S2E2: The Phocuswright Perspective - Navigating the Future of Travel
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In this insightful episode of the Travel Trends Podcast, host Dan Christian welcomes Pete Comeau, the esteemed Managing Director of Phocuswright, the world's largest travel research company, for an engaging discussion on the exciting transformations happening in travel events, media, and beyond. Prepare to explore the core of Pete's remarkable career and gain valuable insights into the broader travel industry, understand the innovative initiatives he's leading at Phocuswright to support early-stage startups, and gain valuable perspectives on Phocuswright's groundbreaking research projects, uncovering key market trends such as the power of generative AI in trip planning and the emergence of new travel destinations in a post-pandemic world.
Pete shares valuable insights into his extensive career within the travel industry and the innovative ways Phocuswright is supporting early-stage startups. He highlights some of Phocuswright's crucial research projects, shedding light on key market trends that are currently shaping the travel landscape. Our conversation explores the significant impact of generative AI on trip planning, the rise of new travel destinations in the wake of the pandemic, and how major Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) are adapting their strategies to meet the evolving needs of travelers. We also discuss the pivotal role that technology plays in enhancing the overall travel experience. Finally, Pete highlights Phocuswright's TravelTech Executive Fellowship Program, a dynamic initiative designed to connect startup founders and industry experts for immersive content sharing.
Curious to explore the future of the travel industry through the lens of the world's leading research firm?
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Connect with Our Guest: https://www.phocuswright.com/
Speaker 1: 0:15
I'm Dan Christian, and today I am very honored to introduce you to a very special guest, someone I highly respect, someone that is very well known in the industry. His name is Pete Como and he's the managing director of Focusrite. Focusrite is the world's largest travel research company. It also hosts some of the largest travel events in the world. From my perspective, when you see a Focusrite event, it's like the Academy Awards to the film industry, and several years ago I finally had the chance, after many years of seeking the opportunity to speak on stage. Pete has been in this business for over 15 years. He knows Focusrite, he knows the travel trends, so it couldn't be a greater honor than to have him on the show to talk to us not only about his career and Focusrite, but the travel trends we're seeing today. Welcome, pete. Great to have you here.
Speaker 2: 1:03
Thank you, dan, you're far too kind.
Speaker 1: 1:05
I emphasize your background for one specific reason in particular, which is there's a commonality between you and I, and that is that your career started in a similar industry before you got into travel, although it was adjacent to travel. You actually worked in mountain sports I'm a big, avid, long time snowboarder but your journey actually started in the ski industry with a ski supplier in Colorado, of course, based in Denver right.
Speaker 2: 1:27
I am yes, and I made the transition. I actually grew up on the East Coast and the way I came out to Colorado was through the ski industry and when I decided to get a little bit more serious about myself, logically I looked for companies that I was interested in and ski was one of them and I landed at a company called Moguls, which was really tech forward, and I think we spent four years implementing four different reservation systems, really trying to nail the online side of the industry, which was in its infancy, back in this was 2000 to 2004 or so and really cut my chops on the online industry, and that eventually led me to where we are today.
Speaker 1: 2:21
And I think there was just one stop at Orbitz on the way right that you got a good handle on the OTA side.
Speaker 2: 2:26
There was yes for sure. After spending a few years at Moguls, I decided to jump over to Orbitz and I worked for their white label packaging system, which was called the Neat Group, and that was really a special opportunity because we had a lean, mean team of four of us on the commercial side of the business and our job was to connect hoteliers as well as other intermediaries with different buckets of dynamic packaging supply and we had the ability to change rules and it was really. It was a simple system but also a lot of flexibility, and so just, for example, working on the Marriott account and making some tweaks to either the UI or some of the rate plans and structures, and just seeing how that translated into transaction, it was the Wild West of online travel back then. Things are a little bit more consolidated now. Expedia pretty much owns Orbitz, travelocity, verbo all the big brands have now rolled up under Expedia.
Speaker 1: 3:45
Absolutely.
Speaker 1: 3:46
I found it fascinating only because you understand tour operations, reservation platforms, then moving into OTAs with getting a full grasp of travel technology.
Speaker 1: 3:55
The work that you do now at Focusrite encompasses all of that, and even the t-shirt that you're wearing that is probably not going to be clearly, it's not going to be visible to anybody that's listening to this, but when you do watch this on YouTube, you can see that Pete is wearing the travel tech leaders t-shirt and we recently connected on that initiative as well, and a lot of the work that you do is around mentoring startups. So Focusrite, which is something I've been impressed with over the years, is that you started introducing these startup initiatives going into that, and that was always whenever I came to Focusrite. I always wanted to come for the startup day. I wanted to listen to all the pitches and then obviously there was the voting and there was such an exciting part of Focusrite. It made it much more dynamic and really had created an ecosystem of tech startups that fed into the larger travel industry that those OTAs might gobble up at some point, and many have Tell us a little bit about that, how that has come into the focus for you at Focusrite.
Speaker 2: 4:49
Yeah, so this was probably 2008 when we launched our first pitch event. We were doing pitch events before. Pitch events are now really popular, but we have a unique spin on it and we realized quite early that having interesting startups on our stage was really important to expose new technologies to some of the more traditional players in the industry so they could see what's up and coming, what they might want to incorporate into their product offering. To your point, maybe they want to look at acquiring some of these companies, but really it was a way for us to expose different types of technologies to the broader industry, and we recognize that startups are often the fuel for change and for innovation in the industry, and if we're not finding the most interesting startups and pulling them into our ecosystem, then we're doing a disservice to the rest of the industry. So we spend a ton of time thinking about who's an interesting company or who's building an interesting company that the industry can latch onto, and we do it at our conferences.
Speaker 2: 6:14
You mentioned some of the startup events that we do on our stage. That's just a small part of it. We also do a lot of mentoring at our event, where we connect earlier stage startups with some of the mentors that we've connected with and engaged with in our industries whether it's VCs or senior execs from across the industry that really can help these startups. Think about product market fit, think about who they could benefit from connecting with. So we spend a ton of time thinking about what's next for how we can help pull startups in.
Speaker 2: 6:55
On the research side of our business, we've analyzed gosh, I think over 4,500 startups since 2005. And we look at what sort of industries are these travel startups being founded in and what are they focused on, as well as fundraising trends, and so we analyze what are the biggest segments that travel startup founders are trying to innovate around. And it goes without saying that hospitality is a primary driver, and that's where a lot of the money is made in the industry is hospitality. Companies and startups are always trying to get a sliver of that pie, whether it's pricing management or revenue management or optimization, or even on the distribution side, more efficiently distributing hotel products through online travel agents or other channels. So startups are something that we spend a lot of time focusing on.
Speaker 1: 8:00
It's fascinating when I think back to the research, specifically in the timeframe you just mentioned, 2008, on startups, when I was at Lonely Planet living in Australia, melbourne, in 2005 is when I got my first access to a Focusrite subscription. I'd already worked in travel companies before that point, but they didn't justify the cost. Lonely Planet did and I won't state the price because it's probably different than it is now and I don't want anyone to, but nevertheless it was expensive, but it was absolutely worth it and a lot of the research that we then leverage, which was about accommodation, because the platform I was working on was Lonely Planet accommodation, essentially making Lonely Planet reviewed and recommended hotels and accommodation bookable online. This is obviously pre Airbnb, even for that matter. This was when most people were using couch surfing to find a similar place to stay. But most of the business case that we put together was all based on Focusrite research and when I got access to that for me, I was like kid in the toy store. I was like there was so much rich data that could justify your case to the board.
Speaker 1: 9:01
And the partner that we actually had planned to launch with was Hostelworld, who is still a major player in this space, based out of Ireland, of course, and one of the things they identified to us was that they didn't want to launch a platform with only Lonely Planet recommended hotels because there wouldn't be enough available inventory, and that was something that they knew, that the business at the time wasn't willing to budge on, because they didn't want to have non Lonely Planet reviewed and recommended hotels, and that really limited the success of the platform and the product portfolio.
Speaker 1: 9:32
So, just to give you an idea, not only the research, but then a startup that actually educates a more established business. So there's so many aspects to your business I want to talk about, but maybe just a little bit more on the research side, if you wouldn't mind, because I then want to get back into events and startups. But just to help everyone understand that may be listening to this that doesn't have a research subscription today and is missing out on that opportunity the type of research report you do, the data that you make available for travel businesses.
Speaker 2: 10:01
We've. We realized quite early on that research was a really important part of our business. To establish that credibility layer we, when Philip Wolf founded the company back in the in the mid 1990s initially he launched a consultancy, but really quickly realized that consulting is a lot of heavy lifting and it also isn't quite as credible as providing really objective research to the markets. We focused on building out a research library from the early days, and the first I think we called it the online travel overview publication that we produced was right around the dot-com bust and we were really instrumental in mapping out what percentage of the market is being at that point being transacted online, and it was a very small percentage of the market but obviously growing really fast. So we put a stake in the ground and said let's build a research practice based around helping travel companies understand how big different channels are across different geographies, across different segments of the market. And that part of our practice has remained true and true since the early days, and so we're used across the board by lots of different types of companies. You gave a really useful use case of really building a plan and using our data to quantify how big is the market opportunity and what does that mean for a potential product? I think one thing that's maybe a bit misunderstood is the price point of our subscription service. We've actually we've sliced and diced it a little bit and I think it serves us well to project. It is a very valuable service, but oftentimes people think that it's unattainable from a pricing perspective. But for startups it's less than 500 bucks a month now for them to access our research subscription, so certainly an investment as they're thinking about building out products and pitching to investors.
Speaker 2: 12:28
Having focus right, research really is a stamp of credibility and we're proud of what we built in the market and it's always been the foundation of who we are as a company. Our events, which we'll talk about in a little bit, are, we like to call them, a live research project, where we have our analysts on stage. But it's not just softball questions to the senior executives. We're really digging into the trends that we see in the market and those trends are all uncovered through both qualitative and quantitative research that we conduct. So we do a lot of consumer work. That's something that really helps us tell the story about what's going on in the market how are consumers searching and shopping and buying and what sort of technology are they using and what sort of channels do they use? How big is the offline channel when it comes to making choices about destinations? Those types of things are part of that consumer coverage, but it's really the sizing that's been the hallmark of focus right research that's really carried us through that's great.
Speaker 1: 13:38
I'm glad you clarified that because it's set out to me and clearly it's an opportunity you've addressed where startups that don't have access to that level of content and, as you say, it's incredibly well researched, incredibly well researched, it's incredibly valuable and that's for me. It was worth the cost, but I knew it was inaccessible to other people. So great to know that that's no longer a barrier. Along those lines with the startups. I will segue a bit into the events themselves because that's and I'll just share one example to highlight a point about the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: 14:11
Several years ago, when Dara was still running Expedia, sam Schenke had started Hotel Tonight and Sam Schenke gave this incredible, one of the best presentations I've seen at a Focus Right conference. He described, for the people that are unfamiliar with the Hotel Tonight business model, but he described the future of staying in hotels and the idea that would know that the room would know enough about you, the hotel would know enough about you as you arrive that everything would be frictionless. You'd walk right into the elevator, it would take you to your floor, the room would be adjust, the temperature would be adjusted to your based on what you set your nest at home. So all this information would be carried forward and it was a very exciting vision of the future and I was totally captivated by his presentation. Later on during the conference, I saw Sam having coffee with Dara at the Starbucks right next door when you guys were in LA and of course I'm fully intrigued, because I was that definitely Expedia is going to buy Hotel Tonight and, for those of you who follow this story, airbnb actually bought Hotel Tonight.
Speaker 1: 15:13
But the reason I wanted to share that example is that when I took a journalism class in university, one of the professors had commented we had to subscribe to various newspapers and one of them was the New York Times, the Sunday New York Times, which and the reason that he had suggested it is that if you read the Sunday New York Times, you don't need to read a paper for the rest of the week because it basically tells you everything that's about to be covered in your local news or in your regional news. And I was amazed because he was right and I learned a lot from that. And I felt the same way about being at a focus-right conference is that when you're there for those few days, you can pretty much plot the next six to nine months of what's going to unfold in the travel industry itself. Is that a accurate reflection of the events the way you see them, because that was certainly my perspective.
Speaker 2: 16:00
Yeah, it's. I think, as innovation goes, it's becoming faster and faster, and we see that with generative AI. Every two weeks there's just something new and really unique that comes out, and it's just that accelerating curve of innovation. So maybe it's not six to nine months like it used to be, maybe it's more kind of two to four months, but we do spend a ton of time thinking about what are some of the big trends that really have staying power. And, as we're thinking about the theme to the conference, that's another thing that we recognize is the bellwether for the industry and we spend weeks thinking about and this happens in Q1, early Q2, when we think about all right, what sort of theme is going to have staying power to last through November, and we actually carry over that theme to our European event, which is June. So we've got to be really thoughtful to make sure that we have a theme that's going to be super relevant in November but also carry over to our European event the following June. And I won't share the theme right now because we haven't released it yet, but, as you could imagine, it's going to focus a lot on this new platform that we're seeing coming into the market that we think is going to have a really significant impact on the industry. We're seeing some early use cases for it. Companies like Expedia have launched some simple integrations into their mobile app basic trip planning stuff which is really just scratching the early surface of the power of generative AI. But we're super enthusiastic that it's really going to be a game changer for the industry.
Speaker 2: 17:55
We've been talking about personalization since, I think, 2012. I read a focus-right report on personalization is now here in 2012. And I think as an industry we've struggled to really get to. You mentioned it with Hotel Tonight. That kind of frictionless data sharing is a problem. There's a lot of context that comes with planning travel that is not well known and you may be on a business trip one time going to New York and a provider may think you're taking another business trip, but it may be a trip with your kids and there's a lot of challenges that come along with that. But AI can really have a strong impact as it learns different behavior can really serve up a hyper-personalized experience for you. We went to London after Focus-Right Europe this year and used different kind of AI planners to help map out itineraries and it's amazing the sort of information you can feed in and get back super relevant results where you're traveling with a family, you give the ages, you explain that yeah, we tend to be active and you can get really super-personalized itineraries.
Speaker 1: 19:16
And again, I think that's just scratching the surface of where Generative AI is going to take us, absolutely and just so everyone knows that the flagship landmark event that you host in the US that you've now brought over to Europe as well, it goes back and forth between Florida and was California, but now Arizona.
Speaker 1: 19:34
So each year and I made the effort to attend every year and I look forward to being there again this year. But to your point about the conversations you had on stage, glenn Fogel being one example, who's the CEO of bookingcom, formerly Price Line I had spoken to Glenn earlier that day when because I was very interested in pitching him on getting tours on their platform multi-day tours, of course, which was something that we had talked about previously with giving recognition to that sector of the travel industry. But nevertheless, I had spoken to him briefly earlier that day and he had an issue with his hotel room, as you may recall, and one of your interviewers actually, she got into it with him on stage and he was very vocal about the issues of checking in because the hotel was oversold and they didn't have his room. And then the conversation even went to. You could feel the awkwardness in the crowd, right, you could feel the, and that made it really authentic, very real, and then she even I think it was Lorraine, if I remember correctly, but it was correct.
Speaker 2: 20:38
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: 20:38
Lorraine and so she even then took issue with the connected trip, because she's heard Glenn mention that so many times the idea of the connected trip and she challenged him on it said when are we ever going to see this connected trip? You keep talking about it. You come every year and keep saying about the connected trip. When are we actually ever going to see that? And that to me is it was refreshing and it was exciting to be in that room, as you're surrounded with entrepreneurs and executives and people as significant as he is in our industry are being challenged in an open public forum.
Speaker 2: 21:09
It's true, it's very true and it is a hallmark of our event is to really be challenging on the most important topics of the day, and it's. We've added a lot more smaller group discussions to the mix, so it used to be all center stage. That's where the big conversations happen. But we recognize during the pandemic that people were really missing smaller group, a little bit more intimate conversations where they felt maybe a little more comfortable sharing in a smaller group rather than raising their hand and asking a question in front of 800, 800 others. And we've added a lot more of those to the to the content mix at the conference and people are really enjoying it. And it's taking the big speakers from the main stage, bringing them in and just curating a discussion around a particular topic. We call them roundtables. It's not a very it's not a very sexy name, but it's exactly what it is. It's bringing the big speakers from the main stage into a roundtable type format where you've got seats around, you've got maybe 45 to 50 people and just having an authentic conversation about what's truly happening in the industry.
Speaker 2: 22:33
Glenn failed to mention that if he would have booked his room through the focus right room block, it might have been a different situation, but we all know that there are are challenges in the industry. We're all working together to fix those challenges, whether it's the practice of hotel hoteliers overselling their rooms and having to walk people. That happens every day somewhere and it just unfortunately happened to happened to the, the CEO of booking holdings. But there, there are certainly challenges left in this industry to solve and I think that that does that. That does us a favor. We can highlight those on our stage.
Speaker 2: 23:19
I recall a conversation between Brad Gersner and Bill Gurley about the check-in process of hotels and why does it need to take five minutes to come in and they should have all your information. And so Bill went through this diatribe of it just is shouldn't be this difficult. And then I saw him post on Twitter a couple years later that Hilton had an amazing app experience where they served him up a virtual, a virtual key. He used that to get into his room. He bypassed the whole front desk. So he gave some kudos to to Hilton for an experience that he had had shot them down on before. But that's what the focus right conference is all about is those real, authentic conversations and helping to solve them and move the industry forward For sure.
Speaker 1: 24:11
There's so much there that I could love to talk to you about, including Steve Haffner. He was always the highlight for me because he was completely wild and unpredictable. But I also want to touch on some of the other things you guys do beyond the research and conferences, and that is the startup when we connected recently. But I work across startups and you are very involved in that community, and so the travel tech leaders tell us a bit about that partnership and how, outside of the event itself, how you guys work with with startups.
Speaker 2: 24:42
Yeah, we realized when the pandemic set in and in early 2020, we realized that obviously events were were going to be face to face, events were going to be challenged for quite some time. The first step that we took was we launched a community of travel tech leaders. These are industry executives as well as startup founders as well as industry investors that are working to move the industry forward, and so we brought these three kind of constituents into a virtual metaverse type experience and allowed them to connect and communicate. And the way we enticed them to come was to just bring in a CEO from a big company to really anchor the conversation, but allow each member to jump in and ask questions and share experiences. One of the most memorable sessions we had was with Chris Nassetta from Hilton, where he agreed to listen to two startups pitch. So we offered him up two startups and he gave the most amazing feedback to these startups that are trying to innovate in the hotel space and try to sell their technology or distribution solutions to hoteliers. He just gave some really great advice. But that was the purpose of the platform really was to connect people that were really trying to move the industry forward with senior leaders. We talked a lot about leadership experiences and how they were navigating their companies through a really challenging time in the industry. So we recognize that there is a role for virtual technology. If you can do it well, it can really provide some value, and we wanted to open this up to more mentoring with startups. We thought there was a space to play there, so we launched the TravelTech Executive Fellowship Program, which was a little bit more focused and a bit more of kind of an accelerator style program where you bring in startup founders as well as up and coming stars in the industry together and expose them to a ton of content over the course of eight to 10 weeks and they can pick and choose what content they're most interested in.
Speaker 2: 27:08
You mentioned Sam Schenck, and we always try to enlist him because he tells such great stories about both his experience as a startup founder as well as just general leadership experience and what he shares with our kind of next the future of the industry. Just how he learned he was raising a ton of money to fuel the growth of Hotel Tonight and then all of a sudden funding became a bit more challenging and he had to figure out how to get to profitability and he had to downsize his company and he talks a lot about just what he went through as a CEO to have to lay off people that he had along with him from the entire time, and just talking through that was super valuable to those that got to hear him. That's something that has been really successful for us. We've had two cohorts.
Speaker 2: 28:08
We're launching our third cohort in August, where we bring about 100 startup founders and rising industry stars together to learn from each other, to connect with each other, to listen to content from others and to create this, really this community effect, this networking effect.
Speaker 2: 28:28
That's good for our brand. I think it really reflects who we are as a brand, but also helps all these individuals as they're moving forward in their careers, whether it's a connection they made with another fellow or a connection that they've made with an industry executive that we pull in to deliver some content. So we think there's a role, for virtual Nothing's going to replace face to face and we'll continue to integrate face to face as part of these programs that we launch. But it's just a way for us to maybe reach more people, which we found that we've expanded to parts of the industry where maybe we haven't touched as much in the past and also introduce them to the type of content that we bring to our stages in the physical presence. So the thought is that we can bring in these people into a virtual world, expose them to some amazing content and then they'll follow us to our stages as we launch our existing events and more events that will launch into the industry.
Speaker 1: 29:34
I was really impressed with the second cohort that I had the privilege to be invited to and I'm going to be a speaker in the third cohort and hopefully will continue to be a part of that community. Because I was really impressed from the sessions themselves. Because when I give presentations I often talk about I'm a huge baseball fan. You can see Jose Bautista behind me with his bat flip moment. I coach my son's team for several years, going into their Cooperstown year, which is a special moment. One of the things I would take my son to is spring training, and one of the things I would talk about in presentations is the one that I love about spring training is it takes combines the rookies with the all stars and the veterans and you bring those three together and they all have to do the same thing, which is they've got to hustle to their position. So it often use the line to say why do you run to your position? Because we'd always tell our players to run into their position, and the answer, of course, is that if you don't, somebody else will, and it just highlights the fact that you have to hustle and you have to earn your position, even though you think you're an all star or because some rookie is going to come up or a veteran may have some glorious last few years in the game and be able to mentor younger players. So I love the camaraderie and I was really impressed because that was my sense of this cohort and I'll just give one brief example, not to mention names. It was someone I wasn't familiar with, but the CEO of CloudBeds, adam Harris, did a great session Again, someone I didn't know before and I really wasn't familiar with CloudBeds or their business model and I was so amazed and impressed with the scale of their business and how he had grown the business and the remote working style, the culture of the business. But in particular, he talked about Jasper, jasper AI I know we'll talk about that when we get into some of the trends and I had looked at it and thought about it and then, after he talked about it, he said that he loved it so much he signed up all of his executive team for Jasper, and so I signed up and I've added our acceleration team members to Jasper because it makes us so much more efficient. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: 31:32
I use chat, gpc, of course, but Jasper can do many of the writing tasks that you would otherwise need an extended team to really helps with communications. He was using the example of improving. Key to culture is communication, and but it takes time and effort. Everyone's very busy, but to improve communications they're now all leveraging Jasper rather than having to someone right on behalf of the executives. So that for me was a takeaway, and now there's no shortage of uses. I've already found for Jasper and how much, and I would not have necessarily taken that step had I not been a part of that session and listened to him. I'm certainly looking forward to the next one, but is there anything else you want to highlight about those initiatives that stand out to you? Or, before we get into the trends that I haven't touched on with focus Right? That may be an area of the business that I even I'm not familiar with.
Speaker 2: 32:18
Yeah, so I appreciate you bringing up Adam. So Adam was someone that we had connected with Gosh probably four or five years ago, and I realized very quickly that, first off, he's super smart and, secondly, he's got a ton to share around. How he built that cloudbeds business and the culture that he's put into place there is really impressive, and we see it when he brings his group to the conference, and he's got a lot of great stories to tell In terms of other parts of the focus right business. We'd be remiss to not at least call out focus wire, which is it's interesting. We were always hesitant to launch a media platform on top of our research business because we thought that it would maybe put in some ways, put our research credibility at risk with having to report on the news of the day, and those concerns quickly went away as we got feedback on the launch of focus wire. It's five years old now and it's really grown in readership as well as the challenge with a subscription based research business is only the people that have a subscription are able to consume the content. Inherently, our audience was constrained to just those that had access to our content, so we wanted to have a bigger voice in the industry and I think focus wire has allowed us to do that.
Speaker 2: 33:59
Focus wire is a place where we release our hot 25 startups every year in November. Obviously, we cover the daily ongoing news of travel tech and we try to keep razor focused on technology and digital. It's straight B2B. We don't we don't mix in B2C content in there.
Speaker 2: 34:23
It's really just a here's what's going on in the world of travel tech and distribution and we think we've created a nice voice and, again, it allows us much more reach than just having a fenced in research product. So we do a lot of thought leadership. We have a lot of partners that that use focus wire really effectively to help tell their story and it's a really nice platform to help us. Focus Europe, for example, was just last week and if you're tuned into focus wire, you're now seeing all of the content that we just push out through focus wire and it's our way to create a hybrid event experience. You can't replace the face to face networking that happens at a focus right conference, but if you're interested in the content, you can catch all of it through focus wire. So that's been a really important platform for us and something that will continue to grow and cover different markets and different areas of the industry.
Speaker 1: 35:25
I'm glad you mentioned that as well. We definitely would have been remiss not to mention it, because it's been a strength that I've seen you build over the last several years, because you, the team that you had and some of the content, you had the research, you had the events and then you started to build out the content on focus wire. Has that become, maybe just before we get into the travel trends, how significant a part of the business is focus wire now?
Speaker 2: 35:47
Yeah, from an audience perspective it's significant. It is it's where our audience goes and tunes in. So we have probably 35 to 40,000 subscribers to the newsletter. Plus, we have a ton of organic traffic that comes in whether it's through Google News or other referrals that comes in and consumes content on focus wire. From a traffic perspective, it's where our traffic lives and allows us much more exposure of the content that happens at our events as well. So it's an important part of the business.
Speaker 2: 36:26
It was the missing third leg of the stool. We like to say that we had a research business. It was really strong. We had a conference business was really strong. But we needed that third leg to the stool. That really allowed us to Share a lot of that content and obviously it allows us to get our research content out. It's still we keep the core of the research proposition Available to our research subscribers, but a lot of the top level data points We'll use to support some of our coverage at focus wire. So it's a really important part of the business and something that will continue to to invest in and will continue to grow.
Speaker 1: 37:08
That's terrific the Conference you've just come back from. It's probably a good segue to get into the trends. Clearly, people can go to focus wire and I do encourage people to consider registering, especially startups and travel businesses, for the third cohort that's going to start in September of the travel technician. But let's talk travel trends because this is for me I. I know we have to be mindful of other people's time and I got to be mindful of your time as well as we segue into this.
Speaker 1: 37:36
But there's so many questions I have about trends because really I'm, as far as I'm concerned, I'm speaking to the Oracle that has such knowledge at your fingertips, both through the research in the events and also Just understanding this ecosystem so well. So the one I'd love to start off with is the topic that everyone would. If we were Polling people right now, if we were live and we were asking people questions, I think we probably know eight out of ten people would ask us to talk about AI. I want to speak about a lot more things than just AI, but let's start there because that's definitely on top of everyone's mind. So when you see generative AI and Chat GPT because I actually did notice it's one of the nav items on the focus wire as well Chat, gpt. So tell us how you're approaching it, what you're seeing in the travel industry, what brands are embracing it and being successful with leveraging that new technology.
Speaker 2: 38:26
Yeah, it's one of those. It's one of those platform shifts that is is going to be really impactful and we're super early days when it comes to generative AI. But just thinking back to some of the big platforms obviously the internet back In the 90s, early 2000s, mobile came onto the scene, social media was next and now we're into Into AI, which is truly going to be one of these platform shifts. Ironically, ai has been AI itself has been really on the scene for quite some time. I think Google identified themselves as an AI first company. That was Just thinking back. That was probably five, five plus years ago and that I was reminded of that.
Speaker 2: 39:12
I led a panel with, with some of the biggest meta-search players in Europe sky scanner, etraveli, and, and Travago, and and Phil from Sky scanner said, look, we've been, we've been incorporating AI for the last eight to ten years. Ai is nothing new, but generative AI is, and using, using LLMs is something that's really going to be a game changer. So we're not gonna we're not gonna just Release something just to say, look, we're leading the way with, with AI or with generative AI, but we're gonna be thoughtful about where we can add the most value to the ecosystem, and I think it's interesting to see some companies really just planning a flag and saying we're, we're taking a we're, we want to be a leader in the space, and others are being thoughtful about how do we want to play when it comes to generative AI, I, I think we, as focus right, I Challenge our teams to use it on a daily basis and find out how they can make themselves more efficient. That's, that's that, that should be, that should go without saying to anybody in the industry that's experimenting with it is just use it and try to embrace it. And we're doing that certainly at focus right. Microsoft obviously we've. We've engaged a few times with Microsoft to bring them into our conferences as well, as we've done some LinkedIn audio events Just to get their perspective on what they're seeing in the market. They're obviously a major investor in Open AI and chat, gpt and they're taking a really leadership position in the rollout of Generative AI. But there's so much new nuance around it. There's there's security, security topics, there's data topics. There's lots around it that still has yet to play itself out, but we do know that it's going to be a, it's going to be a game changer for the industry. So we'll be right alongside following it. You see the tab on focus wire. I think Mitra Soros, who's our editor-in-chief, has really taking a leader, taking a leadership position in In covering it, and we intend to continue to do that.
Speaker 2: 41:58
Companies in this space obviously, expedia, I think, was one of the first to really launch a Chat GPT plug-in on their mobile app which allows you to play around. Play around with planning itineraries, but we're gonna go so much further beyond that that I think it's what's next. What's next, what's next? There's a lot of different companies that are launching Plugins, so we'll see that kind of early days of that, but it's really the use cases of, of personalization is something that is is a really important topic to the industry, because you want to be serviced the way you want to be serviced and we have the data. It's just a matter of kind of communicating that data and making sure that the context is there and those are. As we see some of these, these new integrations roll out. I think that's what I'll be looking for is how much closer we're gonna get to truly Personalized, frictionless travel, which is something that we've talked a lot about. It focused right for quite some time, so that is the biggest trend that we'll cover Throughout the year.
Speaker 2: 43:11
I think it came up in every single session at the conference. I I a bit tongue-in-cheek, but my closing at the event was completely written by by chat GPT. So I we had a slide and on the background it said this these closing remarks are generated by chat GPT, but there's a lot of other trends in the industry that are obviously really critical and we can jump into that if that's where you want to go with this conversation for sure.
Speaker 1: 43:40
Yeah, just one quick one on this topic because certainly we could spend the rest of the time on just as one item. And I know, given both of our background and certainly the wealth of information you're across and technology isn't a very important aspect of Travel and it always it has been for a long time and the way that the travel industry has embraced technology to reduce consumer friction and Really focus on the travel experience. So everyone's trying to figure out the uses of AI and how they build it in. There's fear, there's lots of practical applications, there's concerns about people's roles being made redundant all the things you hear about. But and I did recently speak to Gail at Berenstein, who is a VC and founder and he spends a lot of time on AI is dappin AI researcher. We had some in-depth conversations about it. So I definitely want our conversation to be more broad.
Speaker 1: 44:31
But just to highlight one small example that when we started doing the travel trend shows, one of the things I reached back to was my Lonely Planet guide. You can see there's a couple behind me and when I worked there because you could actually, when they discontinued a guidebook, they made them available and In the build-up so I can go grab a free copy, and so I was always the guy that had tons of Lonely Planet guidebooks. But one of the books that I held on to was a quiz book, and so when we started doing these shows, I literally was flipping to the back of the quiz book for the answers and trying to find answers that were relevant to the guest. Today we're gonna talk a lot about Colorado when we get to the quiz, but, of course, I quickly move from using a book to Grabbing trivia questions to actually having chat GPT. Just write the trivia questions. It's in most practical applications you could think of today. There's a way you can incorporate chat GPT. But I would love to broaden the discussion, especially since you're just fresh back from focus right Europe and you've been in Barcelona. I didn't have the opportunity to attend, but I saw what a great event it was and the number of people that were sharing highlights from the event. So tell us a couple of other emerging trends or when you see the industry headed now that going into summer, european travel with.
Speaker 1: 45:45
I'll finish with one last example. You and I both saw some of the predictions. 2019 was a banner year for travel. 2020, obviously, the world turned upside down. Here we are in 23. There were predictions that it was gonna take 10 years for travel to get back to where it was in 2019 and In fact, 2023 is exceeding numbers from 2019 for some businesses. It's uneven, of course, and that's some of the things I want to dive into you on to understand how travel behavior has changed, but tell us what you saw being in Europe in the start of summer and what what travel businesses are Experiencing yeah for sure.
Speaker 2: 46:20
So there's, I think, coming into this year. There was some, maybe a little bit of pessimism around the the macroeconomic environment, but the industry is still not seeing it. It's still really strong forward bookings. Maybe there's a little bit more Caution in in spend further out, but I think, for the most part, travel businesses are performing quite well. To your point, the online market in Europe has actually surpassed 2019 levels. The, the total market will take a bit more time and the reason for that is the lag in recovery of business travel. That's, I think, been spoken about To quite some level. That business travel has not come back to 2019 levels, and it's just the nature of business travel and work and these types of experiences where no longer are people taking those one-day business trips just to meet one client. Those are being replaced by virtual technology, so that part of the industry is a little bit slower to come back. But in in general, it's been a super strong recovery. I think we actually we obviously forecast ahead. Three years is normally how far we forecast ahead in our numbers. We've been pretty, pretty consistent on recovery being 2024 to 2025 Across different markets.
Speaker 2: 47:50
Asia's is a little bit Delayed. China is starting to open back up, although there's real big challenges with visas now, and we saw that in India as well, where the market was open but travelers couldn't couldn't get access to To visas, so they couldn't they simply couldn't travel. Asia is Is. Is is coming back strong as a destination, as well as the the origin markets, but again the industry is really performing quite well through some potentially challenging economic, macroeconomic environments, some of the other trends.
Speaker 2: 48:32
Sustainability is something that we've talked about for for quite some time, and especially being in Barcelona, which was maybe the poster child for for over tourism and having really challenges to the local local economy and the culture there just because of so many tourists coming in and Overloading parts of the city. There's been a lot of discussion in Barcelona about how to how to bring back tourism. It was quite busy in the city and it's not even peak tourism season yet, but there's definitely a lot of discussion among the different Bodies within Barcelona whether it's tourism Barcelona or the government about how to really be thoughtful about managing over tourism, and that obviously kind of segues into sustainability, not only sustainability from an environmental perspective, but also sustainability from a community perspective. So those are really big topics that will really carry us through. We've talked a lot and we're doing some research right now on travelers, not just their willingness to pay for a sustainable, sustainable tourism. I think that's maybe been covered to a pretty significant degree that travelers aren't willing to spend a lot of money on choosing a sustainable options. It's much more about Are they thinking about and are they acting on doing volunteer, volunt, voluntorism within a particular destination, or they thinking about how they travel and is that driving decision-making? So we're gonna dig into all those aspects in this research that we're conducting. But that's certainly a topic that came up on the stage at Focusrite Europe.
Speaker 2: 50:29
Some of the segments that I think are interesting as we kind of transition into a, from the pandemic into post pandemic. The short-term rental industry really had a, had an unbelievable time during the pandemic and just a boost because that was the type of Accommodation that a lot of travelers perceived as safe and and secure and it's maybe flattened a little bit. But I think as a, as a segment of the industry, it's really benefited from the visibility that it got and obviously Airbnb is. They're evolving and continue to grow and just looking at that business, they relaunched back to their booking. A single room on their site was something that was part of their core proposition when they launched. They drifted a little bit away from that into more traditional short-term rentals, but now they're really back to marketing that and a lot of it's driven by price point the industry. We spent quite a bit of money flying over to Europe with my family and staying in accommodations and Airbnb is really thoughtful about offering a really inexpensive proposition to somebody that wants to travel but maybe can't afford to stay in a pay $450 to stay in a four-star hotel in London. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
Speaker 2: 52:03
There's a lot of discussion. There's a lot. One more point on Airbnb. There's a lot of discussion around marketing booking and Expedia spend, I think, $3.2 billion in the first quarter and Airbnb spent maybe $450 million and they talk a lot about just using the power of the brand and how that can play for them because Airbnb is a it's both a noun and a verb and they get a lot of play off of Airbnb and this really helped them drive direct traffic to their mobile apps and their websites and it also is allowing them to spend a lower percentage of their marketing dollars on performance marketing. Some interesting stories around Airbnb that came up at the conference. But there's a lot going on in the industry, as there always is.
Speaker 1: 52:58
No, that's fascinating one, and certainly Brian Chesky has the businesses come back. As you've highlighted, he's focused on brand, looked at what they were spending on performance marketing before and made a shift. Now Airbnb hasn't typically been. They's like many of the OTAs they see themselves as technology companies, not travel companies, and I remember that being a theme when Darro was asked about Expedia, and the focus was we're a technology company. The whole premise is building a technology stack, integrating other brands into that technology stack, and at the Travel Corporation, the focus was actually that we were a travel company and travel was first, and so the consumer experience was what was paramount. And I just found it interesting between travel and technology, airbnb has not typically been a major part of focus right conferences, and so it's interesting mentioning them. Do you see that changing in the future, or do you see them getting more active in the travel community as opposed to the technology community?
Speaker 2: 53:58
Now it's interesting. It's a pure, a pure B2C company, although with Hotel Tonight that kind of is the link between the traditional independent hotel industries Although Hotel Tonight also works with chains as well. So certainly we see individuals from Hotel Tonight come, we get it. The corp dev team from Airbnb is always at our conference because they're scouting up the next potential acquisition. But Airbnb is an interesting business. We'll get executives from Airbnb to share perspectives on our stage, as we had at Focus right Europe.
Speaker 2: 54:43
But they've been a little bit cautious about just fully embracing the industry. I think Google is an interesting juxtaposition because we get tons of folks from Google to come to our conference to just be really part of the travel industry. They wanna embrace the industry. Google's a little bit different. Again, they rely on advertising dollars and they find a lot of those advertising dollars at our conference. But also they wanna be part of the conversation and it's a clearly very innovative company. But Airbnb has taken a step back and they haven't really sent a lot of people to industry events, primarily because it's a business that's serving travelers and they're razor focused on that and as long as they're continuing to do a great job serving travelers, which they are, it's really an amazing company. I'm not gonna call them out on any of their strategies. I wish we had more of them that would come to our conference. But I get why they don't.
Speaker 1: 55:48
Brian, consider this your call to action. We'd love to see you focus right this year, but I'd love to go back to keeping on the theme of travel. There's two more questions. I just really wanted to ask you about travel trends and then we'll dive into the quiz.
Speaker 1: 56:02
When you look at Mark, you were talking about Asia. A lot of travel, specifically European travel, has been Western countries, typically English speaking countries, traveling to Europe, and I always find the movement of people genuinely fascinating. What emerging destinations that people choose to go to, and all of a sudden, iceland is hot and Japan and South America these things continually shift and I also feel awful for the people in a destination when it shifts away. For example, we were in Sri Lanka just before the pandemic and certain countries have been harder hit than others given various other factors in their society, and they've been particularly hard hit and I often think about some of the people that we've met along the way and some of them I keep in touch with, but not everyone, of course and just how their lives have been impacted, because when the sun shines on you in the travel industry, it's a wonderful feeling and when the sun goes away, it really exposes other aspects of society that then the economic opportunity isn't replaced.
Speaker 1: 57:05
So I just wanted to ask you, in terms of outbound, or even inbound, I would love to, if you could Australians, for example. They are massive outbound travelers. They travel for extended periods of time because obviously they're traveling a farther distance. Is there any countries that you see travel resurging, greater from, like the US market, of course, this year, and is there, equally, I guess, any markets that you are seeing that are really coming to the forefront this year, that the people are choosing to travel to, that were different than when we went into the pandemic?
Speaker 2: 57:39
Yeah, it's a great question. It's a great question, I'd say. India as a market is really super strong, coming out of a again a really challenging time, and the government has really supported mobility as well as infrastructure to allow for this to happen. Put aside some challenges with visas, india is a market that's really emerged from the pandemic super strong. China obviously is a massive travel market and I think once the Chinese traveler is able to get out about we expect that to happen next year, I think in earnest again just getting through some of the challenges that are occurring in the Chinese market from a visa perspective. Some of the markets that relied on the Chinese traveler really took a big hit during the pandemic and had to reinvent their travel experience, and those were some of the local markets in mainland Asia that really had to reinvent their domestic tourism because the Chinese travelers were not able to come. So those markets are taking a little bit longer to recover.
Speaker 2: 59:10
You mentioned Japan. Japan has maybe took a little bit longer to open up and I traveled through Japan on the way to Singapore last October and it was completely dead in the airport, just completely dead. But Japan's come roaring back. I think Japan is always up top on popular kind of inbound destination and it continues to be super strong. But yeah, it's really interesting to see there's a lot of US travelers that are traveling to Europe still. Last summer we spent some time in Italy and it was jam-packed with US travelers. Same this summer, although we were able to get a little bit further off the beaten path. And those are the travel experiences that we love right, where you can just get away from people and really see some amazing places. Although we did spend some time in London and had a great time and it wasn't overly packed with US travelers, I think London is one of those destinations that does a really nice job of catering to different sorts of travelers and spreading them out across the city.
Speaker 1: 1:00:23
That's fascinating. Thanks for sharing some of those. I could definitely talk about that for a while longer, but there's one other one I definitely wanted to ask you. Is it the ways that people are traveling post pandemic? You mentioned short-term rentals and clearly during the pandemic there were winners and losers. The winners where everyone's working in tech and now, all of a sudden, travel is back and so.
Speaker 1: 1:00:43
But when the industry was shut down effectively, I was a very strange experience For me in particular. We're living in LA. My son was an avid plane spotter and he wants to be a pilot one day, and so we'd often go to the airport and there was so few planes coming in and we would often see the gorgeous A380 Qantas planes, the ones that weren't in the desert, the ones that were still at the airport covered up, and it just seemed so strange to see these glorious planes that were the future of aviation and the travel industry and reducing prices that all of a sudden I remember when I was living in Australia the A380 came out. It was like it was gonna change pricing for people to be able to travel these long distances. To see them parked was obviously quite surreal.
Speaker 1: 1:01:29
But as travel comes back, what are you seeing that's changed in consumer behavior In tours? I say you mentioned accommodation, rail travel, like what are some of the other elements you're seeing that are either? Are new emerging trends in the way that people wanna travel? You've mentioned sustainability. Obviously that's a terrific example, but are there any other patterns of behavioral change that you've seen in the ways that people are choosing to travel now?
Speaker 2: 1:01:55
Yeah, we've talked a lot about leisure over the years, and I think that term has maybe become blended travel, which is now workation and there's a lot of different words for it. But I think we all understand that type of travel really was boosted by the pandemic and virtual work, and so that's something that I experienced when I was working in Barcelona at Focus for Europe and my family was alongside playing in the city and we extended and spent some time in London. So that type of travel for sure is here to stay, and I think travel companies have to figure out where and how they need to play in that space. Short-term rentals is the discussion on the stage at Focus. Right. Europe was really embracing some of these new types of travelers, whether it's blended travelers or executive teams that are now working remotely, and they need to get together for strategy sessions, and what a better place to get together at than a nice villa on the coast somewhere?
Speaker 2: 1:03:02
Companies are really thinking about how to position themselves. Airlines are trying to figure out how to reposition themselves without as many business travelers flying up front of the planes. So that's something that is changing and it's where it used to be. They would make 70, 80% of their revenue off of business travel. That's shrunk quite significantly. I was speaking with Timor from Swiss Airlines, who is at our conference, and he's trying to figure out how do we manage now we're at a 50-50 split where we were at maybe a 30-70 previously and how do we manage that?
Speaker 2: 1:03:47
Airlines are getting pretty sophisticated about upselling through their apps and also different pricing strategies. So we're seeing a lot of that as well, which is upheaval in the distribution landscape, with NDC and American kind of pulling fares out. But that's the technical side that travelers don't really see. But I think certainly apps are, as we're thinking about millennials and Gen Zs, they're embracing different types of apps. Hopper is one of those companies that's come up fairly recently, although they've been working at it for quite some time. That really is engaging that younger demographics that are embracing apps and price flexibility and all the different offers that they offer through their service.
Speaker 2: 1:04:41
It's certainly not a dull time in the industry. There's a lot of activity in the startup space. It's a really exciting time and it's great to see the travel industry just powering through some of the challenges that we're seeing in the broader macroeconomic market, because coming into this year there's a lot of concern that maybe the industry was going to take a step back after all the unleashed pent up demand that flowed out in 22. But it's great to see that for the most part the industry is remaining super, super strong, absolutely.
Speaker 1: 1:05:15
Now. This has been terrific and I would love to ask you more questions, but I know I need to be respectful of your time. But I hope we have this opportunity again and hopefully we'll see each other in person in the near future as well. But I want to put you to the hot seat for a moment and ask you your five quiz questions and then we'll wrap up with some parting thoughts, and I have these ones. I referenced chat, gpt, but these ones I actually customized myself because I wanted to make them specifically about Colorado and some of the connections that we have. The first one I'm just going to this is a softball, so I recognize that.
Speaker 1: 1:05:55
But part of the reason, the inspiration for the travel trends is really to showcase outstanding people, tell their stories and also educate and inform people, to encourage people, to inspire them to travel again and to showcase the amazing industry that we're fortunate to be a part of. Hence the questions about Colorado. For those of you who have never been to Colorado. What I wanted to ask Pete first is where does the name come from? So what does it actually mean? Because it's a Spanish word. So what does the word actually mean and what is it named after a mountain or a river. Tell us, if you wouldn't mind, what Colorado means and represents.
Speaker 2: 1:06:31
I actually don't know where the name came from. I grew up in Maine and moved out to Colorado after I graduated from college, but I do know that Colorado is a special place from a tourism perspective. Tons of great tourist activity here in Colorado.
Speaker 1: 1:06:53
I didn't mean to stump you out of the gate. My apologies. There, colorado, I think it's because of the fact that I wish I could speak Spanish, and I've tried, and I struggle with the second language. I'm Canadian, of course, and my French is incredibly weak, but Colorado is a Spanish word. That means reddish and colorful right Colorful.
Speaker 1: 1:07:11
Yeah, but specifically named after the Colorado River, since it's red. And so, yeah, and I respect the fact you're from the East Coast. I learned that at the beginning of our call. Let's see how you do with the rest, because now I'm really putting you to the test.
Speaker 2: 1:07:26
Yes, oh for one, oh for one yeah.
Speaker 1: 1:07:31
That's all right. There's a brewery just outside of Denver, in Golden, colorado, and it's actually the world's largest brewery. What is the name of that company? That would be Coors Brewery. There you go. Okay, cool, I didn't realize. One of the first times I came to Denver was to see a baseball game and I didn't realize that even the stadium being built like this Coors field, of course and that it really rejuvenated the downtown area that it was built in and I haven't been back in many years to Denver. I'm assuming the city has become much more dynamic in the last 10 or 15 years.
Speaker 2: 1:08:12
It has, and it's an amazing place to watch a baseball game, and I think that's why the owners are reluctant to spend money on the baseball team, because people will show up to watch games there anyway, because it's such an amazing view of the mountains and it's a very well situated stadium.
Speaker 1: 1:08:29
Cool. Now this is a point of connection between us skiing and snowboarding. There's so many amazing mountains in Colorado and incredible ski resorts. I was fortunate enough to come to Aspen for the grand opening of Aspen to snowboarders many years ago and got to be one of the first people to ride down the mountain, and so there's so many other places I'd love to go in Colorado, but I was actually amazed at how much skiable terrain there is. So you got three options here. How much skiable terrain is in Colorado? Is it 500 acres, is it 1,000 acres or is it 5,000 acres?
Speaker 2: 1:09:07
Wow, I would say it's got to be 5,000 acres.
Speaker 1: 1:09:15
Yeah, trust yourself.
Speaker 2: 1:09:16
Yeah, it's massive.
Speaker 1: 1:09:18
Yeah, exactly, it's massive. It's just resort after resort. The other one that stood out to me is that I've not been to, but Colorado has the highest example of this in the US. It's not a mountain, but it's a manmade feature, or I should say person-made feature that was built that you have a spectacular view from, but it has the highest. What in the USA?
Speaker 2: 1:09:51
Maybe airport.
Speaker 1: 1:09:53
Yeah, it's a good mile high stadium right.
Speaker 2: 1:09:56
Those spikes are exactly the spikes on the airport.
Speaker 1: 1:10:03
It's actually a suspension bridge, the Royal Gorge Bridge. That's over 1,000 feet.
Speaker 2: 1:10:10
Interesting.
Speaker 1: 1:10:11
So I think we've got two out of four, which Zach, who is our producer that you met just as we started. He was the very first one on the podcast. He got one question out of five. So you're already past Zach and you have a chance.
Speaker 2: 1:10:24
Nice. I need another multiple choice.
Speaker 1: 1:10:30
You redeem yourself with his final one, and this is actually in his honor as well, since he kindly produces and edits these and he's always quietly in the background scoring himself. So one of the questions that I came across in preparing for our discussion was which dinosaur was first discovered in Colorado, and I'll give you three options, or it could be all of the above. Was it the Triceratops, was it the T-Rex, was it the Stegosaurus, or was it all three?
Speaker 2: 1:10:59
I think it was the Triceratops.
Speaker 1: 1:11:04
It was actually all three. All three were first discovered and actually I asked all three.
Speaker 2: 1:11:11
Interesting.
Speaker 1: 1:11:12
Zach before our call, and he was. He struggled with it because he wasn't sure he thought it was like he thought T-Rex was discovered elsewhere. But incredibly that was the key part of that question was that where they're first discovered and it's actually all three were first discovered in Colorado. So it's something.
Speaker 2: 1:11:31
Yeah, there is a big dinosaur. There is a big dinosaur fandom out here in Colorado.
Speaker 1: 1:11:38
Yeah, I know he wants to make it a future trip. They're off to Alberta next month and then hopefully at some point they'll be in Colorado as well. But thanks for indulging me with that Pete and having a bit of fun and doing a bit of travel trivia.
Speaker 2: 1:11:52
Yeah, enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: 1:11:53
And thank you. Thank you so much for this. Yeah, of course I want to give you the final word, but I just want to say before we do wrap up, not only what a pleasure it was to have you on Travel Trends and I appreciate you taking this opportunity to come on our relatively new podcast show. Given the theme in the background, I couldn't think of someone more perfect than yourself to have this conversation with, and I'm a huge admirer of you and I look forward to seeing your continued success and seeing you again in a few months time at Focusrite and the TravelTech Nation cohort in September. So thank you again and I'll pass it to you for any final thoughts.
Speaker 2: 1:12:30
Yeah, no, of course, thanks for having me and really enjoyed these types of initiatives and anything that we can do to bring the industry together, and it's a big part of our ethos as a company is connecting people across the industry, and you and I go back a few years, but it's good to be involved on helping get something off the ground and I will make sure to tune into a future episode. So thanks again for having me, dan. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: 1:13:03
That's awesome. Thank you, pete, and thanks to everyone taking the time to listen to the show. Thanks, pete, and thanks to everyone that continues to support the show, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thank you so much. Bye for now. Bye.
