Travel Trends with Dan Christian
Welcome to our Travel Trends Podcast, the #1 B2B global travel podcast for professionals shaping the future of travel.
Hosted by Dan Christian, this show features candid conversations with global travel leaders, startup founders, tourism boards, hospitality executives, and technology innovators. Together they explore the ideas, innovations, and strategies driving the next era of travel.
Whether you're building a travel startup, leading a destination, scaling a hospitality brand, or new to the industry, you’ll gain actionable insights and real-world perspectives from the leaders redefining the global travel economy.
Travel Trends with Dan Christian
Live Event Recording: The Rise of Agentic AI
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Recorded live at Intrepid Travel’s Toronto headquarters during Toronto Tech Week, this special Travel Trends episode moves beyond AI hype to explore what agentic AI in travel actually looks like when it meets the complexity of the real world.
Co-hosted by Dan Christian, Host of the Travel Trends Podcast, and Christian Wolters, President Canada and GM, North America Marketing at Intrepid Travel, the discussion brings together leaders working at the front lines of AI adoption across the travel industry.
Jeff Kischuk, Co-founder and CEO of Tripian, shares how AI agents are helping transform disconnected spreadsheets, PDFs, emails, and legacy databases into actionable intelligence that can create faster, more accurate, and highly personalized itineraries at scale. Drawing on real-world implementations, including work with a major Japanese travel brand, Jeff explains what it takes to move from AI experimentation to operational value.
Brian Tossan, Chief Technology Officer at Toronto Pearson International Airport, offers a fascinating look at AI applications behind the scenes of one of North America's busiest airports. From monitoring kiosk performance across massive terminals to improving operational resilience, reducing disruptions, and strengthening cybersecurity, Brian highlights how agentic AI is already supporting critical infrastructure in ways most travelers never see.
A common theme emerges throughout the conversation: orchestration. AI agents are only as effective as the systems, data, governance, and workflows that power them. The panel explores the challenges of trust, data sovereignty, authorization, and accountability, while also examining where human expertise remains essential.
The discussion also explores Intrepid’s approach to "human-led, AI-enabled" customer experiences, the future of biometrics and frictionless travel, and where the industry must strike the right balance between automation and human connection.
More than a conversation about technology, this live event examines what it will take for travel companies to successfully operationalize AI at scale. The result is a practical, candid discussion about the opportunities, challenges, and decisions facing travel leaders as agentic AI moves from concept to reality.
We're grateful to host this event in partnership with our incredible sponsors:
Toronto Pearson International Airport
Toronto Pearson International Airport is Canada's largest airport and a vital connector of people, businesses, and goods. Operating at a scale and complexity few organizations ever touch, Toronto Pearson is one of Canada’s most consequential real‑world testbeds for applied digital innovation, where technology deployment, policy, and public trust intersect.
Tripian helps you deliver the perfect mix of your inventory and third-party offerings, driving conversion and maximizing revenue per booking.
The #1 B2B Travel Podcast Globally. Over 100 Episodes. Listeners in 125 countries. New Episodes Every Weds.
https://www.traveltrendspodcast.com/
Live Travel Trends From Toronto
SPEAKER_10Welcome to the first ever live Travel Trends podcast here at Intrepid's headquarters in beautiful downtown Toronto. Awesome. This is your host, Dan Christian, and I'm delighted to be back here again this year at Intrepid's office during Toronto Tech Week. And I'm so excited to be joined by my great friend, industry leader, and co-host today, Christian Walters, the president of Intrepid Canada. Thank you again, Christian, for having us all here. And on that note, tell everyone a little bit about the session that we're going to be hosting and who our panelists are.
SPEAKER_03Now, this sounds like a little bit of a repeat, but we're going to do it. We're going to do it again. So tonight's conversation is focused on agenc AI. And of course, this is all on top of our minds. We're all concerned about it, but we're also very excited about it. And I think everyone here, including myself, is here to learn to kind of see what's up in the future, kind of understand, you know, what are the theoretical improvements that we're going to experience, but of course, then also have a look at what's practically happening out there, maybe some of the limitations that are impacting us right now. And our panelists are also going to give us a little bit of an insight on maybe what we should look forward to because all we hear is that AI is hitting an acceleration button right now. So how is that going to impact our daily lives in travel?
SPEAKER_10One of the great things about being here in Toronto, not only is this a great hub for technology and AI, but it's the biggest hub really in North America for travel. And so we're joined by two Torontonians. And I'm going to introduce Jeff and then Christian will introduce Brian. And the reason I wanted to introduce Jeff because there's sort of a personal connection. I've known Jeff for a number of years, and he not only has a really successful AI startup that he's built in Toronto, but his business partner passed away a few years ago of cancer. And there's a, there's a, I think for most of you who know my story and actually the people I bring on the show, and the there's obviously a strong personal connection when people understanding why someone does what they do. And Jeff, when I got a chance to meet him and eventually learn that story and his decision to keep the business going and pivot and evolve to create Trippian and now one of the leading AI companies in travel, he's been at this for more than eight years, and his investors have believed in him from the beginning. And he's now at the point where he's going to be an eight-year overnight success story. He's signed some of the biggest brands in travel, including JTB from Japan. I'm sure you can't announce all the partners that you have. Hopefully, I can mention them, but that's a huge deal. And I know you guys were just in Hawaii together. So Trippian is really the back, it's the infrastructure. And they work with so many suppliers throughout the travel network. And we had them on our podcast just last week with Guesto West and I Wander to talk about how AgenTech AI is being utilized across the travel industry. And Jeff Kischik is a real expert in this space. He's got a few team members here. And so, Jeff, I want to welcome you to this event. And I want you to tell everyone your favorite. You want to tell your funny travel story? You want to tell everyone one of your uh best places you've ever wanted to travel.
SPEAKER_04Hi, everybody. That's fun. Hi, everybody. Uh thanks, Dan. That's really kind of you. Um, so the interesting thing, I don't come from travel. I'm an engineer by profession, worked in every industry except travel. So when this opportunity came up, I was one of those people, hey, I like travel. I like tech. Let's work in travel. Um, yeah, eight years later. I'm wondering why sometimes. But the funny travel story is, you know, I have adult kids now, and I'm probably the only person who never took their kids to an all-inclusive. It was as we traveled, it was adventure travel, it was going out and about, doing our own thing, exploring, uh, being with locals. And my kids recently, on their own, have gone to all-inclusives and they came back and thanked me for teaching them what travel and experiencing people in culture was like. And they both said they'll never go on another all-inclusive. So sorry if there's any all-inclusives here, but that's kind of my fresh perspective on travel.
unknownFantastic.
SPEAKER_03Welcome, Jeff. Perfect. Thanks, guys. Um, so I'm gonna introduce our next guest, Brian Tosson. And uh Brian works uh for a little-known airport called Pearson. Um, you may have heard of it. Um, uh, he's the uh chief technology officer for an airport, which is quite amazing. Um, I'd love to ask Brian questions about what he thinks about the this, you know, the Center Island Airport and the plans for that. But we're this is an AI session, so we're gonna save that for cocktails later. Yeah, yeah. But um Brian and I have something in common. Uh, we both worked in the automotive industry, but unlike uh Brian, I was only there for seven years. Uh Brian was uh in working for GM for over 25 years, which is uh quite exciting because Brian's had a huge familiarity in major changes. So when you think of cars 25 years ago, they were wheels, engines, uh, and so forth, and now they've become more or less software platforms. If you think of uh, you know, where Tesla's taken us, and now all cars are following through. So Brian's gonna have some amazing, interestingly um uh great insights on all this change that's happening right now. But of course, uh the transition to an airport and the impacts there. I'm just I'm just very excited to hear what you have to say about all that.
SPEAKER_08I I will probably um uh maybe bridge on a little bit what was just talked about in terms of all-inclusive. I have also not really ever gone the all-inclusive route uh with my children. Um but but we have a little bit more of a uh a different trajectory. A lot of our travel is driven by uh dance competitions. So we don't actually do too much travel for vacation. Um it's more around getting around. My girls have been dancing since they're really small. Um uh so that's sort of the way to see our world. But we actually have a do have a trip coming up. It will be headed to Italy uh in a few weeks. We've been before, but it's my first time my kids have ever been. So I'm really excited for that uh exciting, exciting adventure uh that won't be scripted, but we'll uh I'm sure we'll get out and see the sites and it should be a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_10We are
Defining Agentic AI For Travel
SPEAKER_10gonna talk about the human side of travel. There's four topics that we're gonna focus on with our guests. And one of the things we thought we would start off with is actual use cases of agentic AI. When we were together last year, we talked a lot about generative AI and kind of getting into agenc. Everyone is talking about agentic AI. And I think probably everyone in this room has a good understanding of the difference between the two of something that can create content versus something that can act on our behalf. And the thing that I always go back to, I love Yuville Noel Harari, if anyone's you know familiar with his work, as a historian who's written books about AI, um looking at the the study of change over time. And one of the things that he very much points out is that if you can look back and you can project forward, but one of the things that humans have never done is actually invented a tool that can think and act on our behalf. And so a lot of this area that we're moving into is uncharted and unknown. But the reality is these use cases are here and they're real and they're meaningful. So what I want to start with is the actual use cases of agentic AI. Then we're gonna talk about what the real potential is for everyone in this room. And again, you guys can add to this. Then the question becomes what's the role for humans uh in the whole travel experience, which is an important conversation we need to be having. And then we'll talk about what the next six to 12 months looks like. So I'm gonna start with
Trippian Use Cases With JTB
SPEAKER_10Jeff. And I'm my question to you, Jeff, to kick things off. For all of our listeners and all of our attendees here, give us some of the most practical use cases of how Trippian is utilizing AgenTech AI and your customers are that are actually in practice valuable, useful, and having a re making a real difference today.
SPEAKER_04Okay, thanks, Dan. I'm generally not the one to self-promote. Um, so I will talk about something we're doing with Trippian uh when it comes to AgenTech AI. And Dan mentioned JTB. Uh JTB is a large uh destination management company that has thousands of inbound travelers to Japan. The reality is, is a company that's still run on spreadsheets, PDFs, loose emails. It ties into an archaic system of a database that's 12 years old. They still have disparate systems to do web lookups. So what we're doing is we're bringing all these data systems together. We're vectorizing their product databases, we're uh doing data parsing on their inbound inputs. We're essentially creating an agency system of taking their legacy information internally, combining it so that their staff, their inbound travel agents who are doing the work, can use an agentic system to help them generate inbound itineraries and travel plans much quicker, much more accurate, with way more flexibility than they previously could. The reason is they didn't have the tools to run an agentic platform. The whole kind of one thing you'll hear me talking about a lot tonight is just the coordinated system. Without a coordinated system of guardrails and information talking to each other, an agent doesn't know where to go. It doesn't know how to act on your behalf. It can have your intent, but unless it has the systems to go to to facilitate the next step or the next booking, it it doesn't know what to do. So on the other side of the agent, the agent's the fun front end, but in behind, there needs to be a very connected infrastructure in order for that agent to work.
SPEAKER_10Just when I mentioned about knowing Jeff, um, there's a bit of debate about how we first met because he's he says I reached out to him on LinkedIn, but I really think he actually poked me first. But nevertheless, um, and then he sent me a message, and apparently I didn't reply for six months. And then I saw him at a conference. He's like, I sent you a message. Did you get my message? I'm like, yeah, maybe I did. And so like I was like, once a month, my team knows this once a month I go through all my LinkedIn messages and I just say, please email me. And then that's ultimately what I'll likely reply. And so, but the interesting thing about what happened next, we met at the conference. And since then, we've been meeting once a month on Avenue Road to have coffee together because we realized we had so much in common. And for there was been no commercial arrangement between us, and he kindly sponsors tonight's event. But over the last year and a half, we've been meeting every month to talk about what's happening in this space. So that's actually why I wanted Jeff at the table today, because he was ahead of the curve with what he was building. And JTB, I we were sitting at a conference together, and he's like, I think I got it. I think I got it. And they came over to shake his hand and like he was like, this, and this was a game changer for him, his team, and his business. They didn't need to seek any more funding. They can actually pay their staff, they can expand. So this was like, but I saw that 12, 18 months in the making. So I was delighted for him. And now all of a sudden, you're gonna hear much more about Trippian. So uh thank you for sharing that.
Pearson Operations Agents And Security
SPEAKER_10And I now I want to bring Brian into this conversation as well, because I just threw through flew through Pearson the other night, and I think there could be some improvements. I was like, have you guys heard about agenda KI?
SPEAKER_09Have you guys uh I'm surprised this is why we brilliant. Let's turn this into a roast tonight, shall we?
SPEAKER_10No, in all seriousness, airports are probably have the greatest opportunity to make it a seamless experience for all of us. I just want to be able to stand and I don't even want to travel with my passport. That's a whole issue that happened to me this week. I just want to be able to scan with my face and walk through customs and walk to the plane and not so there's places where there's a need for humans and other places where technology can do so much of this right now. And so I would love to know, Brian, there has to be many use cases already of how you're leveraging, all kidding aside, of how you're leveraging agentic AI. Tell all of our listeners that have been walking through Pearson Airport what they what they're not seeing currently that is behind the scenes.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, no, I I I that's great. And then you know you're you're right, there are a lot of use cases for for agentic AI. Hopefully, you were just the only person maybe that had a bad experience recently. But let we can talk about it a little bit later on. But yeah, I think um maybe just before I talk about different use cases, because they're pretty exciting. And we always get excited when we get into a room and talk about oh, it could do this, it could do that. But I did want to just build a little bit on what Jeff was saying. It does start with foundations and um data aggregation, getting um the right guard rules in place are really important, especially in an airport or an aviation that's very regulated, has a lot of safety parameters and mission critical systems. We have to get these things right. What we don't want to have is agents acting on, let's say, our behalf and uh and having uh the wrong intentionality or making the wrong decisions at the wrong time. So getting those governance frames or getting the testing regimes in place. This is actually trickier than you think with systems that really weren't designed for this. You know, no nobody built these systems necessarily, or a lot of the ones that in airports today are not built with an ecentic framework in mind, right? So this is uh a complicated work, but it's really worth giving right. So I didn't want to just highlight that. But if we kind of transition to think about, okay, what could you do with it? Um, and what are we doing with it today? You know, there I would say I'd break it up into a couple of different areas. You know, it it's still early days. Um, but but you know, maybe one of the first things is is around a lot of the airport operations themselves. You can probably imagine. So, you know, um maybe one that can resonate with a lot of people. If you if you walk into the Toronto Pearson Departures area today, you might go into our check-in hall and you might be presented with a lot of different kiosks, for instance, to be able to print bag tags or your boarding pass, for instance, to come through. Those are all machines that have to be running 24-7, 365. But what if there's a glitch? What if there's a patch that needs to be done? What if there's a problem with the kiosk? Maybe you've encountered a kiosk that's not necessarily functioning the way it needs to be. But we've been able to actually apply gentic solutions where we have agents actually checking the health of those kiosks on a constant basis and saying, wait a second, this one's not up and running. That that doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you are talking about a massive terminal, hundreds and hundreds of kiosks spread across a very large geography, it's great to be able to detect quickly when there's a problem and then take action. It might just be a simple reboot, um, you know, to be able to get that up and running. And all of a sudden, that has created new capacity for people to be able to go through with the airport. So that's an example of some of the operations. There's many others, there's a baggage or de-icing. It's still small. We're not replacing work. What we're really thinking about is augmenting a lot of the operations that are there today. We do have some customer-facing operations as well. I mean, we'll have information kiosks and web pages and chatbots. You think about lost and found, for instance, would be a really good application of this. So it kind of goes on and on um in terms of how we can really have some customer-facing value. And then last thing I will just say, because it's really important, you know, we we are also national infrastructure. Um, this is a very important role we pay, we role we play in the country. And as part of that, cybersecurity is a big deal. So if you think about um, and I won't get into big gory details around that, but there's a significant cybersecurity program that's active all the time. And we take advantage of agentic operations, right? To be able to monitor and see where things are at um and be able to um address vulnerabilities or be able to probably actively uh pull levers, if you will, in in the right ways to make sure that we are really always uh acting with the highest speed uh and lowest latency for something as important as security. So those are just a couple examples of what's already running today.
SPEAKER_04I just want to add, can I come work for Pearson? That sounds like some really cool stuff.
SPEAKER_10Would you guys like to buy Trippian? It's a per it's a match made. Let's do that deal tonight, shall we? Get the term sheets out. Nice exit for Jeff, great new tech for Pearson. Christian, over to you.
SPEAKER_03Awesome.
Breakthroughs Barriers And Orchestration
SPEAKER_03No, I I just wanted to sort of take this into a more holistic uh level. Um, you know, obviously there's so much uh fragmentation and travel. And uh when you think of the complexity of you know, looking at airports, airlines, tour operators, um, you know, custom report centers, itinerary management, and so forth. Um, you know, there's so many areas that um AI can kind of uh have some major breakthroughs. I'd be very curious to know what you guys think are going to be the major breakthroughs and the major barriers. And I, you know, it's just my example for us in the tour operation business is on the customization, the FIT, the tailor-made side. Um, I think the future, the holy grail for the tour operation side is that someone uh you know says, hey, I want to go to Italy, just create this amazing ITRI, which happens right now, but it's not bookable. It's not instantly created that you can actually book it right at this moment. But if we can get to that space, and I know we're working at it in a different, in lots of different formats on the operation side, on the customer facing side. But I'm just kind of curious what you guys think holistically, like some of the biggest breakthroughs and barriers are out there.
SPEAKER_08All right. So yeah, I think uh breakthrough-wise, that's a great question. I think it's really hard to know. Um, I mean, this technology. We were leaning dock in a Gente like two years ago, right? And and I'll if you look who we are today, but I think there's a couple of things that I'll I will kind of serve up um that we think could be pretty important in terms of sort of the gravity of the of of the opportunity. That the first is a little bit of this idea of orchestration, you know, at least in the airport setting, it's uh kind of insane how many different systems have to talk to each other that are actually uh owned and governed by different stakeholders. So there's the airport itself, but we all know, right, there's airlines. You know, at Pearson there's more than 60 of them, right? Flying 200 routes, which is pretty amazing. Um but inside that, right, we have uh ground handlers, we have baggage teams, we have uh the concessions and retail area, everything from Starbucks to duty-free, there's Uber that operates there, like these stakeholders that all kind of have to come together in airport, it's a very, very complex system. And I kind of share this in terms of the potential being twofold. I think the first is if if we can leverage the technology like AI and a gentic AI eventually, right? That orchestration can can really start to come together in a much more seamless, higher, faster rate. And in an airport, that's really key because I kind of think of it as a um like a bit of a butterfly effect. You guys you guys familiar with that kind of terminology, right? If you what is it, if you drop a pebble in a in a in a in a uh in a in a pond and and the waves start to propagate out, it's like that in in the aviation airport sector. You know, one delayed flight, even five minutes, means it's five minutes into that game, which means that the flight that's coming in can't take that one. So this ripple effect goes right across the entire like eastern seaboard, if you really kind of think through that. So if we can orchestrate better, it's not just that one micro area that gets optimized. It's the ripple effect that gets bigger and bigger and bigger because the orchestration gets really improved, which is really key. The second opportunity, I think, is when you're dealing with massive complex systems like airport systems, it's really hard to do pattern recognition. It's actually a little beyond human comprehension to really be able to see all the moving parts and what really is optimal. Now, years of trained experience has helped us figure out playbooks. Airports run every day, they do work, right? But is there optimization inside that? That's hard to know until you actually have sort of an all-seen eye and actually figure out where the patterns might be. And from that, we can draw a lot of potential. So I think those are two game changers. Not to say we're there today, but we're really watchful for that and excited for what could happen.
SPEAKER_04That's tough to follow. Um, so I'm gonna just share something where we think about agentic AI and what we're seeing in travel. Um, our friends at Mind Trip AI down south, they've recently launched Mind Trip Flights. Mind Trip Flights, in my opinion, is probably one of the best examples of Agentic AI that is actually working, where they're able to take a human interface, they're able to communicate their intent, they're able to parse that intent through and find flights and book flights. That all sounds great, and that's all the headlines. But what's impressive, but also telling, is what's in behind is they partnered with Sabre and PayPal. Sabre's been working on flights for 30 years. PayPal's been building the rails of payments for 20 years. Mindtrip has come in and orchestrated that, you know, coordinated system that does flights. So it's illustrative of the amount of work and legacy that's required to build this agency system, but it's also telling of what's ahead, of what it's going to take to open that up. And one of the things that we're really seeing, the the opportunity is gonna come. We're gonna see it first in companies and industries that are already coordinated, credit cards that have an infrastructure, a coordinated merchant network of merchant suppliers, partners. We're gonna see it in other industries where there is those ecosystems, and those ecosystems are gonna figure it out and be able to deploy agents into their ecosystem, and that is what's gonna drive the larger spread is once people start doing it and it's successful, as Brian said, the playbooks get written and people start figuring it out. And I think that's really the opportunity. The barriers are like I said earlier, the barriers are legacy data. There's a bunch of systems out there that just weren't built for this, and companies are trying to figure out how to deal with it. Uh Trippian, we've always been in the data game and we've always been working with large amounts of data and preparing it for use in AI and recommendation type systems. And again, the data is only as good as the context it needs to work in and how people want to use it. And what we're seeing in the industry is people are figuring out how to work with it, how to use it. And it's those companies that are innovating and are open, is where the breakthroughs are gonna come.
SPEAKER_10I'm gonna say one thing really quickly on Mind Trip because it's relevant to a lot of the startups in the room and Toronto Tech Week and what's happening here is that if you look at Mind Trip and their origin story, three people outside of the travel industry came into travel. Based in San Francisco, they had um a couple of big exits before, but they didn't engage the travel industry initially. They came up with this B2C trip planning concept, they raised 10 million, they exhausted those funds, and they realized during that time they needed to work with the travel industry. So they didn't technically pivot their business, they expanded to B2B and they took their solution and they made it work for DMOs. And so they had a great trip planning tool and they started selling it to destination management organizations. And they then raised 15 million. Uh uh, that was their next, and their business has taken off since then. And so they pivoted to B2B, I would say, and but they've never left B2C because they always saw that as the big opportunity. And with agentic, this was the next big development for them is that people are, and you've probably seen these numbers. If you look at focus right over the last three quarters, people using generative, people using um generative AI for trip uh planning purposes, it's you know went from 30% to 40 cents, so it's 56% in three quarters. And the point that I want to make here, though, is that it hasn't shown up yet in the booking activity because people don't trust Agentic AI yet to actually make their booking, they're using it overwhelmingly for research. The question becomes, and this is something when I just wanted to underscore what uh Jeff had just shared, is the potential is there for the dam to break. Once people actually start trusting agentic AI to make their bookings, the consumer journey has already dramatically changed. Every company that's in the SEO game is trying to refigure out their business today. And so companies that are showing up in GEO or AI SEO, however you want to refer to it, these are the companies that are all of a sudden seeing significant increases in traffic and bookings. Um, but it's it's this has the, I think, the biggest opportunity to change in the next six months. And I think there will be some big breakthroughs, and I think Mind Trip is one of those examples uh to look to. But Christian, back to you.
Innovation Culture Inside Big Airports
SPEAKER_10Well, I think it's time for some questions from our studio audience.
SPEAKER_11So uh my name is John, and uh I work at uh Air Fairness. Uh just a question for Brian at Pearson. Um, now that everything's been kind of growing like crazy and technological advancements are happening every week. You go on TikTok and find like this new thing killed this old thing, and it's really happening very quickly. What is the um internal consensus on innovation at a big company like Pearson? Are you getting kind of is it more top-down or bottom-up in terms of like, is it an intern saying we should try this new thing, let's push it up, or is it you saying, hey guys, let's do this, or is it even higher than you? Is it the government saying, hey, Pearson should employ these things? And what's the culture around innovation and kind of where do you see that heading in the next six to 18 months?
SPEAKER_08That's a great question. Um I think we just give up. It's a great question. I um I think maybe the way I'll answer it, I don't know if this is super satisfying, but it's probably true. We we we we're probably a bit ambidextrous on how we we try to approach this. So um at the end of the day, you know, one one thing we have to always keep in mind as a principle is is the airport's here for the long game. You know, airports aren't, you know, something that just it's not a pop-up store, okay, per se. And I'm I'm exaggerating a bit, but this is considered, you know, uh national infrastructure. So when we invest, we have to invest it to make sure that it really is going to be here and functional and at a high efficiency rate five, 10, 15, 20 years. So we apply that lens uh when we think about our architectural decisions or solutions we want to employ. At the same time, if all you do is just take the long view on things, you run the risk, right, of not really being able to take advantage of um near-term opportunities or accelerates in terms of what we want to achieve. So on the other side of the equation, at the exact same time, we are trying to be very intentional about engaging with where technology trends are headed. We're gonna be very measured about implementation because the scale is massive. Um, we we we handle and and and welcome um almost 50 million passengers a year right now. That's a huge number. I mean, I think there's only 37 million people in all of Canada. Every man, woman, and child coast to coast to coast. So we're 1.3 times the entire population of the country, right? So we have to take that with gravity, but we can't afford not to see what's happening. And that's why we've been starting to be very intentional in investing in um partnerships with incubators, understanding how to engage with um global players, and really following along with technology plans and building the most future-proof architecture we can. Well, we're not saying we're gonna bet on this is necessarily the long game, but we want to make sure we don't have so much depth, if you want to think about that with technical depth, that we couldn't pivot to that very quickly to be able to realize the gains once we're convinced that it's appropriate and ready to scale.
SPEAKER_10One more question before we switch topics. We have one more question and then we're gonna Jen Jen.
Data Sovereignty Authorization And Trust
SPEAKER_10Jen Burke.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Um, Jen Burke. Um, so when you reference the dam, like the dam breaking, um, when you look at agentic AI, are there any other major tech trends that we should also be looking at in conjunction with that? Or like to kind of keep up as we go?
SPEAKER_04I'll take a crack at this one. Um this is something I've been passionate about for a number of years, and I think the tech trend that's been lingering that nobody's really giving enough attention to is the data sovereignty, is the trust of the system itself and how information is shared and passed between systems. So it's less about trust outside in of the user trusting a system, but we look at it from building system-level trust. How do we build a system that trusts agents coming in? That we know that agent is authorized, is acting with the right credentials to make those decisions for us to uh facilitate their transaction. So I think a lot of attention needs to be put into the data authentication, data sovereignty, authority, and building trust from the inside out.
SPEAKER_10There's two more topics we want to cover while
Human-Led Experiences With AI Assist
SPEAKER_10we're together. One is the human side, and we're gonna talk about the future. So the human side is something I'm keen and Christian to talk on because we're here here in real life. Humans are obviously we have an innate desire to travel, to connect with each other, to see the world, to have our senses stimulated, hence food and great conversation. And ultimately that's why we seek travel. And so when we talk about agentic AI, I'm keen to get your view, obviously, Christian, from an Intrepid's perspective, and then each of you as well, as far as what where humans are still relevant and where agent AI's role should be.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, I think that the segue from Jeff is you know the trust side of things. And uh that's something that we're uh, you know, quite honestly at Intrepid, we're struggling with. Um, you know, we are a company that provides human-led experiences. Uh, what we're trying to promote is the fact that you can go on to these incredible countries, meet a local guide, travel with uh people from all around the world, and meet locals and have an incredible experience. So then you throw AI into the customer journey and uh where can it help us, but where can it alienate our customers so they don't want to continue uh maybe on the journey of booking a trip with us, or they just think, hey, this is great, this is a service that uh you're answering my questions really quickly. Uh, you know, we um obviously jumped in with two feet first on the customer support side, and we have a tool called Ask Intrepid, and we're currently testing it right now. And uh we noticed that you know, at any point we it we made a point to say for customers that they can push the button and say talk to a human. And um they typically do long before, like I know the AI can go much further on the journey, it has all the information to ask all the questions, but customers are typically pushing that button to talk to the customer first. Now it's it's not to say that that won't change. The norm when people start trusting AI and that becomes the norm, um, you know, we know like how quickly we have to turn around quotes and how quickly we have to uh provide information. And that's not driven by our competitors in travel, it's driven by tech companies and other suppliers. So we have to raise our standards with that. So we know that this is going to change. Uh, but I guess overall, right now, Intrepids uh is is human-led uh AI enabled. That's where we're we're kind of sticking through and what we're gonna be doing moving forward.
SPEAKER_10Brian, I'm keen to get your take on this since we started with you know, it's humans that travel through airports, 50 million of them. And humans still like dealing with humans, and I obviously enjoy my priority line privileges and someone else that puts the bag tag on. I'm still that guy for sure. And um, but I'm very keen to get your take on where humans are still going to be relevant in that whole experience, what the expectations are, and where you think technology should take the lead.
SPEAKER_08It's a really it's a it's a really good question. Um maybe I I think it's a complicated one in an airport, but I'd try to break it down maybe into two different dimensions. I guess that the first is you know something we've been kind of framing out around you know what should be a gen tech led versus what should be human-led from the airport side. So say the airport operations and so how we actually run the airport. And you know, this is very high level, but you know, one one way to think about it might be um you know convenience versus consequence. So we are still very much, you know, a massively scaled operation that has to be uh regulatory compliant, uh uh mission critical, and you know, safety and security above all else, right? So might not make the most sense to necessarily go and rely on a genetic-based uh deployments and solutions for for that area. In fact, we we really want to probably bias heavily towards human-led. You know, humans understand context, humans can see a lot of things, at least at this point in time, and um, it makes a lot more sense. Whereas with convenience-based, you know, um, that might be a different uh example, you know, and and I'll give the example you talked about passengers coming in. This is just a theoretical example, but um, you know, we we we anticipate maybe a future where a lot of passengers are gonna come in with wearables, maybe like these smart glasses. They're coming out, right? Does anybody own smart glasses? Yeah, only one hand? They're all recording it right now with their smart glasses. No one wants to admit, they're not who knows, right? I guess. But let's assume for a second, let's say there is a world where people are coming in with smart wearables, and I don't know, maybe maybe you come into the airport and you know it's it's already detecting that you're here and this is your second time back, and you know, your agent's going off to want to do that latte macchiata with the coffee past security, right? Or maybe you forgot something in the car that you just parked and you sent an agent back to go get it for you. Right. I don't know. Um this is an example of convenience, which might be a lot um more acceptable in terms of kind of where the risk paradigm is and put the reward itself. The last kind of C, I'll say, you know, consequence and convenience, but I guess the last one is choice. You know, if if passengers come into the airport and they choose to want to work with the airport or interact with the airport with an agent, maybe we need to meet where the the passenger or the passenger wants to be. Okay, we meet them back with an agent. If the passenger wants to interact with a human, we need to be prepared to make sure that we have an engagement and interaction with a human as well. So we want to honor sort of some of these choices as well, especially in this convenience space. Um, but that's sort of a high-level view of kind of how we're thinking about it, knowing that a lot of this is still to be written.
SPEAKER_10With Trippian, one thing that's interesting, we talk about airports, and then we talk about the end customer for you is someone who's taking a tour or an activity. You're very much in that space, the infrastructure space, even with JTB being a great example, they're putting together custom itineraries using spreadsheets. And so you see the benefit clearly of them leveraging tools for uh in Trippian for agentic AI, but the customer experience. What's your take? Because every time we go for coffee, you order a croissant and you tell me it tastes just like Paris. That's always like the first line. And it's it's and we have a great conversation with the staff there, and it's like that's all part of the experience, the ambiance. So that's what people travel for, their tours and activities is to have those experiences. Trippian's in the background. Where do you see the role of technology and where are humans still relevant in all of this?
SPEAKER_04Well, I think Dan just kind of answered the question for me. But the to oversimplify it, the reality is we think of our technology and our platform is middleware. You know, middleware has been a term in tech forever, and it's true. So in travel, it's a traveler. A traveler has intent. A traveler wants to do something, a traveler wants to have their croissant in Paris, wants to get those unique experiences that they can take with them. Travel is very complicated. This is where AgenTech AI is going to help that. It's going to make it easier for you to get to those experiences and have those, what you do, travel for. On the other side of it, the end destination, this is where some of our Slack channels have some healthy debate on what role AI is going to play. There's some people who are advocating for AI-driven tours where you can go somewhere and you don't need a guide. You don't need somebody who can just use AI and that AI is going to take you through that experience. I argue the other side. I want that guide who can take me to that restaurant to get me in the back door off the alley to get that chef special that only that guide can get. And AI isn't going to be able to open that door for me. So I think there's a balance in the world. And I think that's where why we focus on the middle is doing that facilitation. So a saying that we use in our company is AI can get you to the human, but AI can't be the human. And I think that's an important thing. That's a philosophy we keep by everything we build. We always think there's human components on both ends of it.
SPEAKER_10I think we all can't wait for a universal basic income so we can just travel all the time, right? Isn't that the ideal state of being?
SPEAKER_03Um is that happening?
SPEAKER_10Think of all the intrepid trips people book once they just get like just free cash so they can travel all the time. Yeah, this is gonna be a $10 billion business, buddy.
SPEAKER_09You just wait.
SPEAKER_04Interesting thing. I was at the plug and place summit the other week, and this is a big the whole travel vertical. One of the industry experts said travel is the hedge against AI. Because with AI in everybody's life, to these guys' point, people are gonna have more time. What are they gonna do with more time? They're gonna travel. So it was really interesting. So remember that. Travel's the hedge against AI.
SPEAKER_10Now let's do one question on this topic and then we'll switch to the final round.
Frictionless Airports Biometrics And Choice
SPEAKER_10George, do you want to add in on uh the question about humans and their relevance in the age of agentic AI? George is the guy that flew all the way up from Washington for this again this year. So yeah, well done, George. Great to see you again. He runs Wanderworth. I want everyone here to be successful. That's the whole idea with Travel Trends was to give people a voice to share their stories. And I'm gonna tell Jaclyn's story in a minute because it's really incredible. We need to close with that. Can we close with that tonight? Because it's a really special story. But George has been a part of our AI summit. He did great, uh, great demo. I just asked him if he'd be keen to do it. He came on and presented, and he was and his businesses have pivoted. So Wander Words is what you need to check out. But George, ask a question here, please.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Um the main question I have is um, I know there's been a lot of discussion around um like what you mentioned about the AI looking. I mean like to work on it, but also like around because there's been a lot of discourse around like AI but it's been trouble with my side. I definitely like to learn more about it from the database. Especially since um when you mention Pearson having 15 million customers that we have. Like how you like when the customers themselves have noticed like implementation of AI?
SPEAKER_10I can say they haven't. No, I'm just kidding, they definitely haven't. No, I think finish your question and we'll get Brian answer that.
SPEAKER_02It's a B2B I think which involves BR file. Like when the how the end user notice is to when you're doing it more like behind the scenes.
SPEAKER_08I just want to repeat. So I think the the question was just you know, as we're scaling AI to 50 million passengers or so, was it I think the question was was around how do end users really experience or or see that change. Is that is that is that about right? Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think I think I said I think it's still early days, and you know, I think it depends on the use case we're talking about, but uh I think a lot of the way passengers notice implementation right now is just hopefully a little less disruption, a little less chaos. Um, you know, that the at least in the airport context, um it's a pretty complicated operation, and anything can happen uh at any given time. And and we probably have all experienced it, to be honest, right? There's probably something that happens that you didn't expect to have happened during your trip, and sometimes that involves the airport uh leg a bit. So the idea here is I think in the early goings, our biggest opportunity is actually to start shaving those peaks down, the spikiness of sort of ambiguity and and turbulence, uh, you know, making it more frictionless. Uh a good example, you know, you talked a little bit about just walk through, no documentation. Biometrics, we're very bullish on that. We we see a very strong biometrics future. We're heading down that road. This is our time to do it as we launch our lift program. This is our major capital program. We're rebuilding the airport of the future, and this is what enables frictionless travel. So I think, in short answer, I think that's kind of what it is. You should notice a lot less friction, um, hopefully, than what you are seeing maybe traditionally um as a starting point. And then hopefully it just gets better and more aggregate um as you go along.
SPEAKER_10Thanks, Brian. So let's move into our final question. And if there are a few questions at the end, I'm just gonna put one more question in the group, and then we'll jump in and bring you into the conversation as well.
SPEAKER_02My name is Mohammed, I'm the actually founder and CEO for Flyby. Um, we're all about the platform to manage air program operations. So when Brian's mentioning about the issues that was going on in Pearson, I used to be part of that problem. Uh, we're going for a lot about the solution as well later on a start boundary. Um, we've managed workflows from baggage all the way down to fueling and all that kind of stuff too. Um, so a lot of hands-on manual processes, a $45 billion industry itself. So, Brian, we don't understand where you're coming from in terms of the issues going on. Um, my question is also from for Brian too, but also touching base with Jeff. It's again, hands-on manual processes happen agency AI flow, it's pretty complicated as well. Um, how do we get involved with all stakeholders in terms of the fragment food services? You know, we got a lot of you know companies in terms of ground controllers involved in different workflows. Um, how do you get agentic AI to kind of solve that problem? It's like a single solution for a platform to own them all, or do you kind of get them in the program in terms of having your own type of niche solutions?
SPEAKER_04I'll I'll do the easy answer first because you it'll be more interesting coming from him. Um, what it comes down to is what we do with our clients now. It's a lot of workshopping. It's sitting with humans, understanding their business process modeling, it's getting them in a room to not talk about what their manual says they do, but what they really do every day, how they react to situations. We work with travel advisors who, you know, there's the people who've been doing the job for 20 years go, yeah, this is my special thing. I know how to handle this type of traveler. And it's how do we unlock that information? How do we unlock that process and capture it so that we can build it into a model? Remember, like these models need to run on rules. And unless we know the rules that the business wants to operate in, anything we're gonna build, an agent just can't go in or an LLM can't go in and restructure a business operation. You have to map it out. And that's probably much like what you do in the airport operations is understanding each step each person does, where it fits into the big process, and then how do you create the models to replicate that process?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I think that's really well said. Um I I would agree, I think just to maybe double down on that point and maybe just add one. You know, when we talk about engaging stakeholders and AI argentic systems, it does have to start with the data flows. And if the data is is not really where it needs to be, um it you can't really take the next steps. You know, it but that's a really great way to actually make sure that you thought of all the stakeholders. Uh in an airport, that's actually kind of trickier than you think. Uh sometimes you think you got everybody in the room, but maybe maybe you're missing this person or this person, not because of any intentionality. It's just a complicated system. Um but when you look at it from the data flow perspective, it becomes more obvious. Wait a second, we don't have this data. This data set's really crucial. We need to get that stakeholder in place. So that's one. The only other thing I would maybe say is we we we really want to try to seek where possible win-win scenarios. Like these uh AI implementations and and and agentic AI implementations are not uh bespoke or architected in from many airport systems, they just weren't there. So they will require investments to be able to get there, whether that's from the airport or stakeholders inside that. So you need return on those investments. So we want to make sure that we are starting with principles around win-wins, right? Where we're saying, okay, if we invest here, someone else invests, they someone everybody gets return out of that. And that's a really great principal starting point, so that no one's disappointed in the end. So those are the two ways we really make sure that we have all the right people in the room and then everybody walks out getting what they're looking for.
Six Month Forecasts For Travel AI
SPEAKER_10All right, so let's move into the final discussion, which is the future. When I talk about the future, I'm talking about six months from now, not five years from now. And I'm talking about October 2026. Tell us about what's October 2026. Of course, our summit is at the end of October. That's the next big landmark event. We're gonna see you guys at the end of October all together and be we're actually just in the process of deciding on our speakers and our content. So, this is timely feedback from us for to hear from you on the topics you want us to cover. Um, but I want to ask each of them because you know, for those of you like Han who did computer science, I mean, the money he Could make when he graduated was unbelievable. But the reality now for all of those all those kids that were told to go into uh coding, all of a sudden there's the the the question then they became prompt engineers, right? Last year was just like now you want to be a prompt engineer, and now all of a sudden it's about a gen tick, right? And that's what we're talking about today. But the reality is six, twelve months from now, when you look at these platforms that are now writing themselves, and all of a sudden the next variation is actually going to be written by AI, and we're also now gonna have artificial general intelligence and these doomsday scenarios that we also have to contend with about what the future looks like. So I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. I just want to get six months ahead of ourselves. And I would love for you guys to share what your view is. What does the world of Agentik, what does the world of AI look like six months from now? We would like to take well actually let's go to Christian. I would love to hear your view on this because you you have been spending a lot of time in this space. You've been speaking on stage, other conferences about AI. You know the travel industry so well. What's your view on where Intrepid's gonna be six months from now with AI and HNC?
SPEAKER_03I mean, it's alluding back to something I mentioned before, and that's on the tailor-made side. I I think that's the future that we're providing um a bespoke experience and a quote almost instantaneously. That's where we need to get to. Um, but it's a it's it's not just as simple as like getting an AI agent to help us uh build this. We also have to have the back end, the operations modularized so that we can build these like Lego into building blocks and then things happen. Because at the end of the day, uh in six months' time, we're not gonna have robots building tours. Um, and that's where we're going. But the other the other side of it is another sort of uh an interesting topic attached to it, and that's the sustainability side. So a lot of my own team have challenged me saying, you know, because I I'm a big proponent of AI, and they're like, well, do you realize every time you do a prompt, it burns down an acre for us? You know, you've heard it all, right? You've heard it all. Um, and so I think there's, you know, the way we look at AI right now is that you have to really uh look at it as any resource, energy that's being deployed, and you have to be responsible with its usage. So it's first and foremost, it's creating, you know, standardized workflows across different companies, uh different departments and systems so that individuals are not just repeating the same AI prompts over and over again and causing that sustainability issue. Um, building centralized and searchable knowledge repositories is really, really critical. I've got a other handful, but the other side of it is really just training um uh you know training your employees to be really efficient and effective on how they're using it is is a big step forward into being a bit more sustainable with this important resource.
SPEAKER_10There's not going to be any humanoid humanoid group leaders taking people on tours around the world. That's not in the plans. You're gonna roll those out.
SPEAKER_03Uh and maybe maybe when the rate robots take over and they want to go on tours, then then they'll have robots uh authentic uh tour guides. But uh no, I think everyone, you know, people want to see people at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_10Because as we know, Jeffrey Hinton has now told us the plumbers even aren't safe anymore, right? Like every profession now is gonna be replaced. So um, Brian, on that note, people are no matter what, people are gonna still be traveling. And by all indications, they're still gonna be traveling on airplanes.
SPEAKER_05I hope so.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, my son's training to become a pilot right now. Someone said to me, has your son heard about AI? And I was like, Come on, don't do that. Don't do that to me. I think there's at least a generation of pilots. If we if we're still not willing to trust driverless vehicle, I think we got at least 20 years of pilot still, hopefully. Um what's your view on six months from now? What's the experience for us traveling through Pearson? What is what do you think will change in the next six or twelve months?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I I that's a great question. Um I think first off in six months, I'm I'm hoping you start off one of your podcasts talking about how great your Toronto Pearson experience is. Um that's my prediction. And and if you invite me back, I'll send my agent. So no, but uh, you know, I think I think um six months. So I think I'll answer a couple ways. I think in six months, you know, we're really looking to make a few progress in a few areas. Uh because again, airports are big and we have to be measured. But, you know, we are building, you know, what we're calling right now Toronto Pearson's first tech stack. You know, we have a very, very large operation with a lot of Discord systems. Jeff talked about this. Um, so it's a bit of an audacious goal. It's not very glamorous. Most passengers wouldn't necessarily understand or appreciate why this is important. But if we don't put this into a bit of a stack, an architected stack, then we really won't be ready. So, you know, in six months, we will probably have a lot more of the foundations are put in place to start to really go and leverage this kind of technology. Right now, a lot of it's around some experimentation and proof of concept to make sure that you know things are where they need to be. But I would say in about six, maybe eight months, you know, we're gonna be at a point where we say, wait a second, we uh technologically wise, we we might be in a position to actually go deploy, you know, in in some, you know, more mission critical areas of the business. So I think that's one. Um the second thing I would kind of you know highlight to some extent is airports still play the long game here. So we we have to look beyond even six months. We do have to force ourselves a little bit to look at 60 months, you know, maybe uh that's really hard to do. I mean, who if I could predict what a frontier model is going to look like in 60 months, I probably wouldn't be doing something different um uh with my time. But but we do have to at least start to forecast where things are headed so that we aren't making some some wrong architectural, some incorrect architectural decisions. So that's a bit of a pulse, is really starting to understand not necessarily what the technology can do, but what we is possible is maybe starting to measure the rate of change in terms of how quickly AI can really learn the airport. So if you think about the airport starting to understand and learn, better at understanding what's happening, AI presents itself a lot as being a learning engine. Airports are pretty complicated problem set. So why don't we actually figure out what is the rate of learning? Right. And and that can be very instructive in figuring out well, what the what's the velocity of travel in certain areas? It's not gonna be universal and only one answer, but it can be a very helpful way for us to think about where are the biggest opportunities and also some of the risks we need to kind of manage down. And I think we'll have a much better sense of that in about six months because more and more data will be coming in this newer field. It won't be as new, it'll be six or eight months from now.
SPEAKER_10And we'll definitely start the next conference with all the amazing developments at Pearson. I will guarantee that'll be part of our summit later this uh in October. And Jeff, what's your view? Six months from now, where are we?
SPEAKER_04Well, I just wanted to get on the record something Brian committed to earlier in talking with me. So my agenc use case at Pearson is I want to be able to be sitting in the signature lounge, have my passport authenticated, go onto the duty-free, have it go purchase my wife's uh Gucci bamboo perfume, do the transaction, have it waiting for me at the gate to pick up so I can do my agentic shopping from the lounge. So you committed to that. So mark it here when it's delivered. That's the use case. Um but from our point of view, from a trippy point of view, what we're looking at in the next six months is simply put, currently agentic AI and AI are getting the headlines. What we want to hear in six to eight months is connected systems, coordinated systems getting the headlines. You know, just the realization of industries waking up and adopting and preparing themselves to be able to adopt AI and Agentic AI by knowing that they need to deploy work in their systems and get themselves data ready so that they can serve and host Agentic AI in their systems.
SPEAKER_10I just want to say a special thank you. I want to get if there are any final questions you got anyone who wanted to add in? Anybody who hasn't asked a question, then okay. We got a couple. So we'll do a couple last questions, we'll wrap up, we're gonna do prizes, and then you guys can also grab a drink.
Backlash Against AI And Real Connection
SPEAKER_10But two last questions. Who do we got next? Yes.
SPEAKER_06All right, from Kendrical Tours. Um, Jim, you as a uh provider, as Brian as you as a as a as a buyer, I'm sure you've noticed there are lots of companies getting into this area in six months or even longer. What do you think will distinguish the winners from the losers in the genetic area?
SPEAKER_04Thank you. That's actually a really good question. It's something we pay attention to. For us, again, I'm gonna go back to the data. It's in order for companies to work with Tripia and to have their tours and their activities ingested into our recommendation and engines connecting them to the other our host systems, it's they need to be data ready. They need to have an API or an MCP, they need to be consumable, they need to be able to be found. So if there's a supplier or an operator out there who's not data ready, they're gonna miss out because the systems are coming, they have to have their data ready to be consumed, and if they're not, they just will miss out. All right, one more question.
SPEAKER_10The man with the pink hat. This is the guy that was like, if it was from our summit, if you're like, who is the guy that was commenting the most? That guy. I'm like, I'm surprised it took him this long to ask a question, but go for it.
SPEAKER_07All right, I'll go for it. Yeah. So um, you know, one thing that I'm sort of seeing in the next six months, really from the consumer point of view, is the backlash against AI. And so there was a recent opinion poll um about AI in the US, and AI is actually less popular than ICE in the US, uh, is less popular than Iran, uh, and is less popular than the Democrats. So, you know, there is already a consumer sentiment, right, against AI, and hearing this from the panel, where do you think you know that backlash will uh show up as a release of travel? I'll type that at the same time.
SPEAKER_09And that's a wrap, everybody. Thanks for joining tonight. I hope everyone enjoyed the session on Genty. What a great panel.
SPEAKER_10You know, I'm just gonna I'm gonna say a couple things really quickly on this topic. When you saw Brian Chesky talking about AI, now you're talking about being anti-AI. You look at the examples of some of the com the um uh graduation speeches over the last couple of weeks. For those of you, it's all about this is the generation that has to be like to destroy AI. And so there is a backlash happening. And one of the things I always finish my presentations, I was doing this at the Virtuoso conference is talking about AI and the need. The beauty for all of us who work in the travel industry is that we can take advantage of that backlash because the reality is that people want to travel. And we saw this, and it's something that a lot of the group tour brands, especially Intrepid, talks about people being more isolated than ever, uh, the loneliness epidemic. And that's all because of social media and we're spending more time on our phones and we want to connect in real life. So I would say travel is the antidote to all of that. So I don't really care on what side of the debate you're on. I actually just want people to travel and travel more. And so I see a role for it, but I'm also joyous when people are like, I actually, you know what, I had this idea for a trip with WeRoad to like travel like it's 1995. How cool would it be to actually travel without the internet at all? Actually, like with a guidebook and actually have to use a phone and get with like a calling card, you know? Like, I mean, there was a beauty to traveling in that era, and I think some of us just want that back again. And so, yeah, let's go back to 1995.
SPEAKER_03Until you get ripped off on that first taxi run. So true, so true.
SPEAKER_10Okay. I I would like um, so I'm gonna do two things to close. Um, I'm gonna close by thanking the panel, but I really want Jaclyn to share a quick story if that's okay with you guys, because it was particularly meaningful for me. Uh, this is totally impromptu, but our last event, Jaclyn came up to me at the end of our AI summit. We had those two days together, and she shared a story that meant a huge amount to me. And I'm only asking her to share this story because my hope is the same for each of you joining tonight. Um, but Jaclyn, would you just uh briefly share your story?
SPEAKER_00Very
Jaclyn's Story And Final Thanks
SPEAKER_00briefly, very briefly. Um, and I think it's a great segue on how you ended. Um not not that we're gonna go back to 1995, but I think for me, um, when your podcast launched, I was in a career transition. I had left the travel industry. Um I had a lot had fell out of love with travel, as a lot of us did um during COVID. And uh I went to another industry, entertainment. It wasn't a great experience, and uh I had a longing to get back to the travel industry, and I came across your podcast, and I listened to every episode from the get-go, and what it gave me was a reconnection to community, and I saw you bring in travel experts um and insight, and after every episode, I took inspired action from that, and it inspired me to reach out to anybody that you were interviewing. Um, I probably am known as a stalker in the industry, thanks to you, because I would always start with my segue. Oh, I heard you on uh Dan Christian's podcast, and I wanted to just reach out and connect with you. And you know what, nine times out of ten, um all of your um uh people that you interviewed would always reciprocate because that's what the travel industry is. Um it's a community of co-creators um who are always um open to connecting. And it gave me so much inspiration. And I I I will so I have a huge crush, a podcast crush on Dan.
SPEAKER_09We've never met before. This is not a setup for the yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, but Dan, I thank you. I thank you, I think, on behalf of the entire audience for what you do because it's not easy.
SPEAKER_10That really obviously means the world to me. I'm gonna um I'm I'm welling up a bit, but I'm gonna keep my emotion in check. But I um I really wanted you to share that more so because it's my hope that with each of these conversations that we're having, that it makes a meaningful difference. And so for me, it was huge validation that I was just like, I'm doing something I know I love and I enjoy, but it's having a positive impact. And like, and for me, that was like I need to keep going. I need to keep doing more of this. And it's like so, um, and I hope that for each of you, like just hearing that is that take the initiative to reach out to the people after we finish this, talk to Brian, tell him how great Pearson Report is. He needs it, he needs to hear that. And uh, and I have to apologize again later, and then probably then tomorrow. And then um so, but take the opportunity to get to know them. And I my hope is for you that as you advance your career, you realize new business opportunities. That to me is the greatest reward of doing this. And so I just thank you for sharing that. And obviously, thank you for our longstanding friendship, for welcoming us into your home here in Toronto, the great team that you have the privilege to work with. Thank you again, both of you guys, for sponsoring, making tonight so special, and really for sharing so many valuable insights that clearly resonated with the audience. So, big round of applause for this panel. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Jack, thank you, Christian.
SPEAKER_09Good night, everybody! Mr. Rap on the first line, Podcast and Travel Friends here live in Toronto.
