Ktimene AxetellKtimene Axetell has been on both sides of the data table, and that changes how she talks about it. Before she became CEO of Arrivalist, she ran a DMO — and led that team to a National Geographic Traveller Platinum Award in sustainability, which is not a marketing achievement. It's an operational one. It requires community alignment, economic modeling, and the [...]

Josh GibsonJosh Gibson has visited all 57 of Tennessee's state parks. That's not a trivia detail — it's the origin story. He came up through digital and social strategy for the Tennessee state park system, left for a stint in product management at FedEx, and came back because mission-driven work turned out to matter more than the compensation that replaced it. Now [...]

This is the shift most teams are still underestimating. The website is no longer the center of the journey. It’s just one input. In the episode, Eric Hultgren frames this as a “Copernicus moment” and it’s exactly right. We’ve spent years optimizing for: TrafficClicksSessions But now: Travelers get answers without visiting your siteAI systems synthesize information before users ever [...]

Pinterest recently launched a campaign encouraging people to spend less time on social media.

Google’s March 2026 update introduced a level of ranking movement we don’t typically see at the top of results.

Some destinations are thinking about AI visibility the wrong way. They’re treating it like SEO—optimize pages, update keywords, improve rankings. But AI doesn’t prioritize pages, it prioritizes answers. When a traveler asks: Where should I go for a relaxing weekend?What’s a good trip for reconnecting with friends? AI tools don’t return a list of links.They generate a response using content that [...]