Feeding the AI Beast: Helping Tourism Operators Adapt to AI with Confidence and Clarity

Last week I had the privilege of presenting at the Destination Sydney Surrounds South (DSSS) Visitor Economy Symposium in beautiful Kiama, NSW. With this year’s theme focused on People, Productivity and Profit, it was a great context in which to explore one of the biggest disruptors (and opportunities) in our industry today — Artificial Intelligence.

My session, Feeding the AI Beast, was built around a very real and growing question for tourism operators: “How do we keep up with how fast AI is changing the way our customers are planning, booking and experiencing travel?”

🔍 What We Covered

We looked at AI from both the consumer lens and the operator opportunity:

• How travellers are using tools like ChatGPT, GuideGeek, Trvlr.ai and chatbots to research and book
• How Google’s share in search is shifting — and what that means for destination marketing websites
• What AI-powered search tools like Perplexity, Gemini and ChatGPT value and prioritise in your content (hint: localised, experience-based content)

💡 Operator-Focused Insights

Keeping with the Tourism Tribe promise of sharing applicable, practical knowledge, a central component of the hour-long session was a demonstration of using ChatGPT to create a marketing and social media plan.  The prompts shared enable operators to:

• generate their Unique Selling Proposition
• create 5 – 7 content themes
• draft a four-week social media calendar

Also shared was how they can create a custom GPT to further improve brand and authenticity content outcomes, and save even more time in their operations.

We discussed the importance of experience-based content in a world of AI-generated messaging and the role of short videos e.g. Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok videos.  I demonstrated using Veed.io to create short clips repurposed for a longer video with a voiceover.  Within minutes operators can produce ready to post short videos that show and tell the real story of living and working in their destination, true guest experiences, and the behind the scenes of their businesses.

🤝 Real Voices from the Industry

A highlight of the session was the operator panel, where we heard from:

• Zeynep Testoni from Soul Clay Studios, who’s curiosity and passion for learning has motivated her to begin her AI journey, and ‘train’ ChatGPT to know how to portray her business
• Michelle Bishop from Bangalay Luxury Villas, who’s been using AI to support marketing and guest experience, greatly speeding up her team’s ability to produce on-brand, human-centric content
• Alex Herlihy from Wildwood Kangaroo Valley, Sandcastles cabins and Le Petit Dejeuner, his recent start up which offers school cultural experiences, who brought brilliant insights from his deep innovation background, and told the story of using ChatGPT for research and rapid product development processes for Le Petit Dejeurner

The panel members were open, inspiring, and proof that there’s no “right way” to adopt AI — just a willingness to learn, test and correct the outputs to get quality results.

📹 We Wrapped with a Real-World Reminder

In a sea of automated content, the key message was this:

Your job is to keep it real.

Genuine experiences, honest storytelling, and five-star service will always win — and AI is here to help you scale those messages, not replace them.

Thank you to DSSS and all the passionate operators in the room. It was an honour to speak alongside such forward-thinking industry professionals. If you’re ready to explore how AI can work for you — without the hype — we’d love to support you through Tourism Tribe.

Want to try our Tourism Marketing Mate GPT demo? Take it for a test drive to draft your unique selling proposition, content themes and four-week social media plan.