Digital Tourism Think Tank

09/06/2026

Where in the visitor journey should a destination's AI interface sit?

💬 This is the question waiting underneath the chatbot-on-the-website conversation. An AI interface can be installed at an attraction or point of interest, included as a feature on a mobile app, embedded on a website or even integrated inside the social platform where a traveller is already searching. Each place needs a different kind of design and a general-purpose chatbot trying to serve every visitor in every moment tends not to serve any of them well.

🌐 More than 90% of visitors now report some trust in AI finding travel information. The picture changes when the question shifts to control. A recent survey found that only 20% would be comfortable with AI curating an entire travel itinerary. Travellers will use AI to support their planning, up to the point where they lose the ability to make decisions themselves.

For DMOs, the design process around AI is shifting from running an interface to deciding the conditions under which interfaces operate. Scope, voice, partner standards and where AI hands the conversation back to a human are now the questions a destination must answer before a tool is chosen.

👉 Read the full article on how destinations are answering that question: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/opinion/where-the-ai-interface-belongs-in-the-visitor-journey

Discover Halifax Experience Columbus Tourism Fiji

As destinations move past basic chatbots, they are deploying targeted AI interfaces, from local port planners to connected city networks, to support travellers while preserving a destination's unique voice.

27/05/2026

What does it mean to be discoverable when AI tools are the fastest-growing way travellers plan their trips and being cited by AI does not always mean being recommended?

🔍 This is the question reshaping discoverability for DMOs in 2026. AI-powered tools are now the only channel actively gaining momentum for trip planning, rising from 16.8% of travellers in 2025 to 23.1% in 2026. At the same time the space available to be cited inside AI is narrowing and the work of staying visible looks different from what most destinations have built for.

📋 Research tracking more than 220 websites that scaled content using AI tools found that 54% lost 30% or more of their peak organic traffic after an initial rise. Visibility inside AI can be earned and then lost again on the timescale of a single planning cycle. The DMOs making progress are working on two questions at once. How well their content is organised so AI can use it. Where they show up on the platforms AI actually reads from.

👉 Read the full article on where AI discovery is heading and what destinations are doing about it: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/opinion/when-search-splits-in-two-being-found-in-the-age-of-ai-discovery

The conversation continues at X. Design Week 2026 in Brussels, 2-4 June, with a full day dedicated to discoverability and presence in this new search environment.

👉 Register for XDW here: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/x-design-week/index-html

Digital discovery is shifting at an extraordinary pace, fundamentally changing how people find information online. Nearly four in ten US travellers used generative AI for trip research in 2025, an eleven-point jump in twelve months.

26/05/2026

The destinations truly advancing with AI are not those with the largest budgets or the most advanced technology. Instead, they are the ones leveraging a community where practical challenges are shared, use cases are tested and progress is achieved collectively.

X. Design Week 2026 is built around that kind of peer learning. The three days in Brussels are designed specifically for DMOs who want to move from individual experimentation to collaborative progress and peer exchange.

Here is what the programme covers:

🔧 Internal Capabilities: What AI readiness actually looks like across tools, skills, workflows and team structure and capabilities.
🌐 Competitive Positioning: How your destination shows up in AI-powered search and the new discovery landscape.
🛡️ AI Governance and Strategy: The frameworks that give destination teams the confidence to act, where strategy becomes action through use cases and working sessions with peers.

X. Design Week is where DMOs compare notes, share what is working and become part of a community that supports one another in the challenging journey to AI adoption.

👉 Register for XDW 2026 to become part of this community: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/x-design-week

22/05/2026

78% of business leaders lack strong confidence that their organisation could pass an independent AI governance audit within 90 days. Most of those organisations have an official AI policy in place, highlighting a discrepancy between having an official AI policy and being able to show how decisions are made.

With the EU AI Act entering into full force in August 2026, regulatory compliance is a particularly important focus for destinations. Yet, legal compliance represents a relatively narrow scope as it only answers the questions that regulators have already assessed. The speed of technical capability advancement often means that oversight and AI governance typically follow more slowly.

The emergence of agentic AI means that as DMOs increasingly move towards providing AI tools with structured access to open data, legal liability for AI hallucinations becomes a much more complex consideration. As autonomous agent-to-agent interactions become normalised, this potential legal exposure requires robust data governance to run in parallel with AI governance.

👉 Read the article on why AI governance for DMOs now has to extend beyond the AI tools the destination deploys to include formal oversight of all AI-mediated communication: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/opinion/the-role-of-ai-governance-strategies-in-mitigating-risk

The conversation continues at X. Design Week 2026 in Brussels, 2-4 June, opening with a full day on AI capability and governance.

👉 Register for XDW here: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/x-design-week

Most destinations have spent the last two years getting comfortable with AI tools, with the pace of experimentation being impressive. The more complex question is what happens when the AI environment changes faster than the policies written for it.

21/05/2026

Most DMOs are working through AI challenges that look unique from the inside, but reveal common patterns the moment they are shared with peers. The Advisory Clinic at X. Design Week 2026 is the zone designed to surface these patterns and turn them into practical and strategic recommendations.

📚 Every participant will leave with a set of practical solutions to the most frequent challenges destinations are working through, alongside specific guidance shaped around their own submitted questions. The patterns that surface in the room will shape the wider Use Cases Library shared after the event.

If your DMO is wrestling with an AI challenge right now, whether it sits in governance, discoverability, interfaces or internal capability, the Advisory Clinic is where you can explore the underlying strategic and organisational questions.

📆 If you haven't registered yet for X. Design Week in Brussels on 2-4 June, make sure to secure your place at: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/x-design-week

20/05/2026

🌎 How can DMOs design meaningful AI experiences for visitors while ensuring their destination remains the preferred choice within those platforms? During X. Design Week, we'll be joined by a line-up of experts who will help us tackle this question:

🎙️ Aleksandra Jerebic Topolovec, from the Feel Slovenia, will explore the DMO's role in connecting deep destination knowledge with partner content, industry data and real-time inputs to create something more strategic than standard LLM outputs. Aleksandra will share the practical work behind Alma, Slovenia's AI travel guide, including the technical and editorial optimisations made to the site, how these feed the assistant with trusted local context and the wider benefits seen in AI discoverability.

🎙️ Mark Merrywest, Founder of Selfe, will address the visibility gap facing DMOs, focusing on how missing schema and poor machine readability shape how destinations are discovered and cited by AI. Mark will explore the technical frameworks that dictate a destination’s visibility in AI interfaces, the common obstacles facing DMOs and the practical solutions that deliver measurable results.

🎙️ Jess Humphrys, from the Digital Tourism Think Tank, will sit down with Nicholas Raymond Hall to talk through her work on designing functional AI interfaces, from vibe coding to newsletter HTML. Jess will walk through how she has approached this process, the tools and prompts that have shaped her workflow and what she has learned about leveraging AI for building usable, branded interfaces. The conversation will give a practical look at what vibe coding makes possible for small teams and how DMOs can start applying the same thinking to their own work.

These are just some of the topics we will explore with DMOs at X. Design Week 2026, taking place on 2–4 June in Brussels, alongside the wider questions of AI interfaces and experience design.

👉 Secure your place at X. Design Week 2026 and join us in Brussels: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/x-design-week

19/05/2026

🌎 What is required to scale AI within a DMO, taking it from a handful of tools to an effective governance structure that the whole organisation unites around? During X. Design Week, we'll be joined by a line-up of experts who will help us tackle this question:

🎙️ Maas van Drie and Sherry Bidgood, from the Aruba Tourism Authority, will sit down with Nicholas Raymond Hall for a fireside chat to discuss the collaborative process for developing Aruba's AI strategy. Maas and Sherry will walk through the audit that opened the process, the readiness questions it surfaced and how this shaped the strategy that followed.

🎙️ Alfred Wagenius, from Visit Skåne, will give an honest account of what AI governance and integration looks like inside a large public organisation. Alfred will share the first steps taken to embed AI into workflows, the thinking behind their disclosure policies and the tensions that emerge when mandated tools and preferred tools don't align.

These are just some of the topics we will explore with DMOs at X. Design Week 2026, taking place on 2–4 June in Brussels, alongside the wider strategic and governance questions.

👉 Secure your place at X. Design Week and join us in Brussels: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/x-design-week

18/05/2026

🌎 How can a destination maintain its visibility as travellers switch from traditional search engines to AI-driven platforms? During X. Design Week, we'll be joined by a line-up of experts who will help us tackle this question:

🎙️ Johannes Auer, from Oberösterreich, will share how their "In Unserer Natur" campaign used AI to build a cast of animal reporters, designed to raise awareness of mindfulness and respect for nature. Johannes will show what AI-led content can do when it carries an authentic and local voice, walking through the creative thinking behind the campaign and how it gave the destination a distinctive brand presence.

🎙️ Stewart Howe, from Discover Peterborough, will talk us through the "Dinosaur City" campaign, which connects AI-generated dinosaur characters to real exhibitions, trails and museum experiences. Stewart will explore what this shift means for destinations when they move from informational content into experiential, character-led storytelling and how this approach gives them an authoritative voice in a fragmenting planning journey.

🎙️ Toby Morris, from Tiki, will open his session with a scene-setter on the shift from traditional search to AI and GEO, framing what destinations are now navigating without the familiar markers. Toby will walk through the factors that shape how a destination stays visible in this new channel and the tactics that have started to make a difference. The conversation will close on what this shift asks of destinations now and the choices that will determine who stays on the map.

These are just some of the topics we will explore with DMOs at X. Design Week 2026, taking place on 2–4 June in Brussels, alongside the wider questions of discoverability and presence.

👉 Secure your place at X. Design Week 2026: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/x-design-week

Nicholas Raymond Hall

15/05/2026

Discover the Charms of Brussels with Us at X. Design Week!

Brussels isn't just a city, it's a vibrant hub of culture, history and innovation. Here is our token Belgian Romy Cywie to tell you more. Whether it's the bustling markets at Place du Châtelain or the serene beauty of Etangs d'Ixelles, there's something here for everyone.

At X. Design Week, happening right on Avenue Louise, we're excited to share these gems with you. Let's challenge the notion that Brussels is anything but boring. Can't wait to welcome you all soon!

Join us at X. Design Week 2026 in Brussels (2-4 June) to discover not just the city's hidden gems, but how to make them discoverable to travellers worldwide.

👉 Join us: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/x-design-week

14/05/2026

Books have been drawing travellers to specific places for centuries and that pull has only grown stronger. With the global literary tourism market valued at $2.4 billion in 2024 and projected to reach $3.3 billion by 2034, destinations that treat their literary heritage as a strategic asset are opening up a meaningful and often underused opportunity.

Literary travellers tend to be culturally curious and willing to invest in experiences, making them exactly the kind of high-value visitor most destinations are working hard to attract.

Here is what we explored in our recent article:

📍 Author Trails and Regional Dispersal: Mapping a journey through the life of a literary figure can connect major city hubs with rural areas and local food culture. This approach gives smaller destinations new visibility, drawing visitors away from the usual anchors and into the wider region.
✍️ Literature as a Brand Position: Literary content gives DMOs a way to communicate values directly to the travellers who share them. When destinations build campaigns around freedom of expression, cultural identity or a distinct local voice, they resonate with specific audiences on a deeper level.
🎬 Screen Adaptations as Literary Tourism: Book-led travel and screen-led travel are closely linked and the destinations that benefit most are the ones that treat an adaptation as an opportunity to deepen the literary story. Building itineraries, content hubs and trade resources around the source material turns short-term cultural interest into sustained visitor demand.
📅 Recurring Annual Moments: A fixed date in the literary calendar, supported by authentic local programming, creates predictable demand and a platform for international visibility. Destinations with a strong literary anchor can transform a single cultural event into a recurring economic impact.
🌍 Authors as Regional Brand Anchors: A literary icon can draw a region together under one identity. It gives towns that might otherwise be in competition a reason to cooperate, turning their individual attractions into a single and shared story.

👉 Read our full article to explore all of the insights and DMO examples: https://www.thinkdigital.travel/opinion/how-literature-influences-destination-branding