Reducing Costs and Building Trust with AI in Travel Industry

In this episode, industry expert Jason Tremblay shares how AI is transforming customer engagement in vacation ownership, reducing costs, and enhancing brand reputation through real-time social media responses and personalized interactions.

Voices of Vacation Ownership is part of CRTA, Furthering vacation ownership in Canada and throughout the world. Learn more about CRTA and the benefits of being a member here: https://canadianrta.org/#

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Hama Campai, the first vacation ownership project on the northern coast of Ecuador.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

This is Voices of Vacation Ownership, the only podcast where the vacation ownership industry's top executives speak openly about what's really driving the business forward. Hosted by Gay Tambin, president and CEO of the Canadian Resort and Travel Association. Each episode digs into the trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping our industry. One conversation at a time. Let's go.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

Hi everyone, I'm Gaitan Babin, and welcome to Voices of Vacation Ownership. It's the podcast where we speak with leaders that are shaping the future of our industry. Now, each episode focuses on ideas that help strengthen performance, partnerships, and the owner experience. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Jason Tromblay. Jason is a serial entrepreneur, Martech, innovator, and CEO of one agency and conversion IQ AI. Jason has managed hundreds of millions in digital ad spent and has built propriety AI systems designed to handle customer engagement at scale. In an industry like vacation ownership, where marketing drives volume, engagement drives trust, and reputation drives growth. Digital chaos is a real challenge. So social comments, fragmented conversations, rising acquisition costs. So today we're going to explore how AI can bring clarity, structure, and scalability to customers' engagement. Jason, thank you for your time and welcome to our podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Well, it's really cool to be here. I always love any time I can spend with you, Gaitan. And uh we've had so many, so many deep conversations about the industry and where everything's going over the years. So it's a total pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

Well, our relationship goes way beyond business. I think we became really good friends. I've always known you as the best dressed man in the industry, so I try to put a little bit Second to you.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Little color to try to pass it. Second to you.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

But I very much value our friendship and I value the contribution that you've done in the industry. You've been in the industry now for a few decades, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Uh well, you know, it's funny. I I first got started in 2003. So how many decades is that? Just a couple, I guess. 23 years. Yeah, 2003. 2003. We my my mom had a a terrible uh experience with a fraudulent resale company that gave birth to sell my timeshare now because I knew I knew resale could be done better. I sold that company a long time ago, uh, as you know, back in 2012, I guess. So what is that now? 14 years ago. Yep. And uh uh Brooke and I uh started an agency uh and we kind of switched sides. We now work for the developers, and I'm just just super, super passionate about our industry, about our our best days are absolutely ahead of us. Uh and but most of that, most of that passion and most of that belief about and optimism is because of the the technology and everything that's available to us now. That was not available, even if even a couple of years ago.

SPEAKER_03 3:39

Well, if I was gonna come up with a word to describe you, it would have to be the word passion. So when you're engaged, you're passionate. And I feel that when AI became part of the technology, AI was a word I didn't know existed 10 years ago. Yeah. Today, I don't think it's going away anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

No, no. So, you know, it's funny because so so conversionIQ.ai is our AI company, but but I want you to know we didn't create a company uh in the spirit of like, oh, everybody's doing AI, let's create an AI company. That's not actually what happened. What happened is our agency, um, you know, we work for a lot of major uh developers in the industry. And uh a big part of what we do for most of our clients is we generate uh online mini vacation sales. We do a lot of online marketing for some of the biggest developers in the world. And the challenge is uh when when a consumer is is looking at, let's say it's a minivac ad, let's say it's a you know, go to Orlando for $99, get three nights, that creates a lot of skepticism. That creates a lot of like, oh, this can't be real or this is too good to be true. And what would happen is all of a lot of our advertising is on social media, because those are the highest engagement channels. So we spend millions and millions of dollars every month on Meta and other platforms too, but probably we spend more money on Facebook, Instagram than anything else. And so that would generate just a lot of our ads would just get a lot of comments like this deal must be too good to be true, or or in some cases, this is a scam. Or, you know, timeshare's a trap, don't fall for it. Really nasty comments. And if we didn't address those comments, that had a pretty significant impact negatively on the cost to acquire a customer. Or basically, you know, our developers just call that the cost per package. Yep. So uh so several years ago, back when my son was 16 years old uh and and wanted a part-time job, I said to Tyler, I said, I need you to start responding to these social media comments. Because if we don't, you know, our developers aren't doing it, our clients aren't doing it, we need to do it so we can get the cost down, right? So that they can scale their campaigns. And that's really how it started. So, Tyler, you know, a couple of weeks he's responding to social media comments and he's like, Dad, you don't you don't realize like there's more comments that I can, I can never respond to all these comments. You don't understand. And we really didn't understand because it's not like there's a counter, like when you log into Facebook that tells you how many comments you have. And I said, Well, what's your buddy Dan doing? High school friend he had. We'll hire Dan too, he'll do it. So now I have Dan telling me, I can never keep up with this, you know. And so that led to hiring uh seven full-time employees just to respond to social media comments, and we couldn't keep up. That then led to hiring an additional team offshore or near shore at Guatemala, and we had another seven people. We had 16 people, their full-time job was responding to social media comments. And we've and we still weren't really keeping up, and we weren't doing a great job in terms of the quality of the response.

SPEAKER_03 6:53

But they were also not responding on real time like the moment that comment came in.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Absolutely. So so let's say that someone sees uh an ad for a Branson mini vacation, it's Friday night, and let's say that the the the mom, the wife in the relationship is you know, she's scrolling on her phone, she sees the Facebook goes, Oh wow, this looks pretty cool. And so let's she let's say she writes or makes a comment, uh, is the resort pet friendly? Or uh I have three kids. Is the unit big enough to to to accommodate my myself, my husband, and our three kids? So she writes that comment, right, on the ad. But if but if if nobody responds to that in real time, uh if if that isn't responded until the the following Monday, that person's gone. They're there, so we've lost that sale, right? So it just got to be um such a ridiculous uh burden and expense trying to keep up with this comment response. I went to our CTO, uh his name is Ezra, he's a brilliant, brilliant engineer, and I said, Ezra, there's got to be some solution that doesn't involve humans. We we're we're an agency, right? We're a digital ad agency. We we had more people on our comment response team than we had on our creative team. And that's when it occurred to me, this is ridiculous. This is this is this is totally absurd. Yeah, there's got to be a better way. So we went out and looked, and there are different like uh uh tools that do like uh they call them like decision tree or structured messages or structured replies. Uh there's a lot of different tools out there, but but they're very labor-intensive to set up, they're very labor-intensive to maintain. They just they didn't they didn't solve our problem, our high-volume problem. They weren't scalable. And so I said to Ezra, you know, I hear all this, this is I think in 2022. Uh I said to Ezra, let's just build something. I I know you're capable, you've we have an incredible development team. And so that that gave birth to what was our uh debut product, Comment Responders. And so what so what Comment Responder does is in real time, uh it looks at a social media post, it looks at a social media comment on that post, and in the brand's voice and tone, it instantly does the sentiment analysis, it determines is this a negative comment, a positive comment? Uh if it is negative, what is the target of that negative sentiment? But ultimately, the most important thing is it responds to the comment in real time with objective-driven purpose. And by objective-driven purpose, what I mean is if the objective is to get them to purchase a mini-vacation, or get them to phone in, or get them to download an app, or get them to fill out a lead form, the AI understands the objective and in a better-than-human way drives the user to that action. So that that's how we started. We weren't trying to start a company. We were just trying to solve a problem.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

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SPEAKER_00 10:26

This is Voices of Vacation Ownership, the only podcast where the vacation ownership industry's top executives speak openly about what's really driving the business forward. Hosted by Gay Tambin, president and CEO of the Canadian Resort and Travel Association, each episode digs into the trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping our industry. One conversation at a time. Let's go.

SPEAKER_03 10:57

Well, in the world today, like and you touched on that, where brands use thousands of uh digital points uh touch points. What's actually happening behind the scenes that the executives don't see? I mean, you throw it to the medias, but there's gotta be uh an effect, like uh you know, a push, guess a pull, and and so forth. So all brands are using digital touch points. Everybody, but behind the scenes, something's gotta go on that we don't see.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

I think that's that's a really good question. Um I I would say a couple of things. When you say what don't what don't the executives see? So I'm thinking when you ask that question, I'm thinking the C level people, right? The the the C-suite, what don't they see? Number one, they don't see uh the the brand damage um that that happens by not engaging in those conversations. Because because typically, typically a brand, particularly when it comes to social media, but but but other channels too, uh they're they're either ignoring it because they had the same problem I had, which was it's very labor-intensive, it's it's it's very difficult to scale up to the scale of the of just the volume of all the social media chatter. So so a lot of brands just ignore it, or they try to keep up with it, but but but the teams that they hire to keep up with it, um they may be human, but humans have bad days. Humans uh make mistakes, humans aren't always in a good mood. Sometimes they call in sick, right? And so as a result, uh the human response isn't always necessarily the ultimate reflection of the brand voice. So that's that's the first thing is there's just a lot of damage that can happen to the brand by not addressing all of this in real time. The second thing that I would say the C-suite doesn't really understand is how it impacts their cost to acquire a customer. Um so and when I say a customer, it could be at sort of the top of the funnel when they're selling, let's say, a vacation package to a potential future timeshare owner and they're just selling a mini vacation package, or even when the person's at the sales table uh on a tour and they're and they're about to make a decision, but they go on their phone and they do a Google search and they see something unsavory. And so, you know, not not not addressing the problem. I can tell you from our experience, when we implemented this AI solution, our cost to acquire a package purchaser, so a vacation package purchaser, literally overnight decreased 32%. That's significant. Um I actually have a lot of reasons to believe it's it's it's it's even greater. But without getting into all that nuance, I can tell you confidently, just responding to social media comments in real time decreased our cost per package on behalf of our clients by 32%.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

That's amazing. But see, in the world of vacation and ownership specifically, um, which has been my world for 30 years, um reputation, trust is everything. And I think there's a person-to-person discussion, a person-to-person interaction, it still has a lot of value. So it how does unmanaged digital engagement impact that long-term performance? Like you want to retention is important, you know, trust is important, yeah. But when it's unmanaged, how does that affect that performance?

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yeah, so so you that was a multi-part question. So the first thing I want to say is one of the interesting debates that we have when we talk to companies about implementing AI, uh AI with respect to customer engagement, is there's a lot of concern around how how can I be sure that this is not going to negatively impact our brand, our brand voice, the integrity of our brand. If we're having just some flimsy AI uh answer a question and not a human, is that going to negatively impact our brand? And here's what I would tell you. First of all, it's a totally rational question, right? If I'm if I'm in the C-suite of some very important brand and and someone were were to come to me with, hey, we can use AI to handle customer engagement, I would be very skeptical. I'd be very concerned, I'd be probably scared. Like uh, there's a lot that could go wrong there. But what I will tell you is everything is knowledge base driven, which simply means um, so whatever the brand is, that brand probably has a brand uh branding guideline and nomenclature guide, right? That that brand has already established what is their brand voice and tone, what are their branding guidelines? How do they talk to consumers? In some cases, they have those guidelines uh on a per channel basis. We talk to our consumers on social media a certain way, maybe we talk to them on the website in a certain way, but they have they know they already know who their what their voice is. Now, many of these brands employ big call centers. And and this may be shocking to hear, but not every call center employee is necessarily living uh their ultimate career dream. So where is there more risk? Let me give you two scenarios. The first scenario is you have an AI that is never in a bad mood, doesn't have a mood, right? Uh follows the the branding guidelines and nomenclature guide perfectly. It it it adopts the voice perfectly.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

Doesn't get emotional.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

It doesn't get emotional about it, it doesn't deviate from it, and it understands the objective. And when I say the objective based on the entry point. So what is the entry point? The entry point could be somebody makes a comment on social media, the entry point could be uh a visitor to the website. Those are all different entry points, and and and and the different entry points could have different objectives. But the AI never screws up, the AI never makes a mistake. Um, sometimes I'm asked, well, yeah, but doesn't AI sometimes hallucinate? Uh and the answer is yes. Uh however, we have an auditing, a separate, a whole separate model that we develop. We we call her Oddity, and Oddity audits any response that Chatty, which is our conversational AI, uh, might make before it's it's actually posted public. And what Oddity audits specifically is is this comment, is this response that that the AI is about to make in real time, because all this happens in literally about 800 milliseconds, uh, is this consistent with the brand voice and tone? And is it consistent with the objective of the campaign? And is it factual?

SPEAKER_03 18:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Uh and so if it passes oddity, and about 94% of the time it does, then in real time it responds. And if it doesn't, it goes back, it says to Chatty, try again.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

So looking at it from a consumer or uh a new member at a resort or whatever, maybe the nightmare is when you phone somewhere and thank you for calling. If you're looking, these are the options one, two, three, four, five, six, and six, you then you hit seven, and then seven says, Thank you for so if your question is relevant to finance phone, it frustrating like no no to it. Yeah, yeah. If I understand you correct, is when somebody calls for a complaint, make a comment, or an issue, so they got a question, they're not looking for a relationship, they're not looking, how's your baby? There, they want an answer, they want a response, they want a solution to whatever they're asking about.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

And the AI is on truth, not wait till Monday till you respond. They will respond to you automatically. Yep. And that could that conversation can continue. It doesn't have to stop on one response, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:06

That's the beauty of it. That's um, yeah, that's the beauty of it. So I'll give you a scenario. So let's say that a brand uh makes it has a social media post. And it might be a paid ad or it could be an organic post, but whatever. It's some kind of social media post. So that then generates a comment from a user. So so chatty, the AI, will publicly respond to that comment. That provides positive social proof. It also hides the negativity. So if somebody says, you know, something, timeshare is a scam, don't do it, or just something negative or stupid. Something of no value, just that's right. Something of no value doesn't support the objective, it just hides the comment. Um but meantime, the AI says, uh sends a direct message to the user because once they once they make a comment on the post, that that gives the permission uh for the AI to then send a direct message. Now now we've got a messenger conversation going on. So now uh and I'll use the mini vacation example, just as an example. But this applies to a zillion examples. So now I'm having a conversation with you, the AI is having a conversation with you, a messenger. Hey, you you you when are you thinking of going to Orlando? Oh, you have three kids, you might want to upgrade to a larger unit. We have upgrades available, isn't that great news? The the base offers for a three-night vacation stay, but we actually have additional nights, additional nights available. I'm gonna, hey, Gaitan, I'm gonna drop a link here for you with with a some custom deals for you. You you click that link, now it takes you to a landing page. Now you go to the landing page, the website, and guess what? Chatty's still there. Chatty is now on the website. So think of like web chat on steroids.

SPEAKER_03 20:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Okay, so think of like um, you're not waiting for a live human, we've all dealt with that frustration. You're not dealing with some dumb chat bot that can only answer very specific questions, and as soon as your nuance goes outside of that, it gets it gets stuck. Imagine having this super intelligence where when you arrive on the landing page, first of all, it remembers your social media comment, it remembers the conversation that you were having in direct message, and it picks up that conversation on the website. And so now maybe at this point it drives you a little further, maybe you're not ready to make a purchase, but at least gets you to opt in.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

So now you've opted in. Now we have your name, your phone number, your email, your marketing consent. And so now you go into whatever the brand has for a lead nurture journey. Um, you're you're not you're now dropped into that. But here's the difference. Let's say part of that journey is okay, think about journey building. I hate journey building. I've been a I've been a direct marketer my entire adult life. I hate journey building. It's a pain in the butt. So journey building is typically like this uh okay, day three. If the CRM event has not changed and it's still unable to contact, send this text message or send this email. Okay. And and typically, if we send a text message, that text message is like a one-way blast. It's like, hey Gaiton, don't forget about this deal. Either call us or go to this link. But imagine if instead that text message asked you a question. Like, hey Gaiton, we were chatting the other day, and I I may maybe you were skeptical about this deal, but if you actually knew that this three-night vacation in Orlando for $99 was real, would you start packing your bags? Well, we most marketers, most brands can't send a text message like that because they don't have the teams on standby to respond to your reply. That's where AI comes in. That's where Chatty comes in. Because you might say, you might say something like, yeah, maybe, but this, I'm sure this is a scam. And that's where Chatty says, well, actually it's not. Actually, all this requires is a 90-minute uh uh tour of the of the resort, and the rest of the vacation is yours to enjoy. The point is, now she's engaging you. Now she's drawing you in because you're having a conversation. And and to be able to replicate that with humans would be so cost prohibitive and so unreliable in terms of messaging, uh, it doesn't work. And that's why AI has changed everything.

SPEAKER_03 23:26

Well, just to finish off, because our time is almost over, but leaders, how should they start thinking in the in the business and in an industry, especially where relationships are are so important? And that's why we're all here at at events like this. How do they balance automation with human connection in an industry that's we need to see face to face? So, where's that balance? Like you get a leader that let's say as a news AI, as a news any of these platforms, still old school, starting to realize falling behind the eight ball. Because if you're not responding to your your your comments, you you're definitely going behind the eight ball. Yeah. So where's that balance?

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Well, I I think I think the the first question is what are we trying to improve? I I I think so, you know, in in our industry and vacation ownership, you know, what what do I hear most as an agency? Jason, we want more tours. Okay. But getting a tour is is the culmination of lots of micro conversions. Yes. Right? So to get a tour, you have to get a person that purchases a vacation package, let's say. Um but to get a person, a person that purchases a vacation package, we have to get them to respond to an ad. And when they respond to an ad, we have to get them to then opt in. And then once they've opted in, we have to get them to make the perhaps there's so many micro sort of conversions that lead up to what that developer wants that or that C-suite wants, which is I want a good tour. So I think the first thing is like understanding what are those micro conversions we're trying to improve. And then when you when you get a little more clinical about it, like that, we're trying to improve these nine things or these 13 things, uh, then it's like, okay, can AI amplify, improve our is there a use case there for AI? And by the way, there in almost every case there is, but I think we get so worried about the whole, what is AI doing to human connection, all that stuff. I'm actually super optimistic about it. I I I I totally understand the the fear, I understand the concern, but I will tell you that when you when you don't try to boil the ocean, when you just look at very specific use cases, okay, we're trying to improve the travel rate of people that purchased open dated vacation packages. That's a very specific use case. How can AI help? Well, right now we're sending emails and we're calling people and we're sending text messages trying to get them to book their vacation packages. Imagine if you send out 10,000 text messages, imagine if you could have, because of AI, 10,000 autonomous, one-to-one conversations, concierge style, helping all those people book those vacation packages.

SPEAKER_03 26:18

At the same time.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

At the same time.

SPEAKER_03 26:20

It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

That's where we are.

SPEAKER_03 26:22

You know, I I learned so much every time I talk to you because you've got into a world, and I remember you were speaking at an event, I think it might have been Cancun recently, and you and you said you're getting kind of bored, and you're kind of, you know, been at it for 30 some odd 30 years, and you just AI felt woke up. I I felt energized, I'm passionate again. So thank you so much for your time. You know what? It's it's always a great discussion together, and and I'm sure everyone will agree that if you haven't met Jason yet, it's a treat to meet him and it one of these events. But if you got any questions when it comes to the AI, the technology, interaction, chat GPT, all phenomenal things, please leave a comment below. We'll be glad to get back to you. In the meantime, safe travel, it's great being with you again, and we'll see you on the next podcast. This episode is brought to you by Hama Campai, the first vacation ownership project on the northern coast of Ecuador.