Wyoming Governor's Conference on Tourism · February 24, 2026

AI and Tourism: How It's Changing Travelers and How It's Changing Our Work

General Session Keynote · Grand Ballroom, Little America Hotel

Janette Roush

SVP, Innovation & Chief AI Officer · Brand USA

A practical look at AI's dual impact on tourism: how it's reshaping where travelers discover destinations and how it's changing the way we work every day. Designed for tourism professionals of any size — from state DMOs to independent hoteliers.

AI as the Car

How AI Is Changing the Travel Experience

The Shift

Travelers Are Already Using AI — Even If They Don't Trust It Yet

62%
of travelers have used AI to plan or book a trip
Booking.com "Global AI Sentiment Report" · n=37,325 across 33 markets · April/May 2025
6%
of users fully trust AI travel solutions
Same study · A healthy instinct, but creates friction for the industry

The gap between adoption and trust is the opportunity. Travelers are experimenting with AI for trip planning, but they still want authoritative, verified information. That's exactly what DMOs are built to provide.

New Tools Reshaping Discovery

ChatGPT Apps

Booking.com and Expedia now integrate directly into ChatGPT, pulling real inventory data into conversational trip planning.

Google's Disco Browser

An experimental browser that reads all your open tabs and generates a custom interactive research page — decoupling content from the websites that created it.

AI Overviews in Search

Google's AI-generated summaries answer queries directly, reducing click-through to destination websites. Zero-click search is accelerating.

Visual AI

Google Gemini reads photo and video backgrounds to answer destination questions. AI now identifies amenities from your images and infers sentiment from guest reviews.

The discovery layer is being rebuilt in real time.

What This Means for Your Content

The Opportunity for DMOs

DMOs are already trusted, nonprofit sources of truth about their destinations. In an era of AI hallucinations and social media misinformation, that credibility is a strategic asset. DMOs can become the verification layer — curating the data that AI systems rely on.

Destination-as-a-Service (DaaS) Framework

Information Layer (DMOs)

  • Events calendar
  • Real-time attraction hours/closures
  • Official walking routes and maps
  • Verified local recommendations

Integration Layer

  • Local transport APIs
  • Weather services
  • Crowd monitoring systems
  • Restaurant reservations

Transaction Layer (OTAs / Direct)

  • Attraction ticket sales
  • Official tour bookings
  • Transport passes
  • Event ticketing

This framework enables tourism dispersal, predictive analytics for visitor guidance, and eventually bookable experiences through everyday chat tools. The buildability window is roughly two years — the time to plan is now.

AI as the Driver

How AI Is Changing Our Work

Practical Applications

AI Lets Organizations Punch Above Their Weight

The second half of the keynote focused on tools and workflows that any tourism professional can adopt immediately — regardless of team size or technical background.

Video Production with Descript

Upload a recording, get a transcript, and edit your video by editing text. Delete filler words with one click. Auto-translate captions and voiceover into dozens of languages using your own voice clone. Brand USA already uses this for South American outreach in Spanish and Portuguese.

Descript video editing interface — editing video by editing text

Slide from keynote: Descript's text-based video editing interface

AI Writing Code

Three live examples of AI-built tools shared during the keynote:

Agents of Change webinar series website screenshot

Education Website

The Agents of Change webinar series — hosted entirely on a website built with AI, replacing a ~$20K/year platform license. Free and fully functional.

Visit janetteroush.com →
Minor League Baseball Road Trip Planner screenshot

Minor League Ballpark Road Trip Planner

AI searched five leagues for home game schedules and built two experiences: "maximize games in 5 days" and "plan a road trip from this city."

Try the Road Trip Planner →
Interactive Strategy Site screenshot

Interactive Strategy Site

Replaced a static PowerPoint with a living website where each strategy layer gets its own page. A single source of truth that updates in real time and adapts to different audiences.

AI-Assisted Presentations

A workflow shared from Brand USA's research team (Chelsea Benitez, Head of Research):

Meeting Follow-Up Workflow

Meeting workflow diagram showing AI-assisted follow-up process

Slide from keynote: AI-powered meeting follow-up workflow

Audience Q&A

Questions from the Room

Any tips for prompt engineering?

Prompting is overhyped — context is what matters most. Use the CRIT framework: Context (give AI background), Role (tell it who to be), Interrogate (let AI ask you clarifying questions — this is the key step most people skip), and Task (define the deliverable). Tools like Claude Code that access your files provide context automatically.

What about security concerns?

Every organization needs an AI policy and paid, secure AI tools. Free tools use your data for model training. Paid versions offer SOC 2 compliance, data protection at rest, and the ability to turn off model training. Set guardrails: keep payroll and banking data out, but strategy documents are generally low risk. Your staff deserves to understand the safety posture of the tools they're asked to use.

Will AI replace data analysts?

AI democratizes basic data understanding for everyone. Trained analysts using AI become exponentially more capable. The key distinction: AI can write deterministic Python and R scripts, keeping analysis transparent and out of the black box. As destinations adopt DaaS frameworks, the volume of data to analyze will grow dramatically — analysts will focus on bigger predictive questions while laypeople handle routine analytics with AI assistance.

What about the environmental impact of AI — data centers and water usage?

AI infrastructure carries real environmental costs — data centers require significant energy and water for cooling, particularly in drought-prone regions. As the industry scales, these concerns deserve serious attention. We shouldn't conflate individual culpability with corporate responsibility on the part of the AI labs building these data centers. We can weigh our personal impact on water consumption through AI tools against water consumed when we stream video content or scroll social media, and weigh the impact of the AI industry's water usage against that of other large-scale industries. These are important conversations to have, and they should inform how we hold AI providers accountable — they shouldn't keep you from exploring tools that can meaningfully benefit your organization and your career.

Resources

Tools & Resources Mentioned

Video

Descript

Edit video by editing text. Auto-translate captions and voiceover.

AI Assistant

Claude / Claude Code

Agentic AI for coding, strategy sites, and file-aware workflows.

AI Assistant

Gemini Nano Banana

AI image generation — for fun and punchlines only, never destination photography.

Recording

Plaud

Physical recording device for meeting transcripts.

Travel AI

Mindtrip

AI conversation "pills" embedded in destination websites.

Website Audit

AI Vision Simulator

See your website through AI's eyes. Audit your structured data and schema markup.

Experimental

Google Disco Browser

Experimental browser that reads open tabs and generates custom interactive research pages.

Stay Focused on Your Mission

What problems do we solve for our stakeholders? How can AI help us do this better or faster? AI is a tool — keep it grounded in the work that matters. The inventors don't know what AI can do for tourism. That discovery is on us. Keep ChatGPT or Claude open on a second monitor, and try something new every day.

You have full permission to experiment.