# 95% Execution, 5% Magic: How The Travel Collection Is Building the DMCs of the Future

An episode of [Travel Trends with Dan Christian](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1689330635), 22 Oct 2026, 1 h 20 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2172036/episodes/20004621-95-execution-5-magic-how-the-travel-collection-is-building-the-dmcs-of-the-future.mp3

Send us Fan Mail If ChatGPT can build a two-week travel itinerary in seconds, where does that leave destination management companies (DMCs)? In this Spotlight Episode, Dan sits down with Hicham Alaoui, co-founder of The Travel Collection, a network of 16 locally led DMCs operating across 22 countries, to explore why local expertise and personal connections matter more than ever. Hicham shares how a Harvard Business School trip to Morocco that sold out in minutes helped launch a business built around delivering exceptional travel experiences. At the heart of the conversation is Hicham's philosophy that great travel comes down to 95% execution and 5% magic. From quick response times and seamless logistics to thoughtful budgeting and attention to detail, he explains what it takes to be a trusted DMC partner. But it's that final 5% that makes an experience truly memorable: understanding what travellers want, drawing on local relationships, and creating moments they wouldn't find on their own. The conversation also turns to AI and how it's changing the way trips are planned. With more travelers and advisors arriving with AI-generated itineraries, Hicham explains why local knowledge is still essential for turning those plans into experiences that actually work. He also shares how The Travel Collection is using AI behind the scenes, where he sees the biggest opportunities for automation, and why the human side of travel remains so important. As AI makes travel planning faster and more accessible, this episode explores what technology can't replace: trusted relationships, local insight, and the ability to turn a good itinerary into an unforgettable experience. Learn more at travelcollection.co. The #1 B2B Travel Podcast Globally. Over 100 Episodes. Listeners in 125 countries. New Episodes Every Weds. https://www.traveltrendspodcast.com/

## Chapters

- 0:00 Why DMCs Still Matter
- 5:30 From Harvard Trip To Company
- 13:30 Time Value Creativity Problem
- 22:30 Building Trust And Going Global
- 31:30 Choosing Destinations And Training GMs
- 40:30 95% Execution Plus 5% Magic
- 51:30 Access Networks And Local Feel
- 1:01:30 Travel Advisors In The AI Era
- 1:12:30 Agentic AI Future Plans Closing

## Transcript

[0:05] SPEAKER_00: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Travel Trends Podcast and a special spotlight recording focused on DMCs.
[0:11] SPEAKER_00: I've so wanted to have a conversation about the world of DMCs, and I have the perfect person to have this conversation with because Hisham Alawi, the co-founder of the Travel Collection, has one of the most impressive backstories.
[0:24] SPEAKER_00: And it really starts with a student trip.
[0:27] SPEAKER_00: Two Harvard Business School classmates set out to organize a trip to Morocco.
[0:31] SPEAKER_00: And they were just, their story was actually just featured in Forbes.
[0:35] SPEAKER_00: You can check that out yourself.
[0:36] SPEAKER_00: But uh the story really starts there because they weren't impressed with the proposals they got back.
[0:41] SPEAKER_00: So they decided that they could do it better themselves.
[0:44] SPEAKER_00: And they hoped to be able to fill one bus, but the demand was something very different.
[0:48] SPEAKER_00: They actually created an entire business out of this called Experience Morocco, and that became the foundation for something even much bigger.
[0:56] SPEAKER_00: Because as you'll hear from Hisham today, this company is global, and he is the co-founder of the travel collection.
[1:05] SPEAKER_00: He grew up in Casablanca, he studied at Princeton, spent four years at Google.
[1:09] SPEAKER_00: So he was in the valley for a number of years working in product and sales and marketing.
[1:14] SPEAKER_00: And that's when he went back to school and did his MBA at Harvard.
[1:19] SPEAKER_00: And that's where he met his co-founder, Ghassan Rashid.
[1:21] SPEAKER_00: And together they have built a travel collection into a family of 16 locally led DMCs across 22 countries, from Japan and Thailand to Peru, Colombia, East Africa, and the United Arab Emirates, where he actually divides his time.
[1:38] SPEAKER_00: And what makes this model really interesting is the balance that is at the core, which is that each DMC is run by a general manager who lives in the destination, but every one of them is held to a single standard.
[1:50] SPEAKER_00: New GMs don't start in their own country.
[1:53] SPEAKER_00: They start with eight weeks in Morocco at what the company calls DMC University.
[1:58] SPEAKER_00: I like that.
[1:58] SPEAKER_00: And their philosophy is refreshingly honest about where great travel experiences come from.
[2:03] SPEAKER_00: It's 95% execution and 5% magic.
[2:07] SPEAKER_00: That makes Hasham the right person for the question at the heart of this episode, which is if a traveler can get an itinerary from ChatGPT now in seconds and AI agents are starting to book on our behalf, what is a DMC actually for?
[2:19] SPEAKER_00: We're going to get into that and where AI is already making a difference, where what local knowledge can't be replicated, and why access may matter more than ever, and what the DMC of the future looks like.
[2:31] SPEAKER_00: And here we go.
[2:32] SPEAKER_00: Hisham, welcome to the Travel Trends Podcast.
[2:34] SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining us.
[2:36] SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Dan.
[2:36] SPEAKER_00: I'm excited for the conversation today.
[2:38] SPEAKER_00: And tell everyone where you are today.
[2:40] SPEAKER_00: I know you've been West Coast, but you're back in Morocco at the moment.
[2:43] SPEAKER_00: Are you back in Casablanca right now?
[2:45] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I divide my time between Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and uh and a bunch of other places around the world.
[2:51] SPEAKER_01: But today it's a bright and sunny day in Casablanca, Morocco, as I'm speaking with you.
[2:55] SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
[2:56] SPEAKER_00: I know you do spend half your time on a plane, but it's great to have you where you're you know from, where you're based, and where the business got off the ground.
[3:04] SPEAKER_00: But let's let's start at the beginning.
[3:06] SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the story connects to yourself and your co-founder as Harvard Business School students.
[3:12] SPEAKER_00: And you went on this trip and you ended up building out a DMC.
[3:15] SPEAKER_00: Did you have any idea what a DMC was when you first started this business?
[3:20] SPEAKER_01: We literally did not know what the acronym stood for.
[3:23] SPEAKER_01: We when we were planning the trip, Ghassan and I said, Oh, we should reach out to travel agencies and see what they could put together.
[3:30] SPEAKER_01: And to this day, if you ask my parents' friends, they'll say, Oh, yeah, Nisham has a travel agency.
[3:35] SPEAKER_01: Um so no, we didn't even know what a DMC was.
[3:38] SPEAKER_01: But what we knew we wanted is someone who could offer a version of Morocco that would speak to uh the interests uh of a curious traveler, particularly from North America, and someone with some degree of sophistication.
[3:52] SPEAKER_01: And so we knew what product we wanted to offer.
[3:54] SPEAKER_01: Uh, unfortunately, at the time, or I should say fortunately, because it gave us a chance to break into the industry, uh, we couldn't find someone to really deliver what we were looking for.
[4:02] SPEAKER_01: And that's how we entered this crazy industry of ours, and we've been in it ever since.
[4:07] SPEAKER_00: Well, tell us obviously about your background, and obviously I'm keen about uh Rasheed as well, because I mean both of you guys had, you know, you had the tech background, he had the investment background, um, Morgan Stanley and consulting at McKinsey.
[4:20] SPEAKER_00: And so you guys both obviously I always find it fascinating when smart, educated people decide to get into this travel industry.
[4:26] SPEAKER_00: I think it's a good thing for our industry, especially when they don't understand it, because you obviously you can come and look at it with fresh eyes.
[4:31] SPEAKER_00: Uh so tell us a little bit about you know, you guys meeting way back in you know 2012 and deciding to embark on this business together because you guys are kind of one of these like best kept success stories.
[4:42] SPEAKER_00: You guys don't do a lot of media, and obviously this our Forbes article, now we're doing this uh spotlight episode together.
[4:49] SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you've been at this for a while and really scaling this business.
[4:52] SPEAKER_00: So tell us where it all began.
[4:54] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, as it as the story goes, on the dark and stormy nights in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we met for the first time.
[5:00] SPEAKER_01: Um, actually, the story predates that.
[5:02] SPEAKER_01: A few weeks prior to showing up on campus, I received a message on Facebook back when people were actually messaging on Facebook, which may seem like a quaint notion to a lot of our listeners.
[5:12] SPEAKER_01: Uh, but uh yeah, he said, Hey, uh, I got your name from the admissions office.
[5:16] SPEAKER_01: They told me there's another Moroccan coming to school.
[5:19] SPEAKER_01: I would love to meet you.
[5:20] SPEAKER_01: And I said, Okay, I'll be there in two weeks.
[5:21] SPEAKER_01: Let's grab tea.
[5:22] SPEAKER_01: Uh, one thing you should know about Moroccans is by and large, uh, although there are some dedicated coffee drinkers in Morocco, uh, the country is hooked on tea, Moroccan minced tea specifically.
[5:33] SPEAKER_01: And so uh Ghassan and I met over the first of what would uh end up being you know hundreds, if not thousands, of mint teas uh shared together uh a couple weeks later in in uh in Cambridge, and we discovered that we um were from similar backgrounds culturally in terms of the culture of Morocco, but really had grown up in in very different um environments, had very different uh networks, uh, had very different uh educations as well.
[5:56] SPEAKER_01: I'd I'd uh gone to school for public relations or international relations in a liberal arts um uh environment, and and he'd studied uh kind of hardcore engineering in one of France's uh best known and most prestigious universities uh in engineering.
[6:09] SPEAKER_01: Um so uh and then after that he'd gone on to investment and consulting, whereas I'd I'd gone on to become a people person at Google in marketing.
[6:16] SPEAKER_01: Uh so very, very different and complementary backgrounds.
[6:19] SPEAKER_01: And so uh that was uh the recipe for us to start brainstorming businesses that we could start together.
[6:25] SPEAKER_01: And that list did not include anything in the world of travel.
[6:28] SPEAKER_01: Um to your point about uh there being a uh lack of uh folks from non-travel backgrounds in the travel industry.
[6:35] SPEAKER_01: I think our industry is one that uh isn't doesn't stand out immediately as an area right for disruption from the outside, right?
[6:40] SPEAKER_01: So when we looked at things that we could enter, uh we were uh investigating avenues that had nothing at all to do with travel until our friends pronounced that fateful and magic sentence where they said, we want to see Morocco through your eyes.
[6:54] SPEAKER_01: That's what really got us down this path of planning an itinerary and a trip to Morocco that we could really stand behind.
[7:00] SPEAKER_01: And as you described it in the intro, once we had a little PowerPoint that showed what we wanted to do and kind of what day one would do and day two and so forth, we said uh we will open up the signups for this trip.
[7:11] SPEAKER_01: It was a total price tag of$2,000 a person.
[7:14] SPEAKER_01: And we asked for a$500 non-refundable deposit.
[7:17] SPEAKER_01: And we said we would open up the signups a week later.
[7:19] SPEAKER_01: I remember it was Tuesday, 5 p.m.
[7:21] SPEAKER_01: Easter time, and sure enough, a week later, Tuesday, 5 p.m.
[7:24] SPEAKER_01: Easter time, we sent out a link and uh we were cautiously optimistic that we'd get, you know, 20, 30 folks on board for this little twin dig adventure to Morocco in the span of under a minute.
[7:33] SPEAKER_01: Uh the 41st spots were gone.
[7:35] SPEAKER_01: And we decided by looking at each other, well, should we just open up another bus?
[7:38] SPEAKER_01: And we're like, yeah.
[7:39] SPEAKER_01: And so we we changed the number in the system that so that it could accept 85 deposits, and those incremental 45 spots were also gone within the minutes.
[7:48] SPEAKER_01: So we just looked at each other, you know, a minute had gone by, we're like all of a sudden we have 85 people who just paid us unrefundable deposits to come to Morocco.
[7:55] SPEAKER_01: Holy cow! Not only is this exciting and fun, it also means that there's probably a business opportunity to uncover you, and that that's how it all began.
[8:02] SPEAKER_00: That's really cool.
[8:03] SPEAKER_00: And I guess that's where, you know, even figuring out you needed obviously to take a deposit.
[8:08] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, most of our listeners know that my background is in the multi-day uh guided touring space, and that's another big reason I wanted to have this conversation because most multi-day guided companies work with DMCs or they own a DMC.
[8:20] SPEAKER_00: I mean, the travel corporation had uh Destination America part that ran the trips for Insight and uh Trafalgar and Kitiki throughout USA and Canada.
[8:30] SPEAKER_00: And many of these businesses try to be vertically integrated, but the reality is most of these large operators need to work with local DMCs, and that's part of how this whole industry is structured.
[8:40] SPEAKER_00: So to the point of that the fact you didn't know what a DMC was, but all of a sudden you created one and you knew you needed to take deposits and you had demand.
[8:49] SPEAKER_00: One thing I want to understand about the problem that you were solving for, given that obviously is your background working in startups, knowing tech, and identifying that there was a problem to be solved.
[9:00] SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things you were trying to work through when you were getting your proposals was it wasn't meeting your needs.
[9:07] SPEAKER_00: So, what was that shift between the proposals you were getting when you realized that you would be better off organizing your own and inviting other people to join?
[9:17] SPEAKER_00: Because obviously there was an unlock that happened there because there was demand, but there was clearly you weren't alone in not being able to get what it was you were seeking.
[9:26] SPEAKER_00: So, what was that problem that you overcame initially where you kind of realized there is an opportunity here?
[9:33] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would break it down into three components.
[9:35] SPEAKER_01: Um, and and pardon me uh for those who are listening, I think it might be a you know a common trend of full-time podcast answering.
[9:42] SPEAKER_01: Well, let me tell you in three points, but that's kind of how my brain works.
[9:45] SPEAKER_01: So uh I apologies for that.
[9:46] SPEAKER_01: But I'll break it down into time, uh, value for money and creativity.
[9:50] SPEAKER_01: So, time, what am I referring to?
[9:51] SPEAKER_01: Um, people were just taking their sweet time getting back to us.
[9:54] SPEAKER_01: We were not asking for anything complicated, you know, can we book this hotel for this many nights in Marrakesh?
[9:59] SPEAKER_01: And we found that uh through the uh agencies or the DMCs that we were quoting through at the time, we were it was taking five, six days to get an answer.
[10:07] SPEAKER_01: So just on that alone, like, well, if we reach out to the hotels directly, surely we can get a faster answer than five or six days, right?
[10:13] SPEAKER_01: So that was one.
[10:14] SPEAKER_01: Second was value for money.
[10:15] SPEAKER_01: Um so quite simply, you know, we were kind of uh fiduciaries on behalf of of uh the folks who were gonna travel with us.
[10:21] SPEAKER_01: We wanted them to, sure, spend money, but make sure they had a good return for it, right?
[10:24] SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of the pricing that was coming through just wasn't making sense to us.
[10:27] SPEAKER_01: And we figured we could get better rates if we negotiated ourselves.
[10:30] SPEAKER_01: And then third is probably the most important is that creativity, right?
[10:33] SPEAKER_01: So what we were getting back was pretty cookie-cutter, you know, the hotel selection, arguably, there's not a lot of room for improvisation there because hotels are what they are.
[10:42] SPEAKER_01: Um, but in terms of what we were going to do during the day, the nature of the excursions, the nature of the guided services that we were going to do, it felt pretty uh stock standard.
[10:51] SPEAKER_01: And we wanted to instead bring in elements that were going to offer a breath of fresh air and a breath of genuine connection to our travelers.
[10:58] SPEAKER_01: So, what am I referring to?
[10:59] SPEAKER_01: Well, for instance, remember we were NBA students.
[11:02] SPEAKER_01: We thought, wouldn't it be fun to organize an event at a co-working space in Casablanca, where, and funny enough, if a couple months later that would end up being the place we would set up shop, but back then we just said this is a place where we know a lot of startups have their offices.
[11:14] SPEAKER_01: Why don't we just show up for like a cocktail hour and we'll have our friends, students, you know, MBA students, connecting with Moroccan startuppers and learning about what it is that they do and what problems they face and so on and so forth.
[11:24] SPEAKER_01: No DMC work was proposing something like that, despite the fact that we sold them this is who the audience is, right?
[11:30] SPEAKER_01: But no one was going that step further of thinking, okay, if I know who the audience is, how do I come up with a version of Morocco or, you know, insert destination of your choice that is going to speak to them in a unique way?
[11:40] SPEAKER_01: And so again, time, value for money, and creativity in the itinerary.
[11:44] SPEAKER_00: Well, and the other thing I'm also interested to understand, given the timing of this, is you know, you start your MBA in 2012.
[11:50] SPEAKER_00: It's a two-year program back when MBAs were two-year programs.
[11:53] SPEAKER_00: And then since then they've been trying to figure out how to get people back into the workforce within a year or get people to do executive MBAs.
[11:59] SPEAKER_00: But this is the you know very legitimate two-year Harvard MBA.
[12:03] SPEAKER_00: And somehow you decided to do this midway through.
[12:05] SPEAKER_00: So September of 2013, you know, midway through your MBA, you embark on creating this uh ultimately DMC experience, Morocco.
[12:14] SPEAKER_00: And so what I'm keen to also understand is that did you have a good idea then?
[12:18] SPEAKER_00: Like, was this something that you thought, oh, I can make some additional money while I'm at school?
[12:23] SPEAKER_00: Did you have uh an idea then, given that you obviously had the um um the knowledge and understanding of what it's like to run, you know, to work in big tech, to scale uh companies with you know the type of education you had at uh uh doing case studies at at Harvard?
[12:40] SPEAKER_00: For you, did you see that travel was a massive industry and all of a sudden you had, you know, you put your foot into it and thought this is something that could become what obviously what it's got onto, or was this something that was kind of just a side venture for you at the time and thought, oh, I'll get back into doing consulting or take another really high-paid gig?
[12:58] SPEAKER_00: I'm keen to know if if it was the entrepreneurial path that you were about to go on, because so few people leave their MBA and go entrepreneurial.
[13:05] SPEAKER_00: Many people just go into highly paid consulting roles.
[13:10] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think um in life there's many things that you can try to reproduce.
[13:14] SPEAKER_01: The one thing that Gassan and I are grateful for, and and we always say it, you know, with great regularity, is the one thing you can't repeat or replicate is is us meeting each other and and making that commitment to want to work with one another.
[13:27] SPEAKER_01: And so uh to answer your question a bit differently, coming off of that first trip, which ran in March 2013, uh, Ghassan graduated, so he was a year older than I was in the MBA program, and uh and he was uh destined for great things in the world of finance and and hedge funds, believe it or not.
[13:43] SPEAKER_01: So he received uh a couple of offers that were incredibly compelling uh in terms of compensation, and he declined uh on the uh assumption that he'd go back to Morocco while I was a rising second-year student, and he would manage the operations of the business while I manage sales and marketing, and we'd give this a fair shot.
[14:00] SPEAKER_01: I think this is you know perhaps a different podcast, but I think more MBAs could benefit from seeing their degrees as a beautiful insurance policy that you will have a comfortable gig awaiting you if you want to go down the corporate road and therefore take advantage of the path unfollowed, of trying something different, of exploring a new avenue or thinking of a startup idea.
[14:21] SPEAKER_01: Because the worst case scenario is you learn something interesting and you go back to a corporate gig later on, right?
[14:26] SPEAKER_01: So Hassan and I didn't view this as the decision for the rest of our lives that we were going to go into the travel industry and that was going to become our life.
[14:33] SPEAKER_01: That's what it ended up being eventually.
[14:35] SPEAKER_01: But for us, it was simply, hey, let's try this thing out, see how far we can take it, see what we're gonna learn from it.
[14:39] SPEAKER_01: And if all else fails, you'll go into finance and I'll go into tech and we'll figure it out, right?
[14:44] SPEAKER_01: So that it wasn't a big decision at the time.
[14:46] SPEAKER_01: It was just like, let's see and see what happens.
[14:48] SPEAKER_00: Well, so you had a good fallback plan if you needed it, but obviously I'm glad you guys didn't and decided to continue to pursue travel because what you built with Experience Morocco led to something much bigger, which is the entire concept of building out the travel collection.
[15:05] SPEAKER_00: And just for those people who are multitasking, the website is travelcollection.co.
[15:09] SPEAKER_00: And so you can see more about the size and scale of the business that the two of you have built out.
[15:15] SPEAKER_00: But the one thing just in terms of timing, uh to connect those dots too for all of our listeners is that you know you've been running Experienced Morocco now for over 13 years, and you created the travel collection in 2022, so which is uh got a four and a half almost you know, going on five years.
[15:31] SPEAKER_00: So take it, you you clearly cut your teeth.
[15:34] SPEAKER_00: I the reason that's why I emphasize that, you know, you had nearly 10 years of running Experienced Morocco and you've built a very successful DMC.
[15:41] SPEAKER_00: What was the moment where you decided that we need to go beyond Morocco?
[15:46] SPEAKER_00: We need to go into other markets.
[15:47] SPEAKER_00: And it's incredible how quickly it's grown in the last five years to be in 22 countries and have multiple DMCs, which to me also tells me what the next five years looks like where you could continue to scale this business.
[15:59] SPEAKER_00: But yeah, take us through that leap between experienced Morocco to creating that uh the travel collection.
[16:05] SPEAKER_01: Well, I've got to give credit to Ghassan.
[16:07] SPEAKER_01: He always uh, of the two of us, I'm I'm more in the kind of nuts and bolts of executing the plan in the short term.
[16:13] SPEAKER_01: And he's more the dreamer who sees what the world could look like um five years from now.
[16:17] SPEAKER_01: And pretty early in the development of Experienced Morocco, um he lashed onto the concept that we were building an asset.
[16:23] SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, uh one of the things you can't take away from a finance person is thinking in terms of assets and liability.
[16:28] SPEAKER_01: So he he was thinking that we were building this asset that it would be a crying shame not to leverage it across uh multiple geographies.
[16:36] SPEAKER_01: So what I'm referring to here is the way we built success at Experience Morocco is by becoming a go-to supplier on the ground for um channels, the biggest of which is luxury travel advisors, um, who trusted us to be their eyes and ears on the ground and to take great care of their clients.
[16:53] SPEAKER_01: And so when you build a degree of trust with the travel advisor, honestly, the hardest piece of that journey is behind you.
[17:01] SPEAKER_01: Because in breaking into this world, and we can talk about that more later in the conversation, is very, very challenging, right?
[17:06] SPEAKER_01: Some travel advisors, it literally took meeting them six times in five years for them to eventually give us a shot.
[17:12] SPEAKER_01: So once you build that credibility and that trust, the hardest piece of the work is behind you, obviously, with the caveat that you have to keep performing.
[17:19] SPEAKER_01: So the concept was we have these thousands of folks who trust us in Morocco.
[17:24] SPEAKER_01: Why don't we ask them if they'd be willing to go on the leap of faith and trust us in a different market?
[17:28] SPEAKER_01: And the thesis was that our approach to the way we work at DMC, the way we operationalize our business, very little of it is actually specific to Morocco, and a lot of it is more in terms of the philosophy of the business and the tools that we've built and the processes that we've built.
[17:44] SPEAKER_01: So that was the impetus for the change coming out of COVID.
[17:46] SPEAKER_01: We decided now's the right time with the travel rebound happening at that time and people wanting to travel more than they ever had before because they'd been cooped up for a couple of years.
[17:55] SPEAKER_01: We decided that was the right time for us to attempt to launch in a different market and see if that trust we'd built in Morocco could be uh leveraged in another market.
[18:04] SPEAKER_01: And indeed it was.
[18:05] SPEAKER_01: And that's how we ended up uh, you know, building this extension into the rest of the world.
[18:10] SPEAKER_00: And when you started building out the network, and obviously our listeners can see this on your website as well, when they look at the five continents, 22 countries, and the 16 DMC bases that you have, you know, it's you know, you've got Morocco, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, all of that, obviously in a similar region, UK.
[18:27] SPEAKER_00: And then you've, you know, you opened up in in North America and US and Mexico.
[18:31] SPEAKER_00: I still see you're missing Canada.
[18:32] SPEAKER_00: That's something you need to add to the uh the collection for sure.
[18:35] SPEAKER_00: Um you're in South America, you're in Asia, and you're even in Australia, uh, and clearly Japan, which is a massive opportunity as you've seen in the last several years.
[18:43] SPEAKER_00: But how did you decide the destinations you were going to expand to?
[18:48] SPEAKER_00: Because I I want to understand that and also uh the formula that I alluded to earlier about finding the right GM, giving them the training uh in Morocco, and then setting them up for success.
[18:59] SPEAKER_00: So how did you spread your wings to those other hubs?
[19:03] SPEAKER_00: And what was the, I guess, the decision-making criteria for you to go into those markets?
[19:08] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, again, three points.
[19:10] SPEAKER_01: Uh they had to, we had to find a magic mix uh hitting three different considerations.
[19:15] SPEAKER_01: Uh, first and foremost, finding the right person.
[19:18] SPEAKER_01: So there are markets where we desperately wanted to launch a DMC and we were not able to find the right general manager or what felt like the right map general manager, and we have yet to enter those.
[19:28] SPEAKER_01: I can give you one example.
[19:29] SPEAKER_01: Just off the top of my head, Korea is a place where we've always wanted to do business, and we've heard from countless travel advisors and they could deal with the great DMC in Korea.
[19:36] SPEAKER_01: Um, but in our interviews with different candidates, we just haven't stumbled upon the right person yet.
[19:40] SPEAKER_01: And so until the right person is identified, we do not enter a market.
[19:43] SPEAKER_01: Our GMs are all, as you mentioned earlier in the conversation, they're from the places uh where they're based, right?
[19:49] SPEAKER_01: So that is a very important structural value for us that our GM in in Greece is Greek, our GM in Australia is Australian, and so on and so forth.
[19:56] SPEAKER_01: Uh, on top of being local, they also have a hunger, a yearning to build a business in their neck of the woods.
[20:01] SPEAKER_01: Uh and typically, although not all the time, but typically they do not come from the travel industry.
[20:06] SPEAKER_01: They come from something very different.
[20:07] SPEAKER_01: For example, our GM in uh in Mexico St.
[20:10] SPEAKER_01: Lee comes from over a decade in the pharmaceutical industry.
[20:12] SPEAKER_01: So, really nothing to do with travel.
[20:14] SPEAKER_01: Um, but they want to rediscover um themselves and their homeland by starting up a travel venture.
[20:20] SPEAKER_01: And so, anyways, the first point is finding the right GM.
[20:22] SPEAKER_01: The second point is much more straightforward, is when we have conversations with our channel partners and we ask them point blank, where could you use more support?
[20:29] SPEAKER_01: And they, you know, give us a list.
[20:31] SPEAKER_01: Um, the list varies from advisor to advisor, but there are often a lot of elements in common.
[20:35] SPEAKER_01: You just mentioned Japan earlier.
[20:37] SPEAKER_01: I've yet to encounter a single person in the travel industry who said, I'm all set in Japan.
[20:42] SPEAKER_01: Not a single one.
[20:43] SPEAKER_01: Every single person you talk to says, you know what, I love working with this company and that company, but at times they're busy and I could always use another, right?
[20:50] SPEAKER_01: So there are markets that come up uh across the boards, and there's others that are going to be very specific.
[20:54] SPEAKER_01: There'll be an advisor who says, you know, I do a lot of business in Peru, and there are a lot of great DMCs in Peru, but I just haven't found the right fit, and I'm looking for the right fit in Peru.
[21:02] SPEAKER_01: And so again, second input is where the the our partners tell us they need um support.
[21:07] SPEAKER_01: And the third is um a straightforward economic logic, right?
[21:11] SPEAKER_01: So the first market we entered was Italy.
[21:14] SPEAKER_01: Uh candidly, uh, there aren't a whole lot of people who told us they wanted support in Italy, but we figured Italy is such an enormous market that even if we can break in with like 0.1% market share, we'll have a great business, right?
[21:25] SPEAKER_01: And indeed, it was a case of build it and they will come.
[21:28] SPEAKER_01: No one we'd asked said we'd love a new DMC in Italy, but when we said that we had set up shop in Italy, a lot of people were very happy to try Assad, and that's been a great success.
[21:37] SPEAKER_01: And that was our first port of call in terms of expansion.
[21:40] SPEAKER_01: So we're now been in business a little over four years there, and it's it's doing great.
[21:45] SPEAKER_00: Well, and here's something else I want to get into is that you know, as you're mentioning, the key element is finding the right person in the market.
[21:52] SPEAKER_00: I think most of our listeners all know that our industry is built on people and trust, and that's you know, when we talk about AI, and I want to get into That in our conversation as well.
[22:01] SPEAKER_00: That's one of the big things that's lacking from agentic AI is people's willingness to trust that technology.
[22:07] SPEAKER_00: And if we think about, and I don't want to get too deep on this topic, but it is something that I often uh think about and you know will build into my uh talks that I give is that people trust people.
[22:19] SPEAKER_00: And it's part of how we got to this point uh as a species on this planet, is that we give each other shortcuts.
[22:24] SPEAKER_00: You know, we tell people that's a safe place to go or a safe place to travel and this is safe to eat, and it's like it's a reassurance.
[22:31] SPEAKER_00: And not only is it safe, but also this is something you're gonna really enjoy, and that you know, you're gonna love staying here and you're gonna have an amazing experience.
[22:38] SPEAKER_00: And there's so much riding on a trip always, especially for travel advisors who are trying to encourage their uh their clients to go to a new destination like Morocco.
[22:48] SPEAKER_00: I mean, Morocco has obviously been having an incredible uh moment for the last several years.
[22:52] SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need any additional support in driving more um uh travelers there because it's an amazing destination.
[22:57] SPEAKER_00: It's been discovered, and there's lots of reasons that people would travel to Morocco.
[23:01] SPEAKER_00: But you know, going back even when you started, 10 or 12 years, clearly you helped build up that destination to convince more people that Morocco is a safe place to travel and that, you know, but you do need the right partner that can find the right places to stay and get you safely from place to place, welcome you from the airport, all the things that a travel advisor needs to know that the DMC is going to take care of.
[23:22] SPEAKER_00: And so where I'm going with this question is that there are a lot of DMCs, and I've met great DMCs and I've and I've seen DMCs that um have struggled and um to keep up a decent reputation.
[23:35] SPEAKER_00: And it's something that travel advisors are very mindful about who they partner with, and tour operators are incredibly diligent about who they partner with with DMCs.
[23:44] SPEAKER_00: So what I'm uh interested to understand is how you just how you stood out in what is a crowded market, you know, first with Morocco, but then as you started building out the destinations, I would imagine the person you selected is always key to that because they have relationships, they're a known entity.
[24:00] SPEAKER_00: Um but what separates a great DMC from the many average ones that are out there?
[24:06] SPEAKER_01: I go back to the three things I mentioned earlier when you asked about what we were looking for that we couldn't find in Morocco, um, and then add a fourth.
[24:14] SPEAKER_01: Um so I mentioned uh punctuality, timeliness.
[24:18] SPEAKER_01: Uh our industry is one where the um delta between when someone expresses an interest in a destination and when they can actually book the trip, the longer that delta is, the worse uh the chances of the trip actually happening, right?
[24:30] SPEAKER_01: And I think that's part of the uh initial pull and success of these AI um these AI models and these agents that are able to now book travel is people love the immediacy of it, right?
[24:40] SPEAKER_01: If and and tannedly, you know, even as someone in the travel industry, if all I'm looking for is a weekend at a hotel, you know, I'm not the the shorter time it takes me to book that weekend at a hotel, the happier I'm going to be, right?
[24:51] SPEAKER_01: And so, but when you get into the world of multi-day tours and DMCs, um I I do this exercise when I when I engage with travel advisors uh before you know inviting folks for uh uh a breakfast or a lunch, and I'll just say, let's all raise our hands and you know up in the air, and then keep your hands up as I as I engage you through this prompt.
[25:08] SPEAKER_01: Keep your hand up if it's taken you, if the the longest you've ever had to wait for a response from a DMC is more than five days.
[25:14] SPEAKER_01: And at that point, everyone's hand is still in the air.
[25:15] SPEAKER_01: And then I say 10 days.
[25:16] SPEAKER_01: Usually at that point, half the hands go down, but there's still about half of the hands up in the air.
[25:20] SPEAKER_01: And then I'll say 15, and at that point, there's usually about three, four hands left.
[25:23] SPEAKER_01: And I'll ask those people, what is the longest you've had to wait to hear back from a DMC with a proposal for a particular inquiry?
[25:29] SPEAKER_01: And the numbers I've heard are staggering.
[25:31] SPEAKER_01: The record so far has been 27 days, which no surprise came from a DMC in Japan.
[25:36] SPEAKER_01: But the point I'm trying to make is the table stakes of getting back to people on time, that's incredibly important, never more so than in an era where you're being compared to the answer that I can generate immediately with Claude or GPT or Muse, the latest thing from Facebook, right?
[25:52] SPEAKER_01: And so um I think immediacy and responsiveness and timeliness is something that we take for granted.
[25:57] SPEAKER_01: It's one of those like table stakes, but I assure you, it is hugely important and a very big differentiator of ours.
[26:02] SPEAKER_01: So that's first.
[26:03] SPEAKER_01: Then I get into value for money.
[26:05] SPEAKER_01: Again, just because you're dealing with people who have money doesn't mean they are careless about the way in which they spend it, right?
[26:10] SPEAKER_01: So I think it's become ever more important to be able to delineate what folks are spending money for, which means offering them, if not itemized breakdowns, necessarily category breakdowns.
[26:20] SPEAKER_01: So say you're spending roughly this much on meals, this much on touring, and so forth, and not all the emcees are willing to do that.
[26:25] SPEAKER_01: Again, separate discussion.
[26:26] SPEAKER_01: Um, but in addition to that, just proposing uh a package or a trip that just makes economic sense.
[26:32] SPEAKER_01: And a lot of time in in this post-COVID world where so much of the share of wallet has gone towards travel, uh, the whole travel industry, and particularly the luxury travel industry, has migrated up market.
[26:44] SPEAKER_01: And there's been some unfortunate confusion, particularly on the operator side with the DMC world, that greater budgets equal less discernment, less care.
[26:54] SPEAKER_01: And so another point with which we stand out is where we place a huge emphasis on giving you value for money.
[27:01] SPEAKER_01: Even if your client has$400,000 for a trip, which is crazy budget, right?
[27:05] SPEAKER_01: It's important to understand where that money is going for and that they can say, you know what, yeah, I could have spent$400, but actually I'm there's an option where I'm spending uh, you know, say a fraction of that and I'm still gonna achieve the same goals.
[27:15] SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm interested in that.
[27:16] SPEAKER_01: Whereas a lot of suppliers in the industry go from what you tell them as a budget and they go higher from there rather than exploring what can really be achieved.
[27:22] SPEAKER_01: So I'd say that's another point of differentiation.
[27:24] SPEAKER_01: And then third, and again, most important of all, is creativity.
[27:27] SPEAKER_01: If you tell us a bit about who you are, we want to make it our mission to give you an experience in the markets we're present in that is not gonna be the same exact experience we give everyone else.
[27:36] SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be a flavor, a twist, a particular attention that is given to you and that we wouldn't have done for someone else because it only makes sense to you, right?
[27:44] SPEAKER_01: Um so I just at the start of our conversation before we um uh we we pressed record, you're telling me about uh having twins, right?
[27:52] SPEAKER_01: So if if we were to speak to someone who said, uh I actually uh yeah, we we have twins, I would ask though, what's the relationship between the kids like, right?
[28:00] SPEAKER_01: And if there's a particular folklore, cultural, economic touch point, political touch point, whatever the case may be that relates to twins, I would want to highlight that to you in a way that I wouldn't to someone who doesn't have twins, right?
[28:11] SPEAKER_01: And so very deeply woven into our DNA is this concept of understand who the target traveler is and take the extra 10, 15, 20 minutes to wrap your head around thinking what can we do specifically for them to make this destination shine in a way that is going to leave lasting memory.
[28:26] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what's interesting there when you mentioned that obviously that level of personalization, and I appreciate recalling that we have uh twins that are, you know, we've traveled with our line, my wife and I were half twins will travel because the world is designed for a family of four in many ways.
[28:39] SPEAKER_00: But you know, we've done a lot of custom trips.
[28:42] SPEAKER_00: So one of the companies that we you actually uh was referenced in the article in Forbes uh was Sicasso, and Sicasso gives you the opportunity to compete against different, you know, with different DMCs.
[28:50] SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting is that that was sort of a discovery for us to be able to work with DMCs for a trip and then find great DMCs to work with, and then you start working with those DMCs.
[29:01] SPEAKER_00: And you know, when you find a great partner that will customize and give you a personalized trip that's truly tailored, and that's why I love the idea of like bespoke itineraries that are truly tailored, whether they're for a you know, um a romantic escape or honeymoons or like for people who are into culture, I love tailored itineraries.
[29:17] SPEAKER_00: Um, because most people think about group, they're you know, a group can be multi-generational, it can be um, you know, uh destination weddings, like there's lots of reasons for other front group.
[29:26] SPEAKER_00: And the other area that I know um you guys focus in is affinity travel, um, which is another, like, you know, we've just done an episode on culinary travel, but people who are into you know, alumni, I mean, that's a massive market itself.
[29:38] SPEAKER_00: You know, just look at uh your alma mater, Harvard is a great example, or Princeton, that a lot of these schools they have alumni programs that they love traveling together and they're well educated and they they have time off.
[29:48] SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, when you are looking to either do a tailor trip and an affinity or group travel, the one thing that stood out to me in preparing for our conversation is the fact that this idea that you have you know a personal touch within two days that you get back to people and there's not a contact center that you're reaching out to and there's no you know generic form.
[30:08] SPEAKER_00: So that that uh that's what travel advisors and many of whom are listening to, that for them is the gold standard of making sure they know their customer is going to get taken care of.
[30:17] SPEAKER_00: But there was something else that stood out to me, and it's this combination, you've mentioned magic a couple times, and at that whole, you know, when I was uh starting the conversation about 95% execution, you uh but five percent magic.
[30:27] SPEAKER_00: Tell me about that formula, like where you guys came up with that and what magic actually looks like.
[30:33] SPEAKER_01: The formula is straightforward.
[30:34] SPEAKER_01: It's uh it stood in contrast to um the two years of the NBA program and and kind of what's fashionable in in you know in certain circles, where you spend a lot of time talking about ideas and strategies and big picture thinking.
[30:48] SPEAKER_01: And what we found the keys to our success uh in Morocco and now elsewhere is honestly very little to do with strategy.
[30:55] SPEAKER_01: Not to say strategy is not important, but 95% is just execute the damn strategy.
[30:59] SPEAKER_01: It's not worth a whole lot if you spend your whole day thinking about it.
[31:02] SPEAKER_01: Um at some point it's execution.
[31:04] SPEAKER_01: And and we as DMCs, we're the kind of the final layer of contact, right?
[31:07] SPEAKER_01: It's it's we are the ones who are actually coordinating amongst hoteliers, experience providers, transportation providers to combine all of that, kind of uh weave a very fine uh, you know, thread, combining all of these things into hopefully one seamless experience for the traveler.
[31:26] SPEAKER_01: So when I talk about the 95.5, it's it's the 95 is making sure that all of these things, you know, not missing again the table stakes, ensuring that if someone is supposed to be picked up at nine o'clock, then the driver's actually there at 8.45 and not nine, to ensure that there's always that extra buffer, right?
[31:40] SPEAKER_01: And I think if you focus on the 5% magic of how can we get creative and how can we do something special, but you ignore the table stakes of ensuring that all of the confirmations are done correctly, that people show up when they're supposed to show up, that everything runs smoothly, then you've done nothing.
[31:52] SPEAKER_01: However, if you do the 95%, then the fun part of the gig is coming up with the 5%.
[31:57] SPEAKER_01: So to answer your question, um, it really is a combination of, sorry, let me use the verb, it's it's listening.
[32:04] SPEAKER_01: But then when I say listening, it's a combination of listening to the travel advisor and their customer before the trip, right?
[32:09] SPEAKER_01: So it's the example of the twins that we just talked about.
[32:11] SPEAKER_01: So it's learning something about them that you can weave into the trip itself.
[32:15] SPEAKER_01: And I would say equally, if not more importantly, it's listening when they're on the ground.
[32:19] SPEAKER_01: Because that is where you can truly make magic happen by picking up on subtle little things and weaving them into the trip at unexpected moments to again have that wow, that magic, that oh my God, this is unbelievable.
[32:33] SPEAKER_01: And I'm happy to share a couple examples with you so you can, you and your listeners can kind of understand how this goes from theory to reality.
[32:40] SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of people all around the world watched um the World Cup, uh, which uh ended with uh with Spain's victory a few months ago.
[32:47] SPEAKER_01: Uh Morocco had a very uh uh honored or I say honorable uh journey in that tournament, and we we we got pretty far along.
[32:55] SPEAKER_01: And uh just like the last World Cup, everyone in Morocco, I mean, you could hear a pin drop in the streets when Morocco was playing.
[33:00] SPEAKER_01: The whole country ground to a halt.
[33:02] SPEAKER_01: And as you can imagine, we had many people traveling around the country at that time.
[33:05] SPEAKER_01: Um and so one of the things that happened um is uh a family was traveling with a young child, about seven years old, who was a big fan of this uh one of Morocco's players is called Ashraf Hakimi, and one uh and uh just kept telling the guide who was with them how he loved Hakimi.
[33:20] SPEAKER_01: So these these uh this family happened to be traveling at a time when Morocco was about to play a game.
[33:25] SPEAKER_01: So, as a small gesture of appreciation for them, the guide, who's again an extension of us, right?
[33:30] SPEAKER_01: We we take great pride in partnering with the very best guides around across all the markets that we're operating in, took the initiative because we have this program where we tell all of our guides there's a certain discretionary budget that you are not only are you encouraged to spend, you have to spend it, like in a way in a way that makes sense for the traveler.
[33:45] SPEAKER_01: So he used the discretionary budget to get them all custom-fitted uh shirts with their names on the back so that when they showed up at the cafe, they were they joined a local cafe to watch the game, they showed up with the Morocco hoodies and it could really feel like they were part of the experience.
[33:58] SPEAKER_01: And it was unexpected.
[33:59] SPEAKER_01: It's a small journey, it's a small gesture, it's not like a you know a world-changing thing, but I can tell you that for them, that extra little bit of attention of not only gifting them Morocco jerseys, but ones with their names written on the back individually, their first names for each of them, was an outstanding, like life-changing little thing in the trip, right?
[34:15] SPEAKER_01: So then it's taking that instinct and then scaling it up.
[34:20] SPEAKER_01: So we've done it with one family, they loved it.
[34:22] SPEAKER_01: How do we then do it for other families?
[34:23] SPEAKER_01: And so that was an example in Morocco.
[34:25] SPEAKER_01: I could give you examples in Spain, in Greece, in Turkey, all the markets we're operating in where the logic is listen and try to come up with something that is going to make a meaningful difference without costing, you know, a crazy amount of money.
[34:35] SPEAKER_01: Uh, but just to show the traveler that you're not just providing a service, you're actually engaging with them and picking up on the little things that they're saying to create that little moment that's going to make a difference for them.
[34:46] SPEAKER_00: Well, I've got one more question for you around philosophy and consistency, because these are the two things that I think must uh uh be key to your success, because as you've been answering these uh questions that I've prepared, that you know, when you're like three points here or four, there's kind of there, there's four principles as I understand it, um, in the philosophy of how you build the strips local craft, immersion, and impact.
[35:11] SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things I'm um interested to understand from that, given that most travelers um are looking for something that is special.
[35:20] SPEAKER_00: You know, we always talk about hidden gems, but they're not hidden anymore once people find out about them.
[35:24] SPEAKER_00: But you do need to make sure that it's not a well-worn path and that, you know, the the you know, cookie cutter is uh uh a common term, but it's actually a harsh reality for a lot of travelers that they end up just getting the same, you know, standard group hotels because they have you know great commissions with um and they're easy access, but they're not necessarily the best experience for the traveler.
[35:44] SPEAKER_00: You know, they may want a boutique hotel, they may uh and catering to those individual needs is time consuming, but ultimately it's what's going to make a trip really special.
[35:52] SPEAKER_00: So when you have those four principles of local craft, emergent, and impact, what I'm keen to know is which of those is actually the hardest to deliver on, because as soon as you start to scale, and then the other thing I'm um as a bit of a follow-on to that is the consistency of how you then apply that across all of the different DMCs.
[36:12] SPEAKER_00: Because I would have to assume that one of the keys to your success is you know, you build a formula that everyone follows to make sure there's a consistent experience with whatever DMC they're working with inside the travel collection, that they're they're you know, they're guaranteed to have the same high level of um uh customization and experience and and uh and the itinerary, because I would have to think that your business has grown from people go to Morocco, then they go to Japan, and they keep going, they keep coming back to the travel collection because they love the DMCs in your business.
[36:44] SPEAKER_00: So tell us a little bit more about how you actually approach those four philosophical areas.
[36:49] SPEAKER_00: What's the hardest and how do you make that consistent across this global business?
[36:53] SPEAKER_01: So it goes back to uh people, the GMs that we have, our general managers who are really an extension of our brand and our DNA across all of the markets uh we're present in, and the eight weeks uh that they spend in Morocco, where we when we talk about DMC University, it's really not uh you know a theoretical concept.
[37:10] SPEAKER_01: It's it's very real.
[37:11] SPEAKER_01: We spend uh every day of those eight weeks is like a business school uh classroom where we go into each of the principles that make us successful and we break it down in terms of how can you apply this particular idea, whatever the day's idea is, um, in your neck of the woods.
[37:27] SPEAKER_01: And we're always trying to thread the needle between prescriptive uh processes, where it's this is how we do things, A, B, C, D, but also giving them, and it's very important, the latitude to adapt those processes, those systems, and those ways of thinking in ways that are unique and make sense to the cultural context for each of the places.
[37:46] SPEAKER_01: As you mentioned, we're in 22 countries.
[37:48] SPEAKER_01: Um being bold enough to say we're going to do things exactly the same way across 22 markets is either naive or crazy.
[37:55] SPEAKER_01: But in any case, it's impractical, right?
[37:57] SPEAKER_01: So I think in terms of the way we communicate with clients, the way we present itineraries, all that kind of stuff, that is definitely standardized.
[38:03] SPEAKER_01: But the content of the trip itself and the way in which it's structured, that's where there's an enormous amount of customization and adaptation based on how we put together a trip in Japan, which is very different than if you're doing a safari in Uganda, which is very different than if you're touring Andalucia in Spain.
[38:18] SPEAKER_01: So a tremendous degree of process where it makes sense, but also trust in our general managers and in their teams to be able to adapt those processes locally.
[38:29] SPEAKER_01: So I'll pick one of the one of the fours that we talked about to give you an example.
[38:34] SPEAKER_01: When we talk about local, right?
[38:35] SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the four pillars for us is if you're traveling to a place, you want to make sure that you're feeling like you're in that place and not that you could be anywhere in the world, right?
[38:43] SPEAKER_01: So the way we we structure that is by leaning quite heavily on the networks of our general managers and their teams to have what I would call stand-ins for guides.
[38:54] SPEAKER_01: What I'm trying to say here is you're always going to need a tour guide for the basic elements of history and context setting when you're arriving in a certain place.
[39:02] SPEAKER_01: And the best tour guides can really be magicians.
[39:05] SPEAKER_01: They they tell stories in a way that brings places to life.
[39:07] SPEAKER_01: So I don't mean to diminish the importance of a guide at all.
[39:10] SPEAKER_01: But for me, where it gets interesting is to think about our networks and think about how the people we know can be interesting proxies, in some cases, even supplementary supplemental additions to what a guide can do.
[39:22] SPEAKER_01: For example, let me break this down.
[39:24] SPEAKER_01: Um, in Morocco, uh, I happen to have someone who, you know, kind of works uh for us when we have issues in the house or whatnot, you know, plumbers, electricians, things of that nature.
[39:34] SPEAKER_01: One of our electricians is actually a wonderful um uh card magician.
[39:38] SPEAKER_01: We have these special cards for those of you who are uh viewers of the podcast.
[39:41] SPEAKER_01: There's special cards in Morocco that look nothing like uh the cards, the playing cards you're assumed you're used to playing.
[39:46] SPEAKER_01: And he performs the most amazing tricks with these magic cards.
[39:49] SPEAKER_01: Um electrician by trade, not a tour guide, not someone who engages with the uh travel and hospitality sector.
[39:55] SPEAKER_01: But uh we once had a party where it was a multi-generational party, and there were several young children, and what it was one of their kids' birthdays, and uh the the matriarch who was planning the trip asked us to plan a magician.
[40:07] SPEAKER_01: Um and I said, with your permission, can we do a little bit, something a little bit different?
[40:11] SPEAKER_01: Not like a stock standard magician with balloons, but someone who's a local uh who's not a magician by trade but is gonna wow them with some card tricks.
[40:17] SPEAKER_01: And sure enough, she said yes, and we were able to bring in this person who, to be fair, doesn't speak English at all, right?
[40:22] SPEAKER_01: But was able to perform the most magical card tricks with the assistance of a guy who could translate and so forth, and wow these kids uh with cars that they'd never seen before and and with tricks that they'd never seen before.
[40:32] SPEAKER_01: And that again, that is not someone who's coming from the normal ecosystem of travel and tourism.
[40:36] SPEAKER_01: In Greece, our our GM Aris um uh is able to curate a uh behind-the-scenes tour of the modern art museum in Athens uh because a very close uh person uh uh in his life is the architect who built the damn museum.
[40:50] SPEAKER_01: So therefore, he has an unprecedented access to the museum.
[40:53] SPEAKER_01: That is not something you can find or Google.
[40:55] SPEAKER_01: It's simply because of who he is and the network he has access to.
[40:58] SPEAKER_01: So multiply that by all of the people who are part of our business, uh, not just the general managers, but their teams as well in all these parts of the world.
[41:05] SPEAKER_01: And you have access to some pretty darn cool experiences that are not gonna be available on Airbnb or Viator, that are simply extensions of our networks and our friends who were asking to come in and pitch in and share a part of themselves with travelers, which by and large people love to do.
[41:19] SPEAKER_01: So that's how we think about that element.
[41:22] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I'm glad you mentioned access because that was gonna be my one other question on the operating side is that, you know, in terms of giving uh access to the guests that you're putting these trips together for, is ultimately one of the things they're seeking that's gonna make their trip really special.
[41:38] SPEAKER_00: And I know in speaking to many travel advisors, uh particularly on the hotel side, they always connect with hotel GMs themselves because they're trying to wow their clients by sending them to a hotel where they know they have a relationship with the GM and they can message the GM and the GM can, you know, uh buy them drinks or get, you know, send them something to their room and you know, do something that adds that wow factor, which was why I was also at uh keen to ask you about the 5% magic, because this is the part that I feel like a lot of companies um lose sight of.
[42:07] SPEAKER_00: I mean, when we look at successful e-commerce stories, going back to Zappos um and which was acquired by uh Amazon, but obviously it goes back to the time you would have been doing your M your M your MBA and the incredible story of that business, which was delivering wow and and and making sure that every uh customer felt special and doing something that went over and above, like you know, free shipping both ways or you know, telling people to get there in two days and arrives the next day, something that just gives um makes someone feel special and adds a wow factor.
[42:40] SPEAKER_00: So um when you're working with travel advisors who are clearly a very important part of your business, that's one thing they're uh very uh keen to hear that you know you're gonna be able to give their clients access.
[42:52] SPEAKER_00: But tell us a little bit more about the travel advisor side of your business since you're you know totally B2B and you know you work directly with travel advisors around the world with all of the different DMCs that you operate.
[43:06] SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit how those relationships work.
[43:08] SPEAKER_00: And if a new travel advisor is reaching out to you, what are they looking for?
[43:13] SPEAKER_00: Why is it that the travel collection is having so much success working with trade partners?
[43:19] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so to answer the first part of the question, those relationships are built um the old way.
[43:26] SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is uh generating a trust, creating trust with a travel advisor is something that doesn't happen overnight.
[43:33] SPEAKER_01: Um you can meet with them virtually over a webinar, and and in some cases they might be willing to uh engage with you solely on that basis.
[43:42] SPEAKER_01: But most of the time, the travel advisors who are coming to us are either folks that we've met personally or they've been recommended to us by people that we've met personally.
[43:50] SPEAKER_01: Uh and when I say we met personally, it's a combination of roadshows, trade shows, um host agency shows as well, which are uh a burgeoning side of the industry.
[43:59] SPEAKER_01: Uh but the There's no two ways about it.
[44:02] SPEAKER_01: Many of the people who are supporting us around the world today, we've met not only once, not twice, but multiple times over multiple touch points dating back to at this point nearly a decade.
[44:12] SPEAKER_01: Um so that that's the piece of why they're coming to us.
[44:15] SPEAKER_01: There's an enormous trust element.
[44:16] SPEAKER_01: Again, not to say we've met with everyone, but if they're coming to us and we haven't met them, it's usually because someone we have met has told them, hey, try these guys out.
[44:23] SPEAKER_01: In terms of why travel collection in particular is finding a footprint, uh, I would say our global um presence is something that is providing a lot of reassurance to people.
[44:33] SPEAKER_01: Because as you said earlier, if you liked working with us in Mexico, odds are you're gonna like working with us in Greece.
[44:38] SPEAKER_01: And if you enjoyed working with Hazan and her team in Turkey, then let me introduce you to Hiroshi and his team in Japan, and you're gonna like the same experience.
[44:44] SPEAKER_01: So that consistency is something that they're looking for, especially when it's combined with the creativity that we just discussed, where they know that it's going to be the same standard of service without it being a cookie cutter itinerary that is going to feel repetitive, um, which has been an issue that travel advisors have had in the past, where they work with larger tour operators, for example, where they feel like maybe they're gonna get the one-day response time because the tour operator has a team based in the US.
[45:07] SPEAKER_01: But then the experience of the clients is going to be a pretty stock standard tour instead of something that is really bespoke.
[45:13] SPEAKER_01: So we're finding a lot of support because of the global nature of our business, and we're also finding a lot of support and interest from travel advisors, particularly on multi-country trips.
[45:22] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's very common for advisors to have clients who want to go to London and Paris as part of the same trip.
[45:27] SPEAKER_01: And uh there are few DMCs that can execute these cross-country combos in a way that feels seamless, where it's going to be one payment, uh, you know, one single documentation, one point of contact, and so forth.
[45:38] SPEAKER_01: So that's another area that we're finding a tremendous amount of growth in.
[45:41] SPEAKER_00: Now, one thing that travel advisors are certainly seeing is no shortage of their guests coming in with uh a trip that they've been trying to plan themselves.
[45:49] SPEAKER_00: And it's something I keep hearing about, which is that you know, we've seen the stats.
[45:53] SPEAKER_00: Focus right has over the last year reported on quarterly increased usage of travelers using generative AI to plan trips.
[46:01] SPEAKER_00: And you know, we've seen some of these agentic tools and and um and it's it's what I want to get into a conversation with you about, given your background in tech and your expertise in travel.
[46:11] SPEAKER_00: Um but there's uh there's a few things to discuss on this topic.
[46:14] SPEAKER_00: And where I where I what I was interested to kind of kick off this conversation is as it relates to travel advisors and their clients coming in with um having done all this research, what I keep hearing is that clients are frustrated because they've done all this research and now they just want to hand it to someone to be like, can someone book it?
[46:33] SPEAKER_00: Because they've they've tied themselves in knots doing all of this research.
[46:36] SPEAKER_00: They spent a huge amount of time that they used to spend on Google, now they're spending a ton uh Claude or ChatGPT, and they're building out these itineraries, and some of it is incredibly useful and valuable and they're learning about the destination.
[46:48] SPEAKER_00: But the real challenge becomes actually booking any of these places, which is incredibly difficult to do at this stage where with where technology is.
[46:57] SPEAKER_00: And so, how important is the advisor still in the age?
[47:02] SPEAKER_00: I know you work with Fora.
[47:04] SPEAKER_00: I'm big fans of Fora and the team, and I know they're big uh fans of yours as well.
[47:08] SPEAKER_00: And this where it comes down to the fact that travel advisors empowered by AI, working with guests, is the ideal solution that are empowered then by the DMCs that they know that they can trust and rely on to put uh a package together for them that would be difficult, if not impossible, for them to be able to do on their own, to be able to source all those suppliers.
[47:28] SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm I'm interested to get your your view on this because uh I'm sure it's something you come up with, you come up against all the time.
[47:37] SPEAKER_00: And a lot of these travel advisors are reaching out to you saying, I've got this guest, this is what they've put together.
[47:42] SPEAKER_00: Um, what would you suggest?
[47:43] SPEAKER_00: How do we put them on the right track?
[47:44] SPEAKER_00: How do you approach that right now?
[47:46] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's uh we're gonna need a bigger podcast.
[47:50] SPEAKER_01: Um this is one of those where it's important to say when we're recording this, right?
[47:54] SPEAKER_01: Because for all we know, tomorrow there's gonna be a new tool.
[47:56] SPEAKER_01: Um but uh yeah, so this is as of you know early October 2026.
[48:00] SPEAKER_01: Um So let me answer your question and we can kind of bounce off of that and see where the conversation takes us.
[48:06] SPEAKER_01: Indeed, we are receiving an increasing amount of inquiries from travel advisors where it's it's quite obvious that the travelers have done their due diligence or their homework, or at least they think they've done their homework through Claude or GPT.
[48:19] SPEAKER_01: This is happening now on a on a daily basis.
[48:21] SPEAKER_01: Uh, in terms of how we address it, um, I think there's a couple of things that you've got to get right.
[48:25] SPEAKER_01: Number one is um acknowledging it.
[48:27] SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's it shouldn't be kind of the elephant in the room.
[48:29] SPEAKER_01: So we, if the travel advisor doesn't say so, we definitely say, hey, this looks like it's been put together by AI, so that's one.
[48:35] SPEAKER_01: Two is recognizing where the AI has it right.
[48:37] SPEAKER_01: I think it's it's it's important in this age not to um uh kind of uh mock uh the trust that people are placing into these tools, right?
[48:46] SPEAKER_01: And as a user of these tools myself, I wouldn't appreciate going back and forth with any of them, Claud or GPT or Gemini, or you know, pick pick whichever tool you want, uh, and being told by someone who's a supposed expert in the field, oh no, no, no, you've got it all wrong.
[48:59] SPEAKER_01: I think you have to start by saying, here's what it gets right, right?
[49:02] SPEAKER_01: So for example, if um in I in Italy it's recommending a stay for a first-time traveler uh between Rome and Venice and Florence, you will say, well, and that's typically what people want to do, right?
[49:12] SPEAKER_01: So that in terms of the selecting of the destinations, um, yeah, that's probably where we want to start the conversation.
[49:18] SPEAKER_01: And then we get into some of the nuances without making it feel again uh haughty or or patronizing, which is to say, uh, now perhaps what you want to do is spend a few more days in Rome, a few less days in Venice, and here's why.
[49:29] SPEAKER_01: And we would explain it, right?
[49:31] SPEAKER_01: In our experience, um, this is the right amount of time that you want to spend in this city and and for the following reasons, and here's where this might be overkill and for the following reasons.
[49:38] SPEAKER_01: And typically, when we found uh we find that AI tools sent you uh suggest more days than is necessary here for this reason.
[49:46] SPEAKER_01: So kind of explaining your thinking, not just telling it, oh no, no, that's all wrong, but explaining here's what it has right, here's what we were suggesting slight changes and tweaks, and here's probably why it went off on the wrong track, right?
[49:58] SPEAKER_01: So we provide a bit of logic.
[50:00] SPEAKER_01: And by doing all of the above, generally we engage in a very productive conversation with the travel advisors and their clients who understand that it was a great way to get inspired, but also understand that we have an expertise and uh an ability to pinpoint small things that the AI doesn't have, right?
[50:16] SPEAKER_01: So as an even simple matters, such as, oh yeah, it's suggesting you go have lunch on this day at that market.
[50:21] SPEAKER_01: Only trouble is that market is closed on Sundays, but it'll be great to do on Monday.
[50:24] SPEAKER_01: Simply stating a few facts like that will make the traveler feel like, okay, great.
[50:28] SPEAKER_01: So I wasn't completely off track, but also I'm I'm now engaging with experts who can help point me in the right direction.
[50:34] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I feel like I'm engaging in a in a trustworthy exchange, and then the conversation can build off on that.
[50:40] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I guess that's where, you know, not only when it comes to dealing with travel advisors, it's the confidence that uh travelers have by using AI.
[50:49] SPEAKER_00: And you're absolutely right.
[50:50] SPEAKER_00: You know, these things continue to change.
[50:52] SPEAKER_00: Look at instinct and some of these tools that keep breaking through that people are clearly using.
[50:57] SPEAKER_00: Um but when it comes to building an itinerary in you know seconds using these tools, uh you guys have been perfecting this expertise for you know 15 years.
[51:09] SPEAKER_00: And that access, the curation, um, the execution, the magic, all these things that kind of actually play into it, uh, it is very difficult for any type of technology to replace that.
[51:22] SPEAKER_00: And all and ultimately what people are traveling for is human connection.
[51:25] SPEAKER_00: And this is where I'm still very bullish in the face of technology, as I think you know that when we look at the the growth trajectory for travel and at where people I think are gonna hide out when it comes to having a break from technology or being overwhelmed by uh AI, is that they're gonna desire human connection more strongly than ever and be seeking a refuge.
[51:45] SPEAKER_00: And so how do you view that when you think about technology and your business and where you've gotten to?
[51:50] SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you and your team are already utilizing this technology in some ways to help kind of uh build out itineraries, but um, which are so uh labor intensive for sure for any DMC.
[52:02] SPEAKER_00: Um, where do you see the benefits of AI and where do you see where humans are still relevant in the age of AI?
[52:09] SPEAKER_01: The benefits of AI for our business are strongly centered on the back office, which is to say, how can we automate things so that our teams can focus on the client experience rather than you know going back and forth four times just to confirm a hotel room, you know, a hotel room booking for a client.
[52:25] SPEAKER_01: So on the back office side, um, it has made us, and it and we're discovering new ways to do this every day, but so far, it has made us uh just more efficient with our ability to deal with partners and to do all sorts of boring back office tasks, whether it's contract reconciliation or double checking that the invoices issued by a hotel, for example, correspond to the actual room that was booked and so on and so forth.
[52:45] SPEAKER_01: A whole host of you know, kind of boring back office things are being done more smartly and honestly better than we can with strictly human review on that side.
[52:54] SPEAKER_01: Where you can't rush it and where you can't replace it, at least not for now, and I don't think honestly ever, is the part of the process where it's they're on the ground.
[53:03] SPEAKER_01: What are they doing that they're liking and what are they doing that they're not liking, and how do we adjust their trip to do more of the former and less of the latter?
[53:10] SPEAKER_01: Like that that is not an AI thing.
[53:11] SPEAKER_01: That is the guide and the driver and our team picking up on small little things.
[53:16] SPEAKER_01: Like they they left the cooking class early.
[53:18] SPEAKER_01: Uh they had another cooking class plan.
[53:20] SPEAKER_01: Maybe should we make that an abridged version?
[53:22] SPEAKER_01: Because this one, you know, they didn't engage with it fully.
[53:24] SPEAKER_01: Right?
[53:24] SPEAKER_01: These types of little things, the more our team can focus on the actual experience on the ground, the less replaceable they are, because that's exactly why you're you want to have a human in the loop.
[53:33] SPEAKER_01: And on the itinerary creation side, sure, Claude can propose a two-week itinerary traveling all across Turkey and Greece uh in a matter of minutes.
[53:41] SPEAKER_01: What the reason we need two days and not two minutes to do that is because we want to do that extra step of thinking about who in our network would be someone that we could introduce that would make sense.
[53:51] SPEAKER_01: Would it be possible to do an experience that is only done in a particular season?
[53:55] SPEAKER_01: Or let's get you to visit a festival that only takes place in April every year in Greece, or you know, and so on and so forth.
[54:01] SPEAKER_01: And that piece of it is something where again, it's it's not only is it humans, but it's network-based, and you're calling people and waiting for them to uncover local information and get back to you.
[54:10] SPEAKER_01: And so that piece of it, the final leg of what the actual experience is like on the ground, I think requires a human touch and requires a bit of patience.
[54:19] SPEAKER_01: And I almost want to tell you in a world where we're getting used to getting answers not only in minutes but in seconds, part of the joy of designing a trip that should be meaningful is the wait.
[54:29] SPEAKER_01: And I'm not talking about waiting three weeks, right?
[54:31] SPEAKER_01: That that's on the other extreme.
[54:33] SPEAKER_01: But but waiting a couple days to get something back that is gonna feel unique to you rather than an immediate answer from a tool which is going to be instantaneous, but has very little to do or to reflect uh in terms of it being really bespoke based on who you are, I think that's worth the wait.
[54:48] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think what we've seen so far, especially with the wave of generative AI, I know we've moved into the world of a agentic, but is that you know, with generative AI, people could get a generic five-day itinerary to multiple destinations.
[55:01] SPEAKER_00: What has started to become more common to people utilizing these tools is additional personalization based on what it knows about you, especially if you're using it for writing, you know, that it learns your tone of voice and learns more about you to make more customized recommendations.
[55:14] SPEAKER_00: But obviously, there's still a journey to go on in terms of the technology and and how long it's going to take to get there.
[55:20] SPEAKER_00: I mean, just look at a company like Fora, having mentioned them, incorporating technology from a company called Legends, which is a really cool startup that was all about trying to come up with your traveler DNA based on your uh photos that you had shared.
[55:32] SPEAKER_00: And it would kind of come up with a traveler profile to try and make customized recommendations for you.
[55:36] SPEAKER_00: And these are the things that a travel advisor can do based on the fact they have a you know a deep and meaningful relationship with their clients and they know them, they know the age of their kids, you know, if they have twins, they know what sports they're into, they you know they can do things, and that's that's ultimately why a traveler will keep going back to a travel advisor, and while a travel advisor will work with a DMC.
[55:56] SPEAKER_00: So here's my direct question for you on this is that you know one of the biggest advantages of DMCs is the deep local knowledge they have, and you've emphasized that with the people that you hire, the training that they have, and the access.
[56:08] SPEAKER_00: So AI models are great at answering uh destination questions, but what local knowledge can't AI replicate?
[56:18] SPEAKER_01: It can't replicate the fandom that Juan has for the Real Madrid.
[56:25] SPEAKER_01: That sentence should provoke a couple questions in the minds of the listeners.
[56:30] SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, one of them is not what is Real Madrid?
[56:32] SPEAKER_01: Uh, because if that's one of your questions, then I can't help you.
[56:35] SPEAKER_01: But maybe I should replace it with uh the Patriots or, you know, uh the Jets, although I don't think anyone's a fan of the Jets.
[56:40] SPEAKER_01: Anyways, the point is Juan is our general manager in um in Spain.
[56:44] SPEAKER_01: Um he's a fantastic person, uh, but if Real Madrid loses the game, you want to steer clear of him for 24 hours.
[56:51] SPEAKER_01: He and his dad uh have been season ticket holders uh at Real Madrid um ever since he was a young boy.
[56:56] SPEAKER_01: I think his grandfather was also uh a member of the club.
[56:59] SPEAKER_01: And uh what we can do via Juan's contact is uh for folks who are traveling in either Madrid or Barcelona, where there's the uh the longtime rivals of of uh Real Madrid or FC Barcelona, we can do the same experience with with the Barcelona folks, is we will pair you up with a local fan.
[57:15] SPEAKER_01: Again, this is not a Viator, Airbnb get your guide experience.
[57:18] SPEAKER_01: This is something we do because of the networks that we have.
[57:21] SPEAKER_01: And so um, on a day where there's going to be a game, you will meet a local fan uh a couple hours before the game, you will have tapas, you will enjoy Spanish tapas, and you will learn uh some of the songs that are sung in the stadium.
[57:33] SPEAKER_01: Then when the game starts, you're going to be seated with the fans where they sit, which to be clear is not the most expensive seat in the house, but I would argue the best seat in the house.
[57:41] SPEAKER_01: It's way up in the stands.
[57:42] SPEAKER_01: And these folks are living and breathing every single minute of the game from when they first step into the stadium to when the ref blows the final whistle.
[57:49] SPEAKER_01: If the team wins, then they're going to take you out for drinks after.
[57:52] SPEAKER_01: If the team doesn't win, you really want to steer clear and just go back to your hotel.
[57:56] SPEAKER_01: But the point is, this whole experience is something that AI can't do unless someone kind of productizes it and packages it up into something that is available on one of the aggregators, in which case we'll move away from this and replace it with another experience that is tied to our network.
[58:11] SPEAKER_01: So again, what the agentic AI still cannot and will never be able to do candidly is to uncover ways in which you can make the destination resonate in a unique fashion because of who you are, who you know, and what you know about the travelers.
[58:26] SPEAKER_01: And that piece of it, I don't think that's going anywhere.
[58:29] SPEAKER_00: Well, and this is where, you know, when we think about agentic AI now and technology making it possible to not only make recommendations, but actually handle bookings.
[58:40] SPEAKER_00: And um, and part of this is actually making sure your data is available.
[58:45] SPEAKER_00: I mean, one of the things that everyone's talking about right now is how do you become visible in the age of AI when all of a sudden everyone's using large language models instead of Google search.
[58:53] SPEAKER_00: So this is a pressing priority for every business today to make sure that they are relevant.
[58:57] SPEAKER_00: And uh but when it comes to agentic AI, it's no longer just about being discoverable.
[59:03] SPEAKER_00: It's actually also about making sure that your data is available in a format that's structured in a certain way to make sure that you can be cons in the consideration set.
[59:13] SPEAKER_00: And so given that you've been ahead of the curve in terms of technology and understanding the opportunity around DMCs, where do you see agentic AI entering into the workflow for DMCs or even how they work with uh travel agents to be able to help them build out itineraries to get access to information that you can provide them?
[59:33] SPEAKER_00: And obviously, there needs to be, I presume, some um level of you know, uh protecting a certain amount of information because you obviously don't want to just give access to all of your uh itineraries for everyone to be able to uh to utilize and all of that deep personal knowledge and the access and those connections, obviously those are some of the things you guys need to make sure that you keep close to your chest um to be able to only offer that for your clients.
[59:57] SPEAKER_00: So when you think about uh DMCs in the age of agentic AI and thinking about your data and how you can actually utilize this technology for partners and even for uh for travelers, I take your point about using it for back office, but looking forward in DMCs of the future, where do you see that that technology headed?
[1:00:17] SPEAKER_00: Uh, how how do you see it continuing to uh change customer behavior and how it can be used beneficially for DMCs?
[1:00:26] SPEAKER_01: Good question.
[1:00:27] SPEAKER_01: Um The way we look at it is how can we accompany travel advisors on this journey, right?
[1:00:33] SPEAKER_01: Um, because as long as you believe that there are folks who are willing to pay uh a premium to have experts by their side who, as you said earlier, know them very well, know their families, know their habits, and and then those experts need folks like us.
[1:00:46] SPEAKER_01: They're gonna need DMCs all around the world.
[1:00:48] SPEAKER_01: The question is um less about a direct interface with Igentic AI and more so a direct interface with the uh AI systems being built within host agencies.
[1:00:57] SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned Fora earlier, they're a pioneer in this field, and that's a conversation that is ongoing right now around how can we simplify the process by which fora advisors get in touch with us and ultimately get an itinerary that they can then uh turn around to uh share with their travelers.
[1:01:12] SPEAKER_01: And so those are some of the conversations taking place now with different host agencies around what are the tools that you're using.
[1:01:17] SPEAKER_01: Different agencies use different tools, you know, there's there's different names out there in terms of platforms and software that is actually being used by the end traveler.
[1:01:24] SPEAKER_01: One example would be Access, there's Get You Guy, and Nagi Gas R and a couple of others, the names of which are slipping right now.
[1:01:30] SPEAKER_01: But um the point is how can we combine the efforts that we're doing in terms of rendering our um database of experiences available not to the general public, but to the systems that are being built by our travel advisor partners, where there's a certain amount of baseline uh experiences, activities, and touring that we are comfortable kind of pre-committing to, and others, which are the 5% magic, which again, that that is never going to be something that you can pre-book or pre-confirm.
[1:01:58] SPEAKER_01: That's gonna require your one-by-one um tailor uh making to really make sure that we can deliver that magic.
[1:02:04] SPEAKER_01: But on the table stakes stuff, so again, your basic tours, your transfers, things of that nature, uh, we're actively working right now on ways that we can plug in to the systems that are really being used by uh travel agents in order for uh their work and the flow of communication from them to uh the travelers for that to be as clicking as efficient as possible.
[1:02:24] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, this is where I mean I want to finish our conversation on looking forward and technology is one part of it.
[1:02:30] SPEAKER_00: But when you know you think about what it's taken to get to where you are with building out these DMCs in 22 countries, I want to get your take on where this industry is headed.
[1:02:40] SPEAKER_00: And I say technology is just one aspect of that because I think we often lose sight of uh all the elements that are involved in operating these businesses day to day, and how little of it actually is technology.
[1:02:53] SPEAKER_00: And it is all about personal relationships and it's uh uh trust and and the level of customization that goes into this.
[1:03:00] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, our businesses will continue to be empowered by AI and become more efficient by AI, but a DMC today, um, a strong DMC has a bright future as we look at 20 years out when we think about the number of travelers are gonna double over that time.
[1:03:17] SPEAKER_00: And so I'd love to get your take on the travel collection of where you're headed, given that you are already you have global coverage.
[1:03:23] SPEAKER_00: But I mentioned obviously you're missing Canada, which I'd love to see added into your uh network.
[1:03:27] SPEAKER_00: You got to find that right person.
[1:03:29] SPEAKER_00: I'm sure maybe I could introduce you to one of them.
[1:03:31] SPEAKER_00: Um, but tell us a little bit about your plans for 2027 as you scale this business and you look at other regions.
[1:03:38] SPEAKER_00: What's ahead for the travel collection in the next six to 12 months?
[1:03:42] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've been growing at breakneck speed for the last uh three years now.
[1:03:46] SPEAKER_01: So we're actually pausing new destination developments uh throughout what we paused in 2026 and throughout all of 2027 as well, in terms uh in order for our energies to be able to be directed towards getting all of our DMCs as far along the maturity curve as possible and ensuring that we have the right systems in place uh to accommodate all the growth that we're seeing.
[1:04:06] SPEAKER_01: So if you're hoping this would be an exclusive where I'd announced five new markets, I'm sorry to disappoint.
[1:04:10] SPEAKER_01: Um we are looking at further uh geographic expansion, but not in not in the next year, uh, but perhaps in a longer time frame than that.
[1:04:17] SPEAKER_01: So 28 and forward, we are considering adding uh you know several more markets to our um coverage, um, which again goes back to having to find the right GMs and so forth, which is quite energy consuming, hence pausing that for the short term.
[1:04:30] SPEAKER_01: And in addition to that, um I think there's a couple of other key areas that we're looking at in terms of um developing those relationships with advisors forward.
[1:04:38] SPEAKER_01: So uh to the last 30 minutes of our conversation, uh, if you look at our IT team and the way in which they spent their time, AI was probably 10 to 20% of what they did a year ago, and now it's you know 90%.
[1:04:51] SPEAKER_01: And so uh figuring out how we can leverage more and more of this technology to be the best version of the DMCs that we're building uh is something that is front and center right now and will remain so uh for the rest of the year and into next year.
[1:05:04] SPEAKER_01: And then beyond that, there's a lot of really exciting opportunities that we can start looking at once we achieve a certain scale.
[1:05:09] SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, you know, I covered earlier when we when you asked what the travel advisors are looking for in terms of value, one of the big areas of value we're able to provide is multi-country trips.
[1:05:17] SPEAKER_01: I think we're just scratching the surface of what's possible there.
[1:05:20] SPEAKER_01: And as we grow, we're going to be able to assist folks more and more in curating themed journeys across different markets.
[1:05:27] SPEAKER_01: So if you're interested in understanding uh the role of arts and crafts uh across the world, we're going to be able to curate programs and itineraries that are going to be centered on those types of themes, which is something I'm quite excited about.
[1:05:38] SPEAKER_01: Um, and then if you look at other things that are more straightforward in the industry parlance of it, to industry verticalization uh or vertical growth, you know, uh does it make sense to uh own a bigger chunk of the chain to be able to provide that more tailored service, right?
[1:05:52] SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, in Morocco, you know, uh we we have a couple of RIAs or these very small boutique hotels that we own and operate, which enables us to have a really transformed Impact of what we can do with the space for our guests.
[1:06:03] SPEAKER_01: We can really, you know, decorate them like no one else's space for special specific occasions and special moments.
[1:06:10] SPEAKER_01: And so would we be able to do something like that with a couple of Rio Cans in Japan?
[1:06:14] SPEAKER_01: You know, would we have some type of special area in the Serengeti where we can plant sundowners?
[1:06:21] SPEAKER_01: You know, the the list of opportunities that uh we can look into grows further and further as we have a global footprint.
[1:06:27] SPEAKER_01: But uh for the time being and in the short term, it's really just about ensuring that we're delivering the promise um of excellence and tailorization across all the markets we're already in today.
[1:06:36] SPEAKER_01: So that's where my focus is right now.
[1:06:39] SPEAKER_00: Well, and the fact that you've built this global collection of DMCs uh without even knowing what it uh the term actually means.
[1:06:47] SPEAKER_00: I'm also interested to know, you know, as we have this conversation at the end of 2026, going into 2027, is that term still an accurate way to describe what you guys do?
[1:06:57] SPEAKER_00: Do you still think of yourself as a destination management company, or has it really evolved beyond that and we're just still kind of stuck using that terminology because that's what we knew these companies to be?
[1:07:07] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, uh I suppose just zooming out from our conversation right now, I've always been a little bit jealous of Imagineers.
[1:07:15] SPEAKER_01: I just thought that was the coolest job title, you know, Imagineers at Disney.
[1:07:20] SPEAKER_01: Those are the folks, for those who don't know, these are the folks who are thinking of and conceiving the different attractions that live on the different Disney properties around the world.
[1:07:27] SPEAKER_01: And um, if you've ever been even in line for one of these attractions, I recall uh on my most recent experience in the parks, uh, one of the most uh coveted attractions um or sought-after attractions is a theme around Avatar, the Avatar movies, and you're standing in line for a good four or five hours uh just to get to the attraction if you don't have the fast pass.
[1:07:47] SPEAKER_01: And I was amazed by how they engineered different touch points throughout that four-hour wait to make the wait itself an interesting part of the journey rather than a boring moment where you're just wondering when when the heck it's gonna be your turn.
[1:08:01] SPEAKER_01: And so to go back to your question, I think we're in the business of delivering fantastic experiences.
[1:08:07] SPEAKER_01: And and when I think of the appropriate title for our industry and what we do, uh, yeah, nominally we're DMCs, but really we're curating and delivering experiences, experience creators, experienced arrangers, experienced dreamers, whatever you want to call us, right?
[1:08:22] SPEAKER_01: I think uh that that's a more appropriate term than destination management.
[1:08:26] SPEAKER_01: Um, again, if you want to focus on the 95% that we referred to earlier, then yeah, it's destination management.
[1:08:32] SPEAKER_01: If you want to focus on the 5% magic, it's really about experience design.
[1:08:36] SPEAKER_01: And so that's what we try to inculcate to our teams and then the DNA that's at the heart of all of our brands is let's think about magic moments, magic experiences that don't have to be costly.
[1:08:46] SPEAKER_01: I think too often in our industry we conflate special with expensive.
[1:08:50] SPEAKER_01: They do not have to be tied.
[1:08:52] SPEAKER_01: Um, to make sure that when people are coming to us, they're leaving, not just having had a fun time, but as ambassadors of the country they just visited and of the company or the DMC that they were traveling with.
[1:09:03] SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, if I had to rebrand DMC, I would say it's uh experience curation rather than destination management.
[1:09:10] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Imagineers is a great example of when we think of the uh the experiences we're trying to create, the magic, obviously, of Disney, the whole concept of fast passes I found fascinating.
[1:09:22] SPEAKER_00: We went and studied that as part of my uh team at G Adventures to try and look at, you know, what are the friction points and how do you take something that is uh one of the reasons that people may not go to the parks because they're so fed up with waiting in lines, and actually not only turn it into a wow factor where you have fast passes, but a revenue opportunity as well.
[1:09:40] SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the beauty of Disney, right?
[1:09:42] SPEAKER_00: That you know, they can turn something like that um into a uh a profit line um where you know they're making people uh very happy by introducing these, and people are willing to pay a premium for it.
[1:09:53] SPEAKER_00: So um that's an excellent example of keeping perspective of what travelers want.
[1:10:00] SPEAKER_00: Um, and on that note, I mean, you do travel a lot, you run a global business.
[1:10:03] SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've got a great uh co-founder dynamic.
[1:10:06] SPEAKER_00: And when I look at your executive team, it's an impressive group, and obviously you've built out some great GMs.
[1:10:12] SPEAKER_00: Um to finish off with what keeps you motivated, what keeps you inspired.
[1:10:17] SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, you've got a young family, and um, I only say that because it's you know, that's one of the challenges when you are growing up in uh growing up growing, you know, that your first child was obviously this this business, and now you've got, you know, you've got a little one and one more on the way.
[1:10:33] SPEAKER_00: And so you obviously will start to see the world differently as you, you know, you then look at family travel and different ways to travel.
[1:10:39] SPEAKER_00: So, what are the things you uh continually do to keep yourself up to speed with what's happening, keep yourself ahead of the curve?
[1:10:46] SPEAKER_00: And also, how do you keep your like for me?
[1:10:48] SPEAKER_00: I'm an avid traveler, I absolutely love traveling, and I always um I'm interested to ask people, you know, where's next on your list?
[1:10:54] SPEAKER_00: Because if the magic of travel is gone for you, it's not long before, you know, it it fades in your business as well.
[1:11:00] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, keeping that magic alive for all of us is to like, you know, reminding us why we do what we do, because you know, sometimes it could be tough working in the travel industry, and you need to step out of your role and your business and remind yourself of what is so special about travel.
[1:11:15] SPEAKER_00: So, uh Hisham, how do you how do you approach that?
[1:11:17] SPEAKER_00: How do you avoid burnout?
[1:11:18] SPEAKER_00: How do you keep yourself inspired?
[1:11:20] SPEAKER_00: And what's next on your list of places you want to go?
[1:11:23] SPEAKER_01: I stay inspired by being a very happy and willing guinea pig for all of our general managers when they think of a cookie idea that they may want to offer a traveler.
[1:11:31] SPEAKER_01: I'm always saying, I'll put my hand up first and say, okay, let's let's I'll try that out.
[1:11:35] SPEAKER_01: And uh a great recent example, I was in Mexico checking in with our team, and uh as uh our GM had an idea for a food tour uh that would be uh run by a journalist.
[1:11:44] SPEAKER_01: So not again, not someone with you know any background in tourism, but a journalist who covers you know restaurants.
[1:11:50] SPEAKER_01: Um and but she wasn't sure how that would be received and how the the attitude of this journalist who's kind of a you know no BS, like I'm gonna tell it how it is, um, how that would work or not work with travelers.
[1:12:01] SPEAKER_01: And I had the most delightful evening um exploring the uh food scene of Mexico City and being welcomed into restaurants, not in onto a table in the dining room, but into the kitchen um and engaging with the chef and with their teams.
[1:12:15] SPEAKER_01: And that was a lovely, lovely moment and one that I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who's interested in uh uncovering the food scene of Mexico City.
[1:12:23] SPEAKER_01: So um I keep myself entertained and and uh and connected to the passion of travel by accompanying our teams as they come up with ideas uh for things that they can test.
[1:12:33] SPEAKER_01: Um I I I I was most recently in Japan.
[1:12:35] SPEAKER_01: I just came back uh two weeks ago from a trip with our team in Japan and I had a chance to visit with a retired sumo wrestler.
[1:12:41] SPEAKER_01: Um, again, not someone who engages with the tourism economy, but who was able to open up his home.
[1:12:46] SPEAKER_01: And and I I asked the craziest question around how you adapt your diet back to a quote unquote normal diet after, you know, eating, I forget it was 10 or 20,000 calories a day.
[1:12:56] SPEAKER_01: It was some absurd number, you know, while he was a professional sumo wrestler.
[1:12:59] SPEAKER_01: So again, like when you are able to connect with people in a way that is not the typical touristic approach to connecting with folks in a different market, I think that that you can't help but feel enthused and excited by that.
[1:13:11] SPEAKER_01: And then to answer your last question around what's next, um I'm very excited in December.
[1:13:16] SPEAKER_01: I have a couple of trips plan in the next few weeks, but the one that I'm most excited about in December is to reconnect with um a place that is near and dear to my heart where we have sent uh at this point, I think thousands of travelers over the last 10 years.
[1:13:27] SPEAKER_01: Um, but I myself haven't been back to that property um in a good four or five years now.
[1:13:32] SPEAKER_01: And it's a very, very special place in the south of Morocco that um approaches every meal like a theatrical experience, by which I mean you don't know what you're gonna be eating.
[1:13:42] SPEAKER_01: They have your dietary restrictions, so you're not gonna eat anything you're gonna react poorly to.
[1:13:46] SPEAKER_01: Um, but you don't know what you're going to be eating or where you will be eating.
[1:13:49] SPEAKER_01: So this property uh stages meals in different parts of the property.
[1:13:54] SPEAKER_01: Um and at times when they're full, there are 14 units.
[1:13:57] SPEAKER_01: So 14 breakfast, dinners, lunch is happening at the same time, and you never see anyone else.
[1:14:01] SPEAKER_01: So you're having your own breakfast, lunch, or dinner without seeing anyone else.
[1:14:04] SPEAKER_01: And every meal is in a different part of the property or the surrounding area near the property.
[1:14:09] SPEAKER_01: And I just can't wait to go back and see what magic they're gonna cook up for us uh when we visit.
[1:14:14] SPEAKER_01: So that's the one I'm most excited about.
[1:14:16] SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's great.
[1:14:17] SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to make sure all of our listeners know how to reach out and connect with you from our conversation.
[1:14:22] SPEAKER_00: I've mentioned the website, travelcollection.co, but I'm sure many people would like to reach out to you directly, Hisham, and also the rest of your team.
[1:14:30] SPEAKER_00: So what would be the best way for our listeners to do that?
[1:14:33] SPEAKER_01: Uh, either through the website or if you want to drop me a line, uh it's uh my first name, Hisham at travelcollection.co.
[1:14:40] SPEAKER_01: I'm also available on LinkedIn and all the usual social media channels.
[1:14:43] SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, looking forward to continuing the conversation with you, Dan, with your listeners, and very excited to be part of the Travel Trends family.
[1:14:49] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, likewise.
[1:14:50] SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm so glad we met.
[1:14:52] SPEAKER_00: Actually, just for our listeners too, we had a great dinner together earlier this year with our friend uh Mauricio Preto when we were in Barcelona together.
[1:14:59] SPEAKER_00: And you and I really hit it off.
[1:15:00] SPEAKER_00: We kept in touch, we've had calls since, and I was um super excited to be able to share your story on the Travel Trends podcast.
[1:15:07] SPEAKER_00: So this is obviously, I would say, uh the start of a beautiful thing.
[1:15:10] SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's there's more opportunities, as I've uh mentioned to you directly that I want to get you involved in, um, both with uh season eight of our podcast, a bigger focus on DMCs, and just so our listeners know, we actually are doing a special DMC series as part of season eight of our podcast with a company called Tour Connect out of Australia.
[1:15:28] SPEAKER_00: And I think there is, you know, it's in a whole area of our industry that is not well understood.
[1:15:34] SPEAKER_00: And I do think there's uh a massive opportunity to continue to grow DMCs.
[1:15:39] SPEAKER_00: And I think when what we're seeing in our industry is some contrarian bets in the age of AI about businesses that are gonna stay people-centric and people-led.
[1:15:48] SPEAKER_00: And I absolutely think that DMCs are gonna be a part of that.
[1:15:51] SPEAKER_00: And um, and so yeah, so it's it's been great getting to know you better.
[1:15:55] SPEAKER_00: And and I look forward to to meeting the team and seeing you guys in destination at some point uh again in the future as we look at doing destination spotlights.
[1:16:02] SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's an incredible business you've built.
[1:16:05] SPEAKER_00: Congratulations to you and the team.
[1:16:06] SPEAKER_00: You've got a bright future, not in just not just in 2027, but I would say in the next 10 to 15 years.
[1:16:11] SPEAKER_00: And one of the things we can discuss next time is consolidation in our industry, because I know that is going to come as well.
[1:16:17] SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, uh leave everyone with, I guess, one last parting thought about um uh what you know what do you think the future of DMCs looks like in the next kind of uh let's say five years, you know, post-2030.
[1:16:29] SPEAKER_00: What's what's your view on the future of DMCs?
[1:16:32] SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think it's going to be a great reveal.
[1:16:34] SPEAKER_01: Um, I think DMCs that have been operating with um an approach that is, let me respond to the same inquiry in the exact same way with the same value proposition, are going to be heavily challenged in this uh era of AI, everything on demand, you know, people wanting to book instantly.
[1:16:50] SPEAKER_01: Uh the need for differentiation is never greater than it than it is right now, and it's going to keep um uh being moving into the future.
[1:16:58] SPEAKER_01: So I think uh DMCs that that don't adapt their ways are going to you know disappear the way of the fax machine.
[1:17:04] SPEAKER_01: And those who are able to really center on the magic and the networks and you know the uncovering of ultimately pretty cool human beings that other human beings are going to want to get to meet and know, those will flourish.
[1:17:16] SPEAKER_01: And so that's where I'm excited to take the direction of our business, being smart about using AI and and and different IT tools in all the right ways from a back office standpoint, but really never losing sight of the importance of just identifying amazing people who are going to enjoy connecting with other amazing people.
[1:17:33] SPEAKER_01: And if we do that, the future is bright.
[1:17:35] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree that others will definitely fall away.
[1:17:38] SPEAKER_00: That's a good point and a good place to leave this conversation.
[1:17:42] SPEAKER_00: But uh I do firmly believe that the best will continue to uh to rise.
[1:17:46] SPEAKER_00: And obviously that's very clear with the business you've built, the partners, and the distribution and all of those things, you know, um are uh certainly in your favor.
[1:17:55] SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking forward to following your journey and keeping in touch and seeing you again in real life in the near future.
[1:18:00] SPEAKER_00: And thanks again, Hisham, for uh joining us for this conversation.
[1:18:03] SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much, man.
[1:18:05] SPEAKER_00: And thanks to all of our listeners.
[1:18:06] SPEAKER_00: That's a wrap on our latest spotlight episode.
[1:18:09] SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did with Hisham Alawi, the co-founder of the Travel Collection.
[1:18:15] SPEAKER_00: I look forward to meeting his other co-founder at some point in the near future and bringing them both back on the podcast and having them involved in uh future episodes.
[1:18:24] SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, I'm really keen to continue to explore the world of DMCs.
[1:18:28] SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I certainly take from this conversation is that in the age of AI, it certainly doesn't make DMCs obsolete.
[1:18:34] SPEAKER_00: It really does change where I think value sits in the whole chain when someone can generate an itinerary.
[1:18:40] SPEAKER_00: But the advantage, as you heard in our conversation today, really moves to relationships, access, and having someone that can make judgment on the ground, that uh rather unglamorous 95% that we were talking about that is an execution really lends itself to finding a way to making that 5% magic.
[1:18:56] SPEAKER_00: And I really liked so many things that I have come to understand about this incredible business that uh Hisham and his team have built, and that obviously being a core part of it, that DMCs can really win when you have deeply connected locals that can translate that into amazing experiences for guests.
[1:19:15] SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure many of you want to find out more information about Travel Collection and their 16 locally led DMCs across 22 countries, which you can find on their website at travelcollection.co or reach out to Hashem himself.
[1:19:26] SPEAKER_00: And I'll put a link to his email in the show notes.
[1:19:29] SPEAKER_00: And don't forget, we do post clips and highlights on our social channels, which you can find on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube at Travel Trends Podcast.
[1:19:36] SPEAKER_00: So make sure you follow along to see those highlights from our conversation today and learn more about where DMCs are headed.
[1:19:42] SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for joining us.
[1:19:44] SPEAKER_00: Until next time, safe travels.

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