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.
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Travel Trends with Dan Christian
Event Preview: Arival 360 Spokane 2026
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If you work in tours, activities, attractions, or multi-day travel, you already know the industry is changing fast. Distribution is evolving, the way travellers discover experiences is shifting, and AI is rewriting the playbook. In this Event Preview episode, Dan sits down with Bruce Rosard, Co-founder and COO of Arival, to preview Arival 360 Spokane Oct 12-15 2026 and discuss the trends every experiences business should have on its radar.
Bruce explains what makes Arival different. They discuss why Spokane was selected as this year's host city. And then conversation shifts to this year's agenda, including dedicated sessions on AI, culinary tourism, distribution, and pricing strategies. Bruce shares why discoverability is becoming much more complex than simply ranking on Google, how social commerce platforms like TikTok Go could reshape bookings, and where operators should be focusing their attention as traveler behaviour continues to evolve.
This year, Dan will once again serve as MC for the Multi-Day Stream, which arrives in Spokane after successful editions in Washington, DC, and Valencia, Spain. The program marks an important milestone as the conversation shifts to the largest travel market in the world, putting the spotlight on one of the most important growth opportunities for the multi-day sector. The stream opens with a keynote from Leigh Barnes, US General Manager at Intrepid Travel, followed by a main-stage panel exploring the new entrants and the small-group travel shift reshaping the category, featuring Dan Berger, new US General Manager at WeRoad. Attendees can also expect practical breakout sessions on marketing, technology, and distribution, led by industry leaders including Melissa Krueger (CEO, Classic Vacations), Betsy Harbison (CEO, Softrip), Susan Sanderson (Founder, Rezometry), and Dale Schober (Rad Adventures).
Looking beyond Spokane, Bruce also offers a glimpse into what's ahead for Arival, including Arival Bilbao 2027, themed around transformation, and the anticipated return to Brisbane in July 2027.
Special Offer: Save $100 USD on your Arival 360 Spokane registration with code MCVL-D26. If you register using the code, let us know and we'll feature you in our Travel Trends Event Spotlight.
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Dates, Deal Code, And Why Go
SPEAKER_00Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Travel Trends Podcast and a special event preview episode. We rarely do preview episodes, but we do these especially for our friends over at Arrival. And one of the key reasons is because there's so much happening at Arrival event. And obviously, I'm involved speaking and I'm running sessions as well. And I'm going to bring in our great friend Bruce Rozard, the co-founder of Arrival here in a moment. But I just wanted to start off by reminding everyone that the date is approaching for Spokane 2026. It's October 12th to 15th. You can find more information at arrival.travel and register to join us. And one of the things that you should know and why we're doing this event preview is that anyone that registers with our promo code, which is on the homepage of our website. It's on our event page. I'm going to share it with you now. It's MCVL-D26. MCVL-D26. Use that promo code to get $100 off an already discounted ticket. The operators are $13.99 regularly. They're on for $9.99 plus the $100 discount. There's no reason not to join us in Spokane. And you'll hear that in a moment because of all the amazing speakers and sessions that we have planned. But let me bring back the man himself, Bruce Rozard. Welcome back to the Travel Trends Podcast. Great to have you with us again. Hey, Dan.
SPEAKER_01Awesome to be here. Great to be uh on this side of the podcast. As you know, I listen to just about every show, almost every night when I'm walking my dogs. So uh really looking forward to being with you on this side of the microphone.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much, Bruce. Nobody, you're a great friend, obviously a big fan of the show. We were just together in Toronto. I thought maybe we can actually start with that, only because you were in town. We put an event together for yourself and Janelle. And it was amazing. I keep hearing uh wonderful feedback from we brought about 30 or 40 executives together across the travel industry to welcome Bruce and Janelle to our city so that the arrival
Meet Bruce And What Arrival Is
SPEAKER_00team could see what an amazing city Toronto is, maybe for a future event in the future. But um, obviously it was wonderful to see you in person. And so um, if you wouldn't mind, just as a way of introduction, for anyone who doesn't know about you, because you mentioned not only you're a listener to our podcast, you also have your own arrival podcast that Janelle and Steven host. You also have your own experience this podcast. Tell everyone a little bit more about Bruce Rosart for those people who are not who don't know you as well as I do.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's more than podcasts, I think. Um definitely uh spend more time not podcasting. But just to answer your question there, so the best part of travel is the official arrival podcast that Janelle Visser, our managing editor, does in partnership with Steven Joyce, a longtime friend of Arrival, who's now at the Protect Group. And they they basically take a lot of our content from our events, both online and in-person events, and they use that content to create their podcast and then comment on what they're hearing. It's it's a cool format, different, very different. Um, and then the other one really is what I call a hobby project that I do uh with my friends Lori Timone, who has her own consultancy called Insight in Insightful International, and of course, Christian Watts, who's at Magpie Travel uh and spends most of his time on LinkedIn, it seems like. Uh, and we just have fun on that podcast, but we're always talking about what's the most important issues we can find within experiences. Usually there's a heavy AI focus, um, but it does go way beyond that, and we've been really diversifying that as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you had so many fantastic guests on experience this. And obviously, Christian, the dynamic that you have with Lori and Christian is fantastic. Christian, obviously, is you've got a right balance of three uh industry voices, veterans in the industry that all have strong opinions, and you bring on guests. And um, I've obviously the privilege to be on there before, but you also, it's straight talk. And I want to uh the reason I wanted to bring that up at the beginning is for all of our listeners that are not familiar, uh, I definitely encourage you to check them out on their YouTube channel, experience this, um, because it is video, and that obviously is our new format as well. But um obviously the most important thing that you have going on is arrival, that you are uh the co-founder of Arrival, you're the chief customer officer for arrival. Tell everyone for that hasn't listened to an arrival podcast with us before. Um, let's make sure that we don't leave any of our listeners behind. Tell everyone what arrival is and the type of conferences you run and who come to them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sure. Thanks for that. And I think there's a few ways to describe what arrival is. Um I always like to look at comparables. And when you look at the conferences in the travel industry, specifically the B2B conferences, you start with the huge trade shows that most people would know about. WTM World Travel Market that goes on in London, ITB in Berlin, ATM in Dubai, IAPA. These are huge travel trade shows, tens of thousands of people from all sectors of travel. Right. Then you have another kind of show uh or conference, which would be like the Focus Right conference. And that's actually the genesis of where Arrival came from. That's where I met Douglas Quinby, uh, my co-founder of Arrival. We both worked there together for about seven or eight years, under Philip Wolfe, the founder of Focus Right, who really taught me everything I know about running conferences, um, just amazing stuff. He was a huge mentor. Um, and we realized about 10 years ago that there really was no conference at all for the experiences industry, what we now call destination experiences. At the time, 10 years ago, it was tours and activities. But tours, activities, attractions were always a very small part of every other conference in the world, really. Um, so we started arrival in 2017. So we're it in Spokane, it'll be our 10 years of arrival celebration. Um, and it was the first event where everyone looked around the room. It was over 500 people, and realized we're all part of the same business. And whether you are a food tour operator or a bike tour operator or an attraction like a Disney World or Universal, so small to large, we're all in the same business. And there's no other noise. There's no hotels, there's no airlines, and it changed the conversation immediately. Uh, and it was it was it was an aha moment at our that first event we had in Vegas.
SPEAKER_00For sure. And I obviously I had the privilege uh to be a part of the 2018 conference and uh to do a talk on multi-day tours, which has become a focus. You've got obviously got a wide audience of day tour uh technology distribution partners. You've moved into multi-day, you've moved into culinaire, you've moved into AI, um, the 360 event that you're so well known for in the US. Also, I got the first chance to go to Europe this year. I think many of our listeners would have listened to that, not only the preview episode, but also most importantly, the event spotlight itself, where we bring together all the amazing voices that attend an arrival conference. So the question I always get, which is why I wanted to establish that now, is what is arrival and who goes to this event? Because before we get into why Spokane and why now, um, let's finish off on that. Because given that you are the only real conference that focuses on what you and Douglas have uh referred to as the best part of travel, and that is obviously the app name of the podcast as well. Tell everyone, Bruce, for those people who've never been, what makes arrival different from these other travel industry conferences and what's the state of experiences heading into this event?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I do I do want to clarify we're not the only event focused on this anymore. We were when we started, but there's been a number that have sprouted out. A lot of them are user conferences. So many of our partners now have their own conferences, but there are user conferences for what they do. Um, some of which started at arrival as like a sub-event of arrival, but have now flourished on their own. And there's a couple others that are out there as well that are looking at this sector and doing things, but not with the depth and breadth of what we have. Plus, we're a research company. And that's the other thing that Douglas and I really took away from our experience at Focus Right, is it starts with research. If you do research, you really know the trends. Um, and that's what we bring to the conference is the data and the trends that kind of makes the whole thing go. And that's what people want. They want to really hear not just what's happening in my city or in my segment of the industry, but what's happening overall in the experiences industry. Um, so by starting with research and then going to events, that really kind of puts a different flavor on how we do the events.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a good point you mentioned that because Viator and certainly Fair Harbor, like the Ignite conference, some of the events that they did before an arrival conference, like in San Diego. And, you know, but I guess for my vantage point, Bruce, and I can say this, is like, you know, there's not a conference like arrival. And it's always been, it's what really struck me when I went to the very first conference, there was like a thousand people there. And the people that came to an arrival conference were not the people that I saw at other conferences. And so, and and for many of the people that go to an arrival conference, and I've said this before, but I think it's important to repeat, is that for most of the people that attend an arrival conference, this is their big conference for the year. They've made a real effort to travel to arrival, and that makes that this event that much more special and meaningful for all the attendees, because you have a lot of smaller and have done over the years, uh, mom and pop operators, smaller operators that come around the world to be at an arrival conference, given there's nothing else quite like it. I'll be the one to say that, where they can get access to the distribution partners, understanding what's happening in technology, and have the right balance, I would say, between networking and knowledge learning. Because you know, from my experience, I love going to conferences to learn. Many people go to conferences to network. I know there's benefits to both, but for me, it's always about the content. And I sit in the front row every year to watch Douglas Quinby's opening presentation
What Makes Arrival Different
SPEAKER_00where he shares the latest research. I did that at Focus Right. I've done that ever since uh you guys created at Arrival, and I love it. I just riveted. That's the part that I want to sit in the front row and take pictures for, and that's what it starts with me as great content. Um, so let's let's let's fast forward to the fact that we are really only uh several weeks away from being together in Spokane. So tell everybody why you guys chose Spokane for this year's arrival 360 in the US.
SPEAKER_01Well, hopefully we're about seven, well, it depends on when they play this, but as of today, it's about seven weeks away. Don't don't push it too further, because uh we've got a lot of work to do until we get there. Um, you know, Spokane really talks to our industry, which is over tourism is a problem. So we keep we don't want to keep going to places like where we've been multiple times, Las Vegas and Orlando, which are, I mean, frankly, the least expensive kind of places to go for a conference, which is why you go you go to so many conferences in Vegas and Orlando, and we've done that as well. Um, so we want it somewhere fresh and somewhere different. So there's so many variables when we look for a destination. Um, we also want a place where the hotel, the conference center flows and just makes the, I mean, the amount of time that we spend to make sure the flow works, to keep our sponsors happy because they want to be in the middle of the action. And that there's a lot that goes into making sure that works. And, you know, in Spokane, the conference center has the room we need for our arrival theater, the room we need for our network lounge, the breakout rooms all conveniently located, and then an easy way to get to the hotel right from there. We want a beautiful hotel. We're staying at uh the Grand Davenport Hotel. It's a really famous hotel in Spokane. The city's walkable. You can walk everywhere you want to walk to in the city. And that, so there's a lot of variables that go into that. Um, and cost is important. Uh, as you said, a lot of small companies in our business. So the majority of companies that come to arrival um are operators. We call an operator of a tour activity attraction experience as an operator. And 80% of those companies are SMEs. They're small companies. Um, and they, you know, we want to keep their costs down between the registration, lodging, airfare. We always are looking at that whole package because we know that's what the customer is paying, not just our registration fee. Um, so we want to appeal to that 80%. Uh, and we also want to appeal to the 20%, the bigger companies, the enterprise-level companies and attractions, by making sure we have the right content for them. And as you said, the business development opportunities, the networking. And that's always a lot of a yin and yang. How much time do we dedicate to content? And how much do we dedicate to no content, what we call white space? And that's a we are tweaking that every event. We're really trying to figure that out. It's a hard equation.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, I obviously I love that you've guys expanded from the well-worn destinations because I, you know, I uh Vegas and Orlando, of course, as you highlighted, and many people actually go there because they want to go to Orlando or Vegas. And when it when you take it to a secondary destination, and especially it's not only about keeping the destinations fresh, but also for real avid travelers, myself included, going to a new destination, I've never been to Spokane before. I know it's on the riverfront, beautiful outdoors, like a walkable downtown. I've always heard of Spokane. It's my first chance. And I'm really excited to go to Spokane. I know it's a secondary destination that's slightly more difficult to get to because you have to connect through a flight, but I think that's ultimately why the people that come to an event like this, they're gonna make the journey and they're gonna make the commitment to be there and they're gonna enjoy some of the sightseeing that they can experience and remind yourself why we do what we do and why we love the industry. And I know you and Lynn were just there last week, and obviously you should probably introduce Lynn as well with her uh her title and her role. Uh she's not, she is uh I'll let you do that uh justice, Bruce, because um, but what I was gonna say, I know you and Lynn were there last week, and I want all of our listeners to know that despite the challenges with wildfires, which are not limited to the US and Spokane, obviously Canada, where I'm based, we've had our challenges, um, Spain, France. This is a you know a global phenomenon now, unfortunately. Spokane has had some recent challenges, but I know you and Lynn were there last week, and we're very reassured that the conference is absolutely going ahead and where all systems go to bring everyone to Spokane and have an amazing conference. Uh so bring us up to speed on what the latest is there, Bruce.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh well, first of all, Lynn is our managing director and chief operating officer and pretty much runs the operations of this business and really in a lot of ways has since we started. First year she was a volunteer, and by the second year, she was the COO. Um, so we there was three fires around Spokane, and it was national news. And it was bad, really bad. Part of it because a thousand homes burned. Um, that's significant. Um, where I live in Boulder, Colorado, we had a fire a few years ago where a thousand homes burned. And it's just it's a huge tragedy on the entire community. Um so we wanted to see, you know, they told us, they being visit spokane, uh, that everything's under control. Things are now 75-80% controlled. The fires are, and none of the fires got into the city area, so everything's fine. No problem. Well, for me to be able to look you, Dan, in the eye or look anyone in the eye on a Zoom call and say, no problem, we felt the need to go out and see it for ourselves. Um, and we did that because we've stopped marketing Spokane for the last few weeks. We couldn't market a city that was basically on fire. So we went out there this past weekend, and it's no problem. I mean, the city is alive and well, and everything's out there, and you know, the festivals that were planned for this past weekend were happening along the river. Air quality is um below, you know, it's pretty 60, 70 is their air quality, which is in the good range, uh, and it the fires are all under
Why Spokane Works For 360
SPEAKER_01control. Um, the most smoke that I saw was when we were landing in at DIA. Uh, it was worse coming back into Colorado than anything that was in Spokane. Um, because of our mountains at in Denver, that traps the smoke. And that's from fires in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Canada. Get stuck here in Spokane. The smoke is pretty much dissipated now. And obviously, by the time we get there in seven weeks, it won't be a factor. So that was that was good to see. That was good to see.
SPEAKER_00And obviously, the right decision. I know even when we were here in Toronto and speaking to Janelle and the team, everyone felt very strongly about keeping the event in Spokane to support the community. The mayor, and I know some of the officials had reached out to you to reassure you that it was going to continue. You've now validated that, and now it's all systems go. Let's talk about the event itself, Bruce, and the and the plans for the time that we're going to have together there. Because on the first day before the event starts, you also have the executive day, which was a new development in the last um, the last year. You had it in Washington, you've done it in uh Valencia. I know that's been really popular. It's an invite-only event. Maybe let's just quickly start there and just touch on if those people who are looking at the arrival website trying to decide if they should join us. And the answer is yes, you absolutely should. Um, but should you come a day early to be a part of the executive day? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And there's also something I was gonna mention earlier when we talked about why Spokane, um, on that same day, that Monday, we're doing what we're calling experiential learning. We did that in our Edinburgh event a number of years ago, where people would come, we have operators lined up to take people out on experiences, whether it's in Spokane or the surrounding area, and really work on a topic, whether that topic is how you know, train and hire and retain guides, whether the topic is creating amazing experiences. Um, those are all being arranged now, what those topics are that will go hand in hand with an experience in the area. So that's going on on Monday for anyone that wants to get in Sunday night and take advantage of that on Monday, or the executive summit, also happening on Monday. That'll be between 50 and 100 people. Um it is by invitation or application only. So if someone, if we can't find everyone that should be there, so we're more than happy, and it's right on the website to that page as well, that people can apply. And uh, we just want to make sure that people that come are at that executive level. We're not worried about titles as much as who are they in their company, um, so that we can have that kind of discussion amongst peers of the leaders of the industry. Uh, this year's event, we're gonna have Eric Blatchford, who I know you know quite well, who's one of the most successful investors in this sector, who was the second CEO of Expedia, who's just a rock star in travel and tourism uh world. He's uh on the board of many, many companies, uh including Fora now, which is ironic given that he was Expedia uh 20 years ago. Um and Eric is going to take a position at the executive summit, which I'll just go very quickly. He's gonna debate whoever comes up to debate him on only four key topics, right? And we're gonna pick those topics out, have some feedback from the attendees of what are the most important topics. And then if you want to debate him on one of the topics, you come up and you say, I'm gonna take this side of the debate, and Eric will take the other side and talk about it. And then that discussion will go from a quick debate back to all the attendees to discuss amongst themselves, which is where the real peer-to-peer networking will take place. And and that's what people come to the executive summit for is the peer-to-peer networking with their own, you know, their peers that are also running companies, basically.
SPEAKER_00Obviously, I know how successful the last executive event was. And some of uh even my advisory clients, like uh Renier from Overland loved
Wildfires Update And Community Support
SPEAKER_00the executive day, and a number of people commented very positively about it. So I'm sure that will be a success again. So definitely check that out if you're interested in arriving a day earlier. But for those people who are going to be coming into Spokane that are not gonna take part in the executive day, I highly encourage you also to arrive early to take advantage of the day of experiences. Um, but let's get into the three-day conference itself, because then everything really kicks off on the Tuesday morning, and it is a three-day conference. So take us through some of the big highlights that you have planned for this year in terms of the speakers and the sessions that you're most excited about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, we are doing the same kind of streams that we put into place in DC because they're still so obvious to us, which is AI, of course. And we have a lot of content on AI that we can discuss. And multi-day, as you know, we started for DC, you know very well, since you're our partner, making that happen, finding speakers, putting a program together, and being the MC of the multi-day section, multi-day stream that we call it, and then culinary because culinary is such a fast growing segment. So many food tour operators and others out there interested in that segment. So, once again, we'll have those three streams. Um, we have Kristen Dorset, who is the basically she's in charge of Viator. She's the general manager of now what's called TripAdvisor Experiences, but for all intents and purposes, is Viator. So she'll be coming to talk about what's going on in their world. Um, on the OTA side, another thing we'll have in our arrival theater is what we call the OTA and operator town hall. And we'll have someone from Viator, uh Stephen Thresh, and someone from Get Your Guide, who runs the US for them, and a couple operators to talk about what the challenges are of working with OTAs. I mean, we all know that's the friction in the industry right now. There's probably more friction coming soon with AI, but with the main friction remains direct bookings and OTAs. And we love having a town hall where people can just tell it like it is. Uh, it's not always, you know, happy and everyone loves each other. It's uh it can get contentious and challenges, and I think that creates good content because it brings out true and real answers. Um, so that would be certainly a highlight to look for. Um, we do have TikTok coming, which we haven't had since our event in Bangkok in 2023. We had someone from TikTok and they're coming and they've introduced something new that I'm I'm guessing a lot of your listeners aren't aware of. TikTok go. Uh, TikTok go is a lot like TikTok shop. If they're in involved with that in any way, again, I'm gonna guess most of them are not. Um, but TikTok go is a little green button on a lot of TikTok listings now that puts you two clicks away from buying an experience. Um, and that just launched a few months ago. And now it makes social commerce real, where it's in the past, TikTok and Instagram and YouTube have been more about discovery
Executive Summit And Experiential Learning
SPEAKER_01of destinations and experiences. Now with TikTok go, you can get past discovery all the way to booking. Um, and it's gonna be really interesting to hear about that uh at the TikTok session as well as other sessions after that.
SPEAKER_00And just for our listeners, too, you can see all of the speakers because they um the list obviously Bruce has highlighted a few, but when you look at the number of speakers that come together from food tour companies, from marketing agencies, from uh obviously all the day tour companies, but the tech companies uh like Tripworks, and obviously, you know uh uh Brennan from Propelic very well, and uh his sessions are always very well attended. But there's a very impressive list of speakers. And just to share what Bruce mentioned, because I love working on the multi-day tour side. We obviously kicked it off, as you mentioned, last year in Washington and then extended it into Valencia and had a fantastic turnout. Uh, Bruce uh had set us up so that we could do uh an opening session on the main stage, and then we had breakouts. So I've just so that for all of my friends and colleagues in the multi-day tour space, I was actually speaking to uh Dan Berger earlier today, the USGM for We Road, who's gonna be on stage as well. And he was trying to wrap his head around arrival on the first time, and he's really looking forward to it and excited to meet so many other people in the industry that will be new to him. And so I wanted just to highlight how we're approaching the multi-day tour side, because what Bruce and the team have done is they had woven it into the overall agenda. So on the day one, we're actually going to have two main stage sessions. Lee Barnes, the USGM for Intrepid, is going to be doing an opening keynote. Uh, the team at Arrival has also done some fantastic research. Uh Bruce will obviously be talking to this in more detail at the event. Um, but they had produced a great report for Valencia. They've updated for Spokane. So we're going to provide an overview, at least on the main stage first, but there's going to be a breakout, so more to follow. But then on the main stage, we're going to have a panel that I've been putting together called New Entrants, New Rules, and the Small Group Shift. And the reason that's really compelling to me, and I think it should be for most of our listeners, is that when you look at what's happening in the US market with multi-day with new entrants like WeRoad or companies like Exotica that are coming in with new rules, which is the idea they're changing the game with their discounting process. And then you have companies like Trafalgar and Kentiki and Insight that are making the small group shift, Colette. Everyone's tripping over themselves to introduce small group tours because they've seen the success that G and uh Intrepid are having. So this is gonna be a great main stage panel. And then we're gonna have three breakouts as a result of that: one on distribution, one on technology, one on brand marketing. That will bring together people like the CEO of Classic Vacations, Melissa Kruger. We're gonna have the CEO of Soft Trip, uh Betsy Harbison, and Susan Sanderson, the founder of Resometry. And then we're also gonna have our buddy Dale from Rad Adventures join us. Like it's gonna be uh three great breakout sessions in addition to the main stage. And then Bruce and Douglas are going to be doing the state of multi-day, what the data actually says. So there's enough to just come to arrival if you want to understand the multi-day tour side. But one of the things that really balances out well is that most of these distribution partners, Boken being a good example, they're moving into the multi-day space as well. So as Viator and Get Your Guide start to expand, I mean, the reality is that multi-day and day tour are coming together. And one of the things Bruce has always been very mindful of is running sessions that help Daytor operators figure out how they can move into multi-day. So those are some of the highlights I'm looking forward to, Bruce. But before we finish off on the agenda, is there any other sessions, particularly for first-time attendees at arrival, that you're particularly excited about or what they should be paying attention to if they're looking to register and start to figure out their schedule?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um I mean, first timer at arrival doesn't tell us enough of what their objectives are. Um, you know, do they really want to understand dynamic pricing, for example? Because if you ask me what are the hottest topics, not counting AI, although dynamic pricing uses AI. Um, but dynamic pricing is a seriously hot topic, and operators who work with the right players can make a lot more money on their session, you know, on selling their tours. So I would put that very high up on the list. Um, we have a number of sessions being run by different women who are trying to make sure women feel empowered in the industry, either at that enterprise level or as the entrepreneurs who are running tours. And there's a lot of them in our business. So we put together a lot of sessions for them. So if it's a first-time woman who wants to kind of find, you know, find her people who is also a woman entrepreneur, that's one thing that we find is so valuable is that peer-to-peer. So if you come as a first-timer, and woman, of course, but I was just speaking of this, you know, element of how we really try to promote women in the industry, you you they find their tribe, if you will, right? We have a women's executive event at every at every arrival. Um, and they've been super popular. So it's not training, it's not education, it's just being in the same room as people like you and learning from that itself. Um, you mentioned Brennan and his session about discoverability and AI is always hugely popular. He always has new research he's done. And, you know, when you look at discoverability, it used to be Google, 95%, and everybody else would split the other five. That's changing so fast. I don't even know what it'll be by the time October rolls around. But Google doesn't have 95% anymore, that's for sure. And I think a lot of what is going to be interesting is that top of the funnel social commerce, AI. And we have a good number of sessions talking about what that's looking like and how that's changing.
SPEAKER_00One last question for you on the plans for Spokane specifically and for those operators that might be sitting on the fence right now. I think you've done a great job of painting the picture of who's going to be in the room, you know, creators, operators, OTAs, platforms, technology companies. Um, but I think one of the things that would be interesting for our listeners to know um is what's the mix of people that are going to be there? Um, if they can hear that from you, Bruce. And then just finish off on this topic because I didn't want to make sure people know how to register, get involved,
Big Sessions AI Multi-Day Culinary
SPEAKER_00and I want to finish our conversation with this uh event preview, talking about what's next, because you know, right after Spokane, there's a there's so many events planned for 2027, which people need to be planning for now. I was speaking to some colleagues who are already getting their tickets for Bilbao. So I want to make sure that we do focus on what's next for anyone that is not able to join us in Spokane. I want to finish off on what to expect next and plan for 2027. But before we do, tell us what the mix looks like. And for an operator sitting on the fence, what would be the single best reason for them to make the trip to Spokane? Yep.
SPEAKER_01So the mix of our events is pretty consistently 60, 65% operators. And then the other 35% or so would be a combination first of distributors. So and all the leading OTAs in our world will be there with seniors, senior executives who are decision makers. And that's a big difference. It's not, you know, the typical maybe account manager that might come to many events. It's going to be decision makers, starting with Viator and Get Your Guide and Kluke and Tui and Groupon and Trip.com and on and on Airbnb and on. Um, that'll be a good percentage. I'd have to guess and say about 10 to 15%. Then it's the what we call ResTex or ticketing platforms, right? So the ones that we all, well, we all in the industry at least are familiar with, with Fair Harbor and Peak and Zola and uh Ventrata and Spoken and so many more. Um, those will be another 10% or so. Then we have the marketing agencies, like we've talked about with Propelic and Thomas and uh Von Mac and other companies that really specialize Black Dog in marketing tours, activities, attractions. Um, companies that are really deploying AI and other kinds of tech, like a tour optima um or the dynamic pricing of Aloha or a walkway, Diginex, those companies are maybe another five to 10% that I get to 100 yet, almost, not quite. We have a few DMOs. Um, I consider a DMC a tour operator, so I would put them on that tour operator side. Um, we don't really get creators. You mentioned creators, it's not really, that's not really our crowd right now, just like travel advisors are not yet. Um, we want them to become more involved with what we do, but they don't sell enough experiences. Overall, some do. Um, we're interested more in the aggregators who do, um, like a project expeditions or some of the consortiums. Um, you know, even if we can have someone from Fora and Virtuoso and that type of thing, that would be really interesting. But um, I think the list I gave you probably added up to pretty close to 100%.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And just to finish off on that, given that the event being in the Pacific Northwest, and when we think about the um, I mean, Fora is obviously based in New York, but Virtuoso has their office in Seattle. And if you look at the travel industry, the opportunity to be on the West Coast, and even for all of my friends and even I'll say family as well that are in uh Vancouver, there's a few arrival team members that are based in Vancouver as well. Um, I know Janelle's planning to ride her motorcycle from Vancouver to uh Spokane, and she was so excited to tell me about uh the route that she has planned. And so for those of you looking at Spokane on the map and realizing, wait a second, that's very easy for me to get to. Friends in Calgary. So I think it's gonna be really interesting to see the West Coast phenomenon because last year being in Washington, much more East Coast than the number of people that told me that they just drove from New York or took a train and how accessible Washington is to the East Coast, Spokane very much is to the West Coast. So um, just to finish off, I want to make sure that finish off on Spokane, and then we'll talk about the future. If anyone registers, one of the things I wanted to make sure that all of our listeners do know is that when you get your ticket for Spokane, obviously you get the $100 discount that I mentioned. You can find the code on our website, but email me after you have booked your ticket so that I can add you to our podcast recording schedule. I have a packed schedule as Bruce knows. I love being on the floor and actually interviewing everyone that comes to the event. Uh, my schedule packs up quickly and I struggle to try and fit everybody in, but I will absolutely guarantee a spot for anyone that books a ticket, uses the promo code Let's Me Know. I'll send you a link to my calendar and you can grab a spot to be a part of the Travel Trends event spotlight from Spokane that will be reason enough for going because that will reach thousands of people around the world. They can hear about your business and your journey and what you're working on. And then obviously arrival.travel, Bruce. Any other tips for people that are looking to book their ticket? Two things.
SPEAKER_01One, I hope that you don't have enough time for all your slots for everyone that signs up and wants to come do that. Um, and also you would ask me to kind of give like a one liner, if you will, of why people should think about coming. And I talked to our friend
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SPEAKER_01Ghalad yesterday, and he he was like, This is the coolest time in travel since probably 1995 when Xpedia Travelocity got started. You know, everything is so dynamic, everything's changing so fast. And by coming to an event like Arrival, you're just in the thick of it. You're meeting all the other experts who are also moving so fast. And it's just a really exciting time to be in our industry and surrounding yourself with other really smart thought leaders uh is the way to go to learn a lot or or get left behind. Because if we don't figure some of this stuff out soon, we're gonna be left behind, right? I'm I'm feeling pretty left behind right now. So I I have some good friends trying to keep me, keep me up to speed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, it's interesting, and as you mentioned, uh Gillad obviously is a common friend. Obviously, he's got a great expertise in AI and he'll be speaking and actively involved at the arrival conference. But the other thing is that he's kind of similar to Janelle, even closer. I mean, he's in Seattle. So this is where you have brought the conference to his backyard. And so this is what I'm really keen to see in Spokane this year is the different makeup of the people who will be there. So many people will be their first time, and other people that'll be delighted that we're exploring their part of North America. So um definitely check out arrival.travel, book your ticket, plan to join us. Um, but Bruce, let's talk about what the world looks like after Spokane, as people listening to this and they're thinking about 2027, because I have to say, Valencia was pretty special this year, and then you guys announced you're moving to Bilbao, another destination I've not been to. Many of our listeners, I'm sure, have or are familiar with Bilbao in Spain. Give us a little kind of tease us a little bit with the European flagship event. Um, I know it's April 13th to 15th, 2027, and you can buy your tickets now. Um, but tell everyone a little bit more about what's ahead for events for arrival in 2027. Sure.
SPEAKER_01Um we checked out Bilbao, and it's a really, really cool city. And what we learned um is that the city was not really cool 30 years ago. It was actually down in the dumps. Um, I think it was the early 60s, so that was more like 60 years ago. Um, and it was down in the dumps, the economy sucked. They have a river that runs right through it, and it was dirty and polluted. It was a whole manufacturing industrial area along the river. And the city, the city planners got together and they're like, we need to change this. And somehow they raised, I don't really know the story of how they raised about $100 million to go to the Guggenheim Foundation and say, we will pay for you to build a Guggenheim Museum on our riverbanks. And uh just look up pictures. Google, uh, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. It's freaking unbelievable. And that move changed the city. It was the beginning of what they called the transformation of Bilbao. Um, and it is now known as the transformation city. They also have a beautiful bridge that was built by a world-famous architect, um, which now the old town called Casco has come alive, and you go down as your classic Spanish town where you know you can go and get pingos, which are you know their version of Tapas, kind of like San Sebastian, which is also in Basque Country, um, and just walk the streets and every bar is alive at night. It's it's just a classic Spanish city. I think it's the fourth largest city, or no, maybe fifth, whatever. It's a top 10 largest city in Spain. Um, the conference center is super cool, it's beautiful, and we're really looking forward to being there and putting the theme of that event on as transformation. It's actually we're letting that theme get into the Spokane theme as well. Uh, we're doing something called Ignite, and the theme of that is transformation. Didn't have time to talk about that. Maybe we will later. Um, but we definitely want the theme to be transformation in Bobo because that is the theme of the city. And you and I both believe a lot in that theme, you know, following Joe Pine and the work he's done with the transformation economy. Does not have to mean transformational travel, because that is a challenge for a lot of people, but there's other ways to look at that. And um, we're super excited about Bill Bow. Um early bookings to Bill Bell are really, really strong. I think, I think Bill Bell's gonna have more people than Spokane this year, just because of uh how successful Valencia was last year and how excited people are to go to Bill Bell.
SPEAKER_00And it's so exciting because uh arrival's always been, to me, a U.S. focused event. It was the first time I'd been to Europe, and Europe just absolutely
Bilbao 2027 Theme And Brisbane Reveal
SPEAKER_00shined and outperformed this year. And I think next year uh will be even bigger for the reasons you've mentioned. The part I just wanted to highlight to our listeners, uh Joe Pine, who wrote the experience economy that followed up with the transformation economy, who has obviously been he was a keynote speaker at the Washington event last year at Arrival, and uh he's been on our podcast. We kicked this season off with um this year off with the whole theme of transformation. And as Joe said to me, um, it's really not obviously just about this year of transformation. This is the next 10 or 20 years where we're going to be talking about transformative travel. And I know another common friend of ours, uh Jake Halpert, who runs the Travel Transformational Council, um, uh he will be involved in some capacity. And so I think that I'm super excited, not only for the location of Bill Bow, but for the content and the connection between the theme of the city and the theme for the conference. And so that's why I wanted to bring it up now. Of course, for our listeners, we are going to do an event preview episode for Bill Bow, so you can look forward to that. And we'll share more details when we get closer. But as Bruce mentioned, tickets are available to be purchased, so you can do that now. Um, but to close off, Bruce, I just want to reiterate for all of our listeners, October 12th to 15th. So when you're listening to this, when you're counting it down, um, make the plans to join us. Uh, it fits perfectly into the schedule of fall conferences here in North America. Uh, so I hope that many of you listening to us will take the opportunity uh to join us there. And for anyone who's listening to us the first time, Bruce and I are very accessible uh throughout the event. And it's one of the things you'll find as you, you know, uh you hear our voices or you've seen us in the industry. I think nothing delights us more, Bruce. I can speak for both of us, but I'll get your take here to close out. You know, it's really wonderful when people come up to you and they've listened to the podcast or they know about arrival. It's the first time coming to the event. And that to you obviously charges your batteries as it does mine. And I we just want to make sure that everyone knows that we are truly accessible and we want people to come and actually make the effort to reach out to us while we're there and and um uh and make those connections and have a drink together and share a meal. That's what this is all about. It's the people industry, and that's why we love it.
SPEAKER_01I I think that's why we're usually out till one or two in the morning, even though we got to get up at six. We have like first call at 6:30 or 7 every morning for our standoff uh as staff. But if we're not out until one or two, we don't get to meet enough people. So absolutely. Um, and one more thing, Dan. We will be back in Brisbane in July of 2027. We haven't talked about that. People are hearing that for the first time here. We haven't announced it yet. We haven't announced it in Australia. I'll probably get in trouble for even saying anything, but oh well, we will be in Brisbane. It's like the end of the podcast. So how many people are still there? Anyone that's still there? Uh mid to late July, and I know you told me you have a lot of listeners in Australia. Hopefully, a good number came to what was a phenomenal event last year in Brisbane. It was our first time there uh in Australia, and it it just it felt like our Vegas event from 2017, kind of a new energy for us to tap into, and people loved it and they want us back, and we're coming back.
SPEAKER_00So fantastic. I'm glad that you broke the story here because I wasn't sure if we could uh share it or breaking news, man. Yeah, I'm gonna get in trouble. So yeah, okay. Well, whatever. Well, I'm gonna cut this out as a clip, just that, and put it right at the beginning of the episode. This is not gonna be buried at the end because it's too important. I can't wait to get back to Australia. Bruce knows I wasn't able to attend this year. I had a conflict with my schedule, and I was genuinely gutted about it. Next year, I said to Bruce, 100% I'll be there. I spoke to Campbell Harris, the CEO of Global Journeys, just last week, who was on stage at your conference there, and he absolutely loved it. And he definitely had that first-time feeling of being at a rival conference with the type of people that come together for an event like that. You had Screw Turner on stage, the founder of Flight Center. You guys pulled off an amazing first conference in Brisbane. So I was delighted to hear when we spoke that you're going back to Brisbane next year and you're going to do it in July. So, yes, obviously uh I'm thrilled and uh I'll look forward to doing a preview episode and being there for that. So lots to look forward to with arrival in 2027. But most importantly, as we close off, make sure you join us October 12th to 15th in Spokane. And we look forward to seeing you then. Thanks again for joining, Bruce. Really appreciate our continued friendship, partnership. And the one thing all our listeners should know, especially those who see us there, I'm going to be giving uh Bruce a crisp 100 US dollar bill because my Blue Jays versus his Philadelphia Phillies, that we had made a bet at the beginning of the season, who had the winningest record, and I was pretty confident my Blue Jays for you baseball fans out there. We went all the way to the World Series and we went from first to worst this year. And so that that is pretty much already determined. So I'm gonna go and get a crisp $100 bill to hand over to you because you have won that bet, my friend.
SPEAKER_01And then we'll walk that to the to the bar, and it'll be drinks on me, and we'll be all good. Awesome. Thank you again, Bruce. Always a pleasure, always a pleasure to be on travel trends. Uh, as you know, I think of it as the best travel industry
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SPEAKER_01B2B podcast in the world. I truly do. Um, and love what you do.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Bruce. I appreciate your friendship. And obviously, I you know greatly value every time you reach out after you've been walking the dog and listen to a podcast and you send me a text message, and you make the show better because I get valuable feedback from you and and you know that. So thank you again for for everything. And I can't wait to see you very soon in uh in Spokane. And to all of our listeners, I just want to say thanks again for joining us for this event preview episode. Arrival.travel is the place to go to book your ticket. Send me an email, Dan at traveltrendspodcast.com, to let me know when you do. I'll send you a link to my calendar, and you will be on the next spotlight episode from Arrival 360 in Spokane. We will post clips and highlights from this interview on our social channel, so you can check out Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube at Travel Trends Podcast. And any other information you can find on traveltrendspodcast.com, including other spotlight episodes. You can find a solo episode of Bruce, a solo episode of Douglas Quinby, and many of the amazing people that you'll see. You can get some highlights uh of them, like Christian Watts, some of the amazing people you'll see at the event, have also uh been on our podcast. So you can watch a few of those to reach out to them when you get there. And um I look forward to seeing you at the event. Thanks again for joining us. And until next episode, safe travels.
