Ep. 337 — A Travel Trends Preview with Dan Christian

Dan Christian talks to more of the travel industry than almost anyone, and after two years of conferences dominated by AI, he wants to change the subject. This year’s Travel Trends summit asks where humans are still relevant.

Dan Christian talks to more of the travel industry than almost anyone, from CEOs to small tour businesses, and after two years of conferences dominated by AI, he wants to change the subject. For this year’s Travel Trends summit, he built a full day around a different question: where are humans still relevant? Mitch, who leads that session, makes his case here that the industry has spent too long chasing the instant, on-demand service customers now expect, when what travel offers is the chance to be with other people again. Dan describes executives in an off-script room admitting they have no idea where AI is going, and he explains why he wants the industry’s conversation to shift going into next year. Treat it as a preview of the summit, from two people who think the human side of this business deserves more of the conversation.

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Key Takeaways

Give first. In this industry, your network is what you’re worth. 03:24 to 04:56 Wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency. People in travel trust you or they don’t, and they listen when you offer value. The generosity has to be natural and authentic, because that’s what people respond to.
See a guest as a relationship, not a source of profit to extract. 04:56 to 05:52 At its best, this industry runs on generosity and reciprocal connection: a human meeting another human on the road, both feeling they’ve grown from it. Running a travel business that way is different from asking how to get the most profit out of each customer.
AI headlines miss that more people, not fewer, are coming into travel. 06:46 to 07:44 The fear about mass job losses dominates the news. Meanwhile more people want to travel, want strong human connection when they do, and want to be in a place with their senses switched on, guided by someone who shares their story, their culture and their world. That’s the case for being bullish on travel.
Don’t accept every on-demand expectation as the cost of doing business. 07:44 to 10:14 The usual line is that an occasional-purchase industry has no choice but to accept the customer and whatever they demand. Online shopping has trained customers to want last-minute booking, immediacy and free cancellation. Following that all the way turns a tour into one more delivery for people addicted to their phones. Travel can do the opposite: remind people how to be with other humans again, and meet psychological needs that a phone never will.
Small group travel is growing, and investors have noticed. 10:17 to 12:19 Twenty years ago, small group adventure companies like G Adventures and Intrepid were 50 to 60 million dollar businesses. Now they’re close to a billion. More travelers are looking for meaning and self-actualization, and they’re choosing this style of travel to find it. The best part of travel is doing great things with like-minded people you enjoy traveling with, and that multiplies the whole trip. Private equity is moving in because investors see 10 to 20 years of growth, in immersive day tours as well as multi-day.
Build for the group, messiness included. 12:19 to 14:16 In Siksika (Blackfoot) thinking, needs extend past self-actualization into communal actualization and flourishing. Answers to personal struggles are often found in community. Part of the industry is designing away ever meeting a stranger, awkward moments and translation problems, down to a couple walking one street with separate earbuds playing different stories. The messiness and awkwardness of group travel are part of the value. WeRoad’s funnel starts before any trip, with people doing things together at home.
Sell belonging, not trips. 14:16 to 14:43 There are plenty of good marketers in travel and very few great ones. WeRoad is one of the rare great campaigns: its CMO’s entire ambition for the brand was selling belonging rather than trips.
Travelers will follow a leader they love from destination to destination. 15:18 to 16:42 WeRoad grew from 10 million to 100 million in three years and is on pace for about 200 million this year, before launching properly in the US or Australia. Its coordinators aren’t tied to a destination. A coordinator organizes the trip and goes on it. Travelers say they’ve been to Iceland and Japan with a coordinator and will go wherever that coordinator goes next. Early Contiki worked the same way, with leaders driving the bus and cooking the meals.
Small operators can grow too, and competitors will help. 16:42 to 17:20 There’s real opportunity to grow and scale if you want to. If you run a lifestyle business and just want to maintain it, that’s fine. Either way, people in this industry, competitors included, are ready to lend a hand.
Retire the fire hose guide and the photo-stop itinerary. 17:20 to 18:14 Contiki leaned into social travel years ago: a 27-year-old on a trip is there to be around people roughly their age, often traveling solo. The old model, with the guide as a fire hose of information and an itinerary packed with photo stops, is fading. Build for what travelers need as people, not as receptacles for information.
Urgency and scarcity still sell group trips. 18:14 to 18:52 Contiki got its first travelers with “two seats left” notices hung in London hostels for Aussies and Kiwis, before a single seat had sold. TourRadar now uses the same strategy, showing “only three seats left” on a trip.
Write to customers yourself, and train your team before telling them to use AI. 18:52 to 19:54 You’re marketing to humans. An email with a joke only the two of you would get can’t come out of trading messages with an AI assistant. Telling staff to “get active on AI” without strategy, structure or training repeats the early social media mistake. 70% of office workers use AI, but only 30% are trained, and that gap is where the fear and the trust problems come from.
Decide which moments stay human. 22:46 to 23:29 Learn what AI unlocks for serving customers and running the business. Then decide what you do as a human: replying to an email yourself, or showing up for the Zoom intro call that puts a customer on the right trip and starts the right relationship.
Automate the ordinary and humanize the exceptional. 24:00 to 25:25 The phrase comes from Matthew Upchurch of Virtuoso. Travel advisors show it working: humans serving humans, powered by technology. The advisor business produced a unicorn with a Series C raise in the last year.
Plan for two booking clocks. 28:05 to 28:29 Operators are seeing two booking cycles in 2026. Some travelers book last minute or keep changing dates. Others book much further ahead. Your sales and calendar need to work for both.
OTAs are taking a hit from AI booking agents. 28:29 to 28:40 In the past month, OTAs have been hammered by the rise of agentic booking platforms.
Keep postponed travelers off your best sellers, and skip blanket discounts. 30:20 to 31:01 55% of travelers have postponed a 2026 trip into 2027. Carrying those people forward carries 2026 revenue into 2027, the same way COVID travel credits did. Don’t put them on your best-selling itineraries. If late bookings push you to fill seats, avoid a blanket discount, because it discounts your future trips too.
Expect summer 2027 flights to cost more. 31:01 to 31:15 Fuel costs have doubled, and airlines have already cut capacity and priced that in.
Hold full price on your best sellers and start selling 2028. 31:15 to 32:02 Price the trips that book ahead without discounts to protect your margins. Operators are learning from cruise lines and releasing itineraries further out: Intrepid just announced its most new itineraries ever, and Quark is already focused on 2028. If you only have 2027 priced, adding 2028 options lets you take deposits and bring cash in now.
Test your assumptions against your own data. 33:12 to 34:17 Tourpreneur built an insights engine on the 600 to 700 posts a month in its operator Facebook group. What the data shows is often quite different from what the team assumed the conversation was about.
Solo travelers, mostly women, are a big share of multi-day bookings. 34:39 to 35:00 At TourRadar, 40% of bookings are solo travelers, and 65% are women.
Behind closed doors, executives admit they don’t know where AI is going. 35:25 to 36:05 In an off-script think tank, travel executives said they’re trying many different things, struggling to keep up and feeling overwhelmed. That’s a refreshing contrast to people on stage boasting about AI to lift a stock price or raise funding.