favorites, uh Secret Food Tours is one of our big partners, and they're really cool because they, you know, they they find not just the overly beaten path of what restaurants to go to, but but kind of like the insider knowledge of the specific menu item you want to, you know, try out at these different restaurants, so much so that people that actually live in those cities can get a lot of them just going at one of these secret food tours. Um, so that's one that's kind of classifies as foodies. We have uh fitness and like health and wellness one, Zen Masters. Um, a lot of people are into that these days. I I personally love going to uh like sauna and cold plunge and doing a lot of those things. Uh so yeah, I think it just kind of starts with and it helps the shopping process is to say it's a cross-section of location and what's your persona? You're in Toronto and you're a foodie. Great. We can help you really kind of isolate experiences that they may like.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Yeah, and the other thing, because obviously the reason I wanted to uh discuss that is I'm I was, you know, when I'm first looking at spur experiences.com and thinking about it from my own personal perspective. I'm I'm because like like like any of us, you're you're motivated by self-interest. So the first thing I'm initially looking for is what would I like to do, right? That's just like so knowing that I could purchase an experience for myself or for my wife or my family. So I'm kind of initially shopping for myself, and then my mind was kind of going with, oh, this would actually be really a great gift for um well for Zach or for someone else in my in my world if I'm looking to get a gift. So so you obviously have the marketplace, you have the instant booking option that uh people can choose to just book an experience for themselves. Um but in terms of the gifting part, I know we talked a little bit about wedding registries. Um the one other area that I think that would be a great opportunity, I think about like I got our all of our travel trends team members a gift. Um and I always get people, yeah, I'm always big on birthdays and I'm always big on holidays, and like I always think it's such an important thing to get people gifts and meaningful gifts, which again is one of the reasons I want to have those conversations. But I I don't I think of that, I mean it's technically corporate gifts if I'm giving them to team members. Um, but I I that that's one of the things for me. It's like, what do you give someone that like um that you work with? And it's just like you know, another coffee mug or like uh like so, especially people like you know, even trying to buy your your boss a gift, like you buy them a bottle of wine, like it's like so uh tell us a little bit about corporate gifting. I'm keen to know how that works uh uh from your experience. What what what appeals to people for corporate gifting? And what where where are you seeing that work?

SPEAKER_03 34:29

This is another one that really we kind of tripped over uh because the market demanded it. So there are some similar to the wedding industry where you've got these big kind of planning sites like the knot, Zola, Joy. Uh, one of the fastest growing industries is corporate gifting, really big in Europe, starting to get some pretty good traction in the US. So we're partnering with a company called Sendozu, which is one of these, and they're really good about they do a lot of the things of managing even the messaging to say, hey, kudos on that project that you guys just delivered, really, really good there. But one of the aspects is they have corporate gifting on there. And you know, it could be anything from plaques and mugs to tailor-made golf clubs to you know, different things like that. But what we found is if you think about it, if your company bonused you say$500, great, nobody's ever gonna turn down money, you should always pay people what they're worth, and then some. But it's not something that actually creates a memory, it doesn't create um once it hits your bank account, you you generally don't remember it. Whereas that same company says, We are going to do you know, this suite at some concert event or something like that, and where we can all kind of team build or whatever it might be. Um they found that this is the type of thing that creates just a stronger connection with employees, but also more longevity within the company. Um, so since some of this data started coming out, we've been approached by a lot of these corporate gifting platforms saying, hey, we want people to be able to gift their sales targets, their employees, their, you know, whatever it might be, um, experiences. One of the most popular categories for that with us is sporting event tickets, which is notoriously so hard to gift because it's so specific. Do you know what team they like? Do you know what event date they can go to, what's their seat preferences? And so we've created a model where we have a ticketing integration similar to StubHub or anything, where you could just kind of generically say, I want to gift you New York Knicks tickets, and then they receive that. They later go on to choose the specific game and seats directly on our website. So it really balances that like you're giving them something meaningful, but they're able to have the flexibility to choose what specifically works for them. I'm hugely excited about corporate gifting, though. I think it it combines a fast-growing industry of corporate gifting with a fast-growing industry of tours and experiences as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

I guess the one thing we have to be mindful of of corporate gifts is music concerts like cold play. That would be like that might be a career limiting move. If you give that to the CEO and the head of HR, that would be a good example of a gift to avoid.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

Yeah. That's a great point. We need to we need to strip out any cold play off the uh off the website.

Seasonal Gifting And Occasion Guides

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Oasis? I know Oasis is good, but uh yeah, cold play. Um but but so but in terms of the corporate gift, because I'm asking this genuinely because I'm I'm actually keen to know um like what the type of gifts. You know, I specifically obviously sporting events. So um but if people are trying to put uh reward programs in place, that's one of the things that I think, you know, um I've seen so many companies that have these very kind of standard and tired, like, you know, you've worked there for a year, you work there for five years, and it's just like you get a pen, you get a watch, and it's like um, and I was like after 10 years, you got a it was a one of the companies that I was uh working within was like uh after 10 years, you get a$250 gift certificate to use to a lodge, and it was like everyone was working their way towards that. It was, yeah, it was literally the pen watch, and then this like or it was two nights, two nights at uh at a lodge, and I was just like, start with that. Like it's just like you know what? I can like give someone the gift of getting away. And that was always like I worked at Lonely Planet, my boss had given us um as a reward for um we actually got to stay at this um it was like an Airbnb ahead of its time, but like the idea was like we we were given the gift of a getaway and it was amazing. And I came back feeling like motivated, inspired, and I kind of realized like this is actually incredibly beneficial to the employer because I'm now like I've like it, but it definitely felt me it made me more loyal, it felt me more connected to the company. Um so tell me a bit about that because I'm like, as opposed to just a one-off gift, it's like how are you seeing companies in the corporate giving actually kind of building in more of like a reward-based program though where they just you know the idea is that you get this is your first Spur experience and the value goes up over time. Um yeah, are you seeing that?

SPEAKER_03 38:57

Yeah, it's it's to be completely transparent. It's it's pretty new for this space is for us, but we have. We've started working with a couple companies that said every year they want to have this much of a budget that goes through Spur just for an experience budget. Get out there as part of, I mean, they're thinking about it more along their total health package of uh, you know, so many people are working from home these days, and there's just disconnected from the real world, from uh, you know, for some people getting outside. You know, so we're hearing a lot more from that. We're developing programs that are just that that for somebody in their first year, it's this much that goes to this budget. And it becomes a selling point through the recruitment process, but it also becomes retention, and it also becomes this uh, like you said, it it leads to you're more productive typically when you're refresh, when you get back from vacation, whatever it might be. So those are some of the ideas. Very new, but we do have we're meeting with uh a company that's a lodging company right now, and they say we absolutely absolutely believe in travel. Uh, we want to have it as part of our standard program that they have a budget every year, our employees do, to get out and go do whatever experience they want to do.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Interesting. And so um the other one I want to go back to is the consumer gifting for a moment, too. Is that them because one of the big motivations is milestones. We used to have this idea of celebration travel. So when consumers are booking a trip, uh perfect example of that is gonna be Africa. Like almost all trips to Africa are celebration travel. They are honeymoons, they're uh retirement parties, they're 50th birthdays. It's like it's it's milestone moments. And so um, and that's when you're obviously you're also gonna spend uh more significant amount on someone. Um so what are some of the trends that you see when it comes to consumer gifting with that in mind? With like and I guess I'm specifically asking, what are some of the great experience gifts to give someone for a milestone uh um birthday or a milestone event?

AI Matching, Supply Strategy, And Quality

SPEAKER_03 40:59

Yeah, it it we do see that. We see uh you know, people talking about graduations, people talking about retirements. We had joked around a little bit earlier about I mean, we see people that are doing like divorce gifts. Let's go out and do that thing you've been wanting to do. So there are these big life milestones, absolutely, that the bigger the milestone, the you know, the more extravagant I think the gift is and the experience itself. Um, a lot of those seem to be the bigger adventure, either a bigger adventure one or something that really is on that bucket list. Like they always wanted to see the Coliseum. So we have like the exclusive VIP access to the Coliseum. A lot of that is either anchored in some bucket list, kind of scary adventure that I was always wanted to do, or it's anchored in that destination I wanted to go to, but I want to do it right. Um, I'm you know, if I'm gonna go to Stonehenge, I want to make sure that I've got this super cool transportation to get there and back. Um but it I think it really does tie to that bucket list idea of this is something that I've just thought about for the longest time. I've hit this turning of the chapter, and it it's time to celebrate in this kind of way.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Well, the other thing I was also keen to know, and I think about giving a gift. A lot of time I'm buying a gift at the last minute, but I don't know that that's um um and it's certainly in my own experience, sometimes when I'm traveling, I'm booking things at the last minute. But uh, but I guess it wouldn't always be the case that someone is going to take advantage of a last minute type experience. I would I'm keen to know when it comes to um whether it's you know buying something last minute or even trying to look at some like some um last minute availability, where does that factor in? Or is it the case that more often people are buying, you know, they're buying them knowing that someone's going to do it in the next uh three months, six months, and twelve months? I don't, you know, I'm asking this because I'm actually genuinely curious. I know travel booking cycles quite well, and especially when people are purchasing for themselves, how long they time to like make their research and then um and then that does, you know, the decision phase, the booking phase, the travel, and then returning back. What does that look like when it comes to gifting and the idea of actually giving experiences? Are you seeing people buying them ahead of time, knowing that, you know, and and what does that booking window look like for the person on the other end that's receiving it? Is it something they're doing in the next three months? Is it something they're doing in the next 12 months?

SPEAKER_03 43:23

It depends on the channel. Uh with weddings, we tend to see where people are registering for gifts anywhere from six to eighteen months before their wedding. And then a lot of times they're using it pretty quickly after their wedding. The majority of the gifts happen within about a month to two months leading up to the wedding itself. So they're starting the the person that ends up saying what they want to do, the recipient, they're starting to plan that way ahead of time, along with their honeymoon. Um, they end up receiving the gifts, maybe we'll say a month before the wedding and a month before they're gonna use it, and then they get on. And they can just, like you said, we we have integrations with a dozen different res tech platforms where they can see real-time availability that's standardized depending on what the platform is. Um, so they can see their their real-time availability. Outside of weddings, um, it's interesting because one of the nice things about Booking Experience is you can buy last minute. We got the last holiday season, we got a lot of purchases where you don't have to go to the mall, where you just jump on the website and you can buy that voucher, knowing they've got this trip planned at some point this upcoming year or whatever it might be. And if it doesn't pan out, they can exchange it for something else. We see a lot of last-minute gift buying relative to holidays, because it's it's great for procrastinators, frankly. Um, but then their booking of redeeming that gift, it follows what I think are pretty traditional kind of travel planning schedules. So if you're gonna buy them a gift, they're gonna typically want to know what they're doing at least a month before the actual uh trip comes up. Just something to keep in mind. It can be hard to buy a gift for somebody if you're like, oh, they leave tomorrow for you know, wherever they're going to, Argentina, and I'm gonna try to buy them a gift that they can use on there. It tends to not work out too well when they do that.

Global Footprint And Growth Priorities

SPEAKER_01 45:17

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I I actually really like talking about events and how like because I've learned a lot over my time, certainly being married, but also having uh a family. And I'll give you an exact example that might be interesting for our audience, and I'm hope I'm not oversharing here. But um, when it comes to events like Valentine's Day, I always think of Valentine's Day as a gift between, you know, it's a romantic gift between partners. But I've actually, um, since the time my wife and I have been together, our in-laws have always given us a gift on Valentine's Day. They've that's always kind of been instilled to them that they're like, you know, they like um and typically it's you know will be like a restaurant reservation or like uh or wine or something like that. But they they will always do a Valentine's gift, and it's one of the things I think about with our kids um um who are now in university is one of the things actually I want to continue on is like give a gift for Valentine's as an example. But I but I'm always um I guess remiss at try like it's one of the things you learn sometimes by your elders or sometimes by experience to be like, hey, that's a great idea. You didn't have it yourself, but like if when it comes to an event like that, so using Valentine's as as an as a for instance, because you mentioned the holidays, but like or even Thanksgiving, like what would be a good gift-giving guide? So like if you wanted to give someone a gift, whether it's the partners or you know, give a a couple a gift of a Valentine's, what what would stand out to you as um because that would be one of the things I would be looking for to be like and maybe there's a maybe there's a section for that, but like yeah, what would be a good Valentine's experience?

SPEAKER_03 46:37

Yeah, some of the most popular ones it i include, I mean it's the more romantic things. We have different winery trips, that kind of thing. We have couples massages, um, hot springs getaways, a lot of those things that make good dates, I think are are the ones uh cooking classes is another example. Um I think it can be kind of fun too on a more casual basis. We have some that are more um this is probably oversimplifying it, but the things like uh you know, the bowling date or whatever it might be, especially for the younger crowd. We have like games and activities as a category. Um so it just kind of depends on on that piece, but anything that makes a good date, I I generally think makes a uh a good gift for Valentine's Day. I love any of the spa health and wellness. Like under ours, if if gifts and like Zen Masters, it's uh it's got everything that's really kind of spa related under that. I think that tends to be a just a really good way of connecting with somebody.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Yeah, for sure. No, I definitely like the spa experience, but the one you just pointed out too is a winery one because that's one that I've not done before, but that's something that I know I personally enjoy. Is there over the course of a calendar year, aside from you know the holiday period and then um Valentine's, what are some other key dates for consumers uh when they're when they buy experiences? Is is Thanksgiving an example of that? What what else would stand out to you? Obviously, birthdays when we've talked about some of the milestones, but is there any other key events over the course of a calendar year where you see uh uh a holiday being a great gift-giving for experience?

SPEAKER_03 48:14

It's interesting. So, our business uh close to 50% of gifts given happen between Thanksgiving and like the first week of January. It's crazy amount. So, some of ours we're not so uh seasonal because then we actually are counter-cyclical to that with weddings. So, like 80% of weddings happen between May 1st and November 1st. So it kind of creates this um piece that fits together. But you know, Valentine's is big. Uh, you'll see a lot of Mother's Day, uh, Father's Day gifts, and and some that will do promotions that run at that those times of years. And again, Mother's Day, a lot of the spa stuff, a lot of just kind of how do you pamper mom type of thing. And you know, dad sporting events tends to be a big one for that time of year. But graduation gifts around then as well. Summers are are all about weddings, and then it a big part of ours is just birthdays, which are kind of just obviously sprinkled out throughout the year. But experiences make an awesome birthday present.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

Yeah, for sure. And and obviously, one of the things there, I mean, experiences are deeply personal, and so you obviously need to know someone fairly well, and also, you know, and and and even as we were just chatting, was I'm looking through the website trying to figure out what would work for me or my family or as a gift. Um, and I talked a little bit about you know how I've seen things organized, but when it actually comes to guiding people to make that right decision, as we've been highlighting, how do you guys go about that? And I'm just genuinely curious whether, you know, if you're using any uh AI or recommendation engines to kind of match gift givers with some of the uh the tailored experiences. So tell us a little bit about how that works so that when people are checking out spur experiences.com and trying to figure out what's for them and what's for others, um, what you guys are doing in the back end, in the front end for the user experience, and ultimately um uh uh try to make sure that it's it's simple, enjoyable, and and you're getting people what they want.

Awareness, Influencers, And Social Proof

SPEAKER_03 50:02

Yeah. Yeah, we're AI is fascinating in the travel space. I'm sure you've covered that quite a bit. Uh one of the ways that we start on the very front end is just sourcing experiences. We use AI to say, what is the trending new locations to visit? What are the activity types that are really popping up these days? Who are some of the ideal uh operators that we don't have yet on our platform? So we use AI to do a lot of the sourcing on the very front end. But then when it comes to the customer side, our experiences are tagged with what types of uh gifts that they seem to work for. And what I mean by that is there's uh the event itself that this makes a good wedding gift or this makes a good corporate gift or whatever it might be. Then they're tagged with the location, which is always everybody starts with location filtering. You know, I mean, you even if you get the perfect gift, if it's something that they're not, you know, in the same city, it's it's not gonna do them any good. Um but then also down to the uh experience level, what are we we use AI to map out what experience is similar to another experience? And so ultimately, if you start browsing one, our back-end AI engine will basically say, uh, based on what this person's going for, we think this is it'll feed them other recommendations that they think matches it pretty closely. So it just makes that shopping experience easier and easier. But most of that is on those three things location, um, experience type and um event or celebration type.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Got it. And I I'm given you've got such a diverse mix of options, is the more the focus on is there uh experiences you're still looking to add to the platform that you guys are, you know, when you're getting feedback from um from clearly you you know your business has been around for 12 years and like you've got a lot of repeat customers. So like is there new areas you're pushing into, or is more the focus is just improving the guest experience and matchmaking, or is it actually expanding the inventory? Because I know you already have a significant amount. So yeah, tell us a little bit, I guess, where you're where you're headed in 2026 and beyond.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

Yeah, so in the past it's all been, you know, you always want quality, but it has been a big volume push. We're we're now in 80 countries, we're actually up to over 8,000 experiences. Uh more going forward, what we're really trying to do is just uh focus on two things. One, rounding out markets. So again, we use AI to evaluate our own market relative to what you might see on a trip advisor or Viator you had mentioned before. Um, where do we have any kind of gaps based on like making sure that we have a full catalog in any of these locations? So it's really strategically going and looking for like a gap analysis there. Um, but the other thing is just any kind of differentiated experience, something that's you know, the new hot experience that people want to try that is getting consistently. We're able to pull in the reviews it's getting off of different sites, and we can see on Airbnb or TripAdvisor, whoever it might be, this experience type is getting five stars consistently. We need to use that to go get a differentiated experience. So we went from like a 50-50 quality and quantity mix in terms of our focus to really just saying, let's round out markets, let's add differentiated high-value experiences to our portfolio in 2026.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

Well, yeah, you bring up a really interesting point there, and I think it's a really um a key one for our global listeners to understand is that where these apply to, because uh clearly I was thinking about it even myself from a North American perspective and looking at, and there's clearly destinations around the world, but um tell us a little bit about who the audience is today, like where your customers currently are, and and also where you're expanding to by virtue of having experiences you know globally and in so many countries.

SPEAKER_03 53:45

Yeah, majority of our customers, so probably about 75% is US and Canada, is uh where the customer lives. So we can obviously track uh like billing address, and that's where most of them are. But the majority, I don't know about the majority, but a very big chunk of our experiences are purchased in Europe. Europe's really popular. Growing tends to be uh Caribbean and uh Asia Pacific, including Australia and um New Zealand. But we we certainly need uh bigger focus on how do we reach customers that live in these places, not just the customers that live in the US and are traveling to those places. And that's something that we're you know kind of strategically meeting about is how do we get those customers that actually live there as well. But yeah, most of our sales happen to people that are from US or Canada.

SPEAKER_01 54:38

Right. And I think that's where from a global point of view, I mean we've got listeners of 125 countries, certainly, you know, most of our listeners are in North America, but I think that you know, as uh we see trends, and obviously that's a big focus of our show, and one of the things I'm I'm keen to ask you about next is some of the uh the trends you're seeing in uh in the the world of uh experiences and gifting. But like the you know, it certainly is more and more the case that you know um whether it's Europe or Australia, New Zealand, um Asia, like this just you know, I see this as you know a um, you know, there's a strong human desire to have experiences that's cross-cultural, right? So it's like, you know, this may be something that is primarily you know in the US today, but you know, there is global opportunity for spur experiences, which I'm sure you're you're have ambitions and are thinking about. But um tell us a little bit beyond the I guess the geography and the type of customer, um, how you see this evolving, like the uh the experience economy, this kind of uh new relatively new form of of gifting, even though I say you've been around for 12 years, but you know, where do you where do you see this headed, whether it be with the weddings or workplaces, um with travelers that are definitely seek seeking connection over you know consumer products? Uh tell us a little bit about where you see this industry headed in the next coup uh few years.

Travel Advisors And Partnerships

SPEAKER_03 55:55

Well, it's interesting because you do have an established preference towards gifting or spending money on experiences instead of products. But we just have in in our industry, it's really just an awareness challenge of just saying this is available as an option. You already know that you would prefer an experience, but most customers don't know, okay, what do I do with that? Where do I gift somebody an experience through? How does it work? All these things. So I think that's what it largely is going to be over the next several years is um get better aligned through awareness of um matching what people's interests are of spending money or receiving gifts on experiences to what they're actually given. So that's largely, I mean, that's on us. That's something that we need to tackle. I think some of those other things that are really exciting for me, we um influencer marketing is becoming more and more important all around. And uh, you know, I saw this stat that said for uh people that are the demographic 21 to 35, TikTok is a bigger buyer referral platform than Google is. So whereas you or I are you know people a little bit more gray um in our beards, they uh we we would never even think of that. We uh we search Google and and we go that way. Um for these younger demographics, they are learning through TikTok, through influencers. So we've launched uh an influencer program. We have something like a hundred different influencers signed up where we comp them experiences um in exchange for them to share to their audience to help us with that awareness lift and to create just really high value content. Um so I think that's where it's headed. I do think the retail shops, us, or if you're getting to just more traditional OTAs like a Biator are really important because it's hard to comparative shop um two different experiences. If I'm looking at two different rafting companies, you know, they're structured in different ways. This one has instant booking, this one doesn't. It makes it really, really challenging. Part of our job is to, you know, normalize all of that data, make the shopping experience, the comparative shopping much easier for the consumer, but also to pull in rich media content, really good videos, um, link it to the influencer that's already been on it. So you just get the social proof. Um, so these are all things that we're working on, but I think it all comes down to like that deeper human connection of experiences, but also the social involvement of it all. Um really excited for some of these opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 58:29

Yeah, it's really interesting. Um, one of the things that I was uh certainly thinking about when I was preparing for our conversation and looking at the website and just understanding your marketing and positioning, one of the things that um had stood out to me was distribution. It was like, um is this available for travel agents, for example? And so, you know, you you obviously work with distribution partners that you've um like Zola, the knot, and like so those are and even retail, like how do you get this in front of people? Um, certainly with weddings, um, with corporate groups, that type of thing. Um where does travel agents stand in this? Like, are they is there an opportunity for travel agents to be able to resell or to be able to um earn commissions on uh Spur experiences?

SPEAKER_03 59:10

Yeah, there is. So we we've got a few of those set up already. So with travel agents, uh we earn a commission that's pretty standard commission of that is you know, any market from Airbnb to TripAdvisor for selling an experience. We split that evenly with any um travel agent that ends up selling our experiences. And we have some pretty cool dashboards that we can do if it's a big enough agency where it'll basically say co-branded. When you log in, you'll see their logo next to our logo, and um any of the sales that happened through that kind of um shop, we end up uh sharing the commissions with those travel agents. So, yeah, that's absolutely something that we do.

How To Start Gifting Experiences

SPEAKER_01 59:50

Yeah, I just wanted to make sure I highlighted that because obviously, you know, uh given our B2B audience and you know my background and a lot of the travel advisors that listen to the podcast, as well as consortia groups and travel agencies that you know are seeing more and more interest in this. So um because as soon as you mentioned influencers, obviously it's a very similar idea. Like the influencers are you know, in many ways the modern conduit that leads someone to a direct purchase. They see something that someone's posted on TikTok, and the first thing is, and we all know this because you know you see an experience someone else has had and you want that yourself. You're like, oh, you've you know, you know, you then discover that, oh, wait a second, where did they book that or what experience were they on? And then you uh you find out about something and you and you and you book it. There's an immediacy there with social commerce. Um, but then there's also the traditional channels, which um I think a lot of uh companies miss the opportunity to actually engage with traditional travel advisors who are as relevant today as ever, and more so in many cases, especially for you know um luxury products or for products that require a bit more education and um and a bit more hand holding. Um one of the other things I wanted to call out too that stood out to me was the fact that with your wedding registries, you also work with charities, and that's something that is very meaningful to me because when you're going through a wedding, it's also a time of great abundance. And sometimes, you know, there's an element that is like that you are, you know, um, and the whole idea of giving, again, I've I've always been interested in companies like Tom Shoes or this like give one, get one. It's like, you know, that you actually just genuinely feel better about the decisions you're making. And so I thought that was actually a really interesting standout that I guess 5% of the sales of any couple's registry will go to the charity they've selected. Um and I just wanted to call that out specifically because I was intrigued by uh the charities you've partnered with. So um uh so yeah, anyway, uh I just thought I'd showcase that and share that myself. But yeah, is there anything else along those lines, uh, Cody, that would be interesting for our audience to know about Spur experiences, about where you guys are and where you're headed?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:48

Yeah, the the charity thing is is definitely a personal thing for me as well. It's uh how do you create something that doesn't, you know, just do well, but it does good. Um, I think it's an interesting uh application the way we've done it, because a lot of times you kind of force uh a business almost forces the charity to go through one very specific cause or organization. We try to open that up so yeah, we have hundreds of charities that have their own charity account on our site. And for wedding couples, you're absolutely right. It's a time of abundance, but I think it's also time to just kind of establish this is what's meaningful in our lives as part of the couple's wedding story. So I really like that aspect. Um but no, I think spur uh a lot of the things we've talked about, trying to create a platform that is a great experience, gifting and booking great experiences, and very open to the potential distribution partners. We've worked with the wedding companies, we've worked with the corporate gifting parties uh companies, excuse me, and and we've we're also the same thing. We work with travel companies, and just how do we bring better experiences as part of um the consumer journey as part of their trips, that kind of thing. So 100% totally open to that. Um love our distribution partners. And and what's nice about us, we're small enough business in terms of we don't have a lot of outside investors or anything like that, that we can get really creative with these partnerships. So I would just share that as well as um to any of your listeners if if there's something that we should sit down and and just kind of chop it up over, see if there's an opportunity here. Always very open to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:31

Yeah, for sure. I mean, that uh certainly one of the things that uh had stood out to me is actually speaking directly to them, um to travel advisors, because I know uh all the travel advisors listening to this, this is you know, questions they're getting asked because they have such deep relationships with these travelers and they get to know them so well and they know their kids and they know their families, and they, you know, they're the ones that can also say, you know what you should do, get them the gift of an experience for their graduation, and next thing you know, they'll be booking this trip because they want to do a small group trip or like so, you know, um yeah, I definitely think there's growth potential there. It's exciting to see where you know where your business has gotten to and where you are and where you're headed. I I have a few last questions for you that I want to make sure that I I highlight to um our audience around the types of experiences they should consider gifting. I know I've touched on this a bit, but I want to I want to know some of your favorites and some of your stunt notes. Um so for someone who's never gifted an experience before, what would be your advice to them to get started?

Personal Favorites And Lasting Memories

SPEAKER_03 1:04:28

I would 100% say either Spur or one of the other gifting sites. It it's so much we make it easy to gift this way. We make it easy to transfer one from the next. Vouchers, not just with us, but other some of our competitors, um, vouchers don't expire. Uh we make it really, really easy so you don't give the customer something that they ultimately can't use. So I would say it really does, it is in the best interest of the recipient to go through one of these kind of big retail uh platforms for gifting. Um, and then the second piece is uh just take a crack at it. I mean, uh, whatever you think it might be, there's some that almost everybody enjoys. I I nearly everybody enjoys some of these cool food tours that we do where you get explore the city and eat some good food along the way. That's not a hard one to hit. Um but uh I I would say those are some of the the the quickest. You don't have to overthink it, you don't have to worry too much about I need to get this very specific experience for somebody, because some of these are broad interests, and even if you miss, there's a really easy way for them to you know exchange it for something that they like.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:34

For sure. And then these two are personal questions, and they're very much intended to be that, which is on the platform, and I know this first one's gonna be a little difficult for you because you have to um you know support all your partners. But is there one particular experience that you have had personally from the collection you offer that was most meaningful or kind of the biggest standout for uh uh for you?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:56

Most meaningful. I mentioned that Hawaii one earlier. That was just jaw dropping, but I'd say another one that was similar is I did waterfall repelling in Costa Rica, uh, over by like Lake Ar and all. And we happened to be doing it on like an Easter Sunday, and it was just one of these things where you're going repelling down this cliff and the water's hitting you in the face. Uh it was just it was magical. I love Costa Rica. Anybody that has a chance to get down there or really any anywhere in Central America that's safe enough, it's a beautiful part of the world. So that's a big one. And another one that is our most popular experience across our entire catalog is Iron Mountain Hot Springs up in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Beautiful, relaxing. You get they have all these individual hot springs pools, and it's right on the river with the mountains and the sunset, and you can get a cocktail delivered right to your uh little swimming pool. So that one for anybody that's visiting Colorado or lives in Colorado, Iron Mountain Hot Springs is can't miss.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:00

Very cool. And then when it comes to actually gifting for someone, because I I've been to Costa Rica and I um I love to trip to Costa Rica. I've not repelled down a waterfall, so I'm actually that intrigues me. But it also made me think about what I might want to get someone else. Because you know, when I hear that it had a meaningful impact on you, it might not be something that I've done myself, but it's like so when it comes to something you have gifted to someone you love, what what has been a standout? Because I'm sure being in this business for as long as you have, the first instinct you have for giving a gift is like, wait a second, I'm gonna give you an experience. So from uh from your experience of giving experiences, what were the biggest highlights that you that you would suggest other people pay attention to or just really were special for you that you gave as a gift as opposed to took yourself?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:44

Probably the the one that will always come to mind for me is uh in my family, we grew up big sports fans. And we uh my dad coached our our basketball team, and we would play, we'd wait for him to get home from work, and then we would play basketball in the driveway together. We'd watch. I grew up in Denver, so 1980s Denver Nuggets basketball teams playing. And through Spur, we ended up getting Denver Nuggets tickets to the game where they won the championship a couple years ago. But we took my dad and it was this full circle moment for us where he had you know introduced us to basketball so many years before, and my brother and I are there with my dad, uh, you know, celebrating the championship. So that's just across all gift giving. We did get it off spur because we do have that ticketing integration, but it that's something I'll never forget.

Where To Find Spur And Closing

SPEAKER_01 1:08:34

No, that's really cool. That's special, and that that that to me ultimately is like whenever someone, you know, I started this podcast with my dad, um, um, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. One of the things that most of our listeners know is that, you know, in losing my dad, one of the things that came about was this show. And it's obviously it's part of uh, in some ways, I see it's um um the gift that he gave to me during that time was the fact that it created this opportunity. And um, and but but the reason I highlight that is more that during that time, what we reflected on was the trips that we took, the shared memories that we had, because we were living in LA at the time, and he had done this trip to visit us, and we had gone to go and visit this restaurant that was it featured in the TV show, that he was really key. And we we got the right table on the right evening, and like it was one of those weeks where like everything just worked out really well, and we had so many highlights from that week, and we reflected on that. And I was uh and so for me, what I'm sharing there uh for all of our listeners in you know this year that I've coined the transformative travel year in 2026, and a big reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you, Cody, is that I think that those when we think about uh longevity and we think about uh legacy and we think about you know that savoring all the time that we have, you know, not making holidays just one week a year that you look forward to. You you mentioned something that's really interesting. You mentioned quite a few interesting things on our discussion, but one in particular was when you highlighted the fact that you're it's almost like your happiness quotient goes up as soon as you have a trip planned. You're instantly living in that moment that you're looking forward to because there's an element of like, oh my goodness, I cannot wait for that trip. But rather than living in suspense, the idea that you have something to look forward to each week, each month, uh like whether it's an experience you take in your hometown or you have a weekend getaway. And so for me, I I think that uh uh the giving the gift of experiences is what people should be prioritizing. And I'm excited where you've gotten to with this business. So on that note, Cody, let's make sure all of our listeners know where to find out more information about spur experiences. I know I mentioned the website, but what would be some of the best ways for uh for partners or for potential customers to engage with you and the team?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:36

Yeah, everything really driven through our website. So that's just again spur experiences.com. So that's spur, like spur of the moment, spur experiences.com. And we do quite a bit on Instagram, but uh TikTok's actually our biggest channel. So I think it's spur.experiences. You'll find us on TikTok, uh, really posting a lot of content of people going on these experiences so you can see a really good preview of uh what might interest you. So yeah, always open to new partners, whether it be new experience partners that we can sell through our site or uh just kind of distribution partners as well. Uh wide open to it and looking forward to what this year has to bring.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:15

Terrific. Yeah, I don't follow you guys on TikTok yet, so I will do that because I think you know a short form video and getting a sense of the actual experience is so uh so valuable. But um uh no, I really uh really appreciate the conversation we've had, Cody. I certainly wish you and the team every success in 2026 and beyond. I look forward to keeping in touch. But thanks again for joining us for being a part of this spotlight episode, and I look forward to seeing you at some point over the course of the year.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:37

Well, thank you, Dan. It's been an absolute joy talking to you today, and I'm I'm glad that we connected.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:42

I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Cody Sudmeyer, the founder and CEO of Spur Experiences. Thanks again, Cody, for joining us and sharing your perspectives on where gifting and transformational travel are headed in 2026 and beyond. And thanks again to everyone for listening and spending this time with us. If today's conversation sparked some ideas for you about how you can plan to travel, celebrate, or gift differently, be sure to check out spur experiences.com to learn more about what Cody and his team are building. You can also find additional highlights, clips, and insights from this episode across all our social channels YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. So make sure you're following along there. And don't forget to check out more travel trends spotlight episodes on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or anytime at Traveltrendspodcast.com slash spotlights. Thanks again for listening. We really appreciate you being part of our community. Until next time, safe travels.