Key Takeaways
AI Becomes Everyday Infrastructure
From experimenting to relying: Teams are increasingly using AI daily for drafting, summarizing, tagging, and speeding up routine work.
A new phase: redefinition: The shift isn’t just adoption, it’s redefining how teams operate and how success is measured (including KPIs).
Pair AI with human oversight: The strongest pattern shared was “AI behind the scenes, human voice up front,” especially for travel storytelling.
Tool-switching fatigue is real: One recommendation was to pick one tool and use it consistently long enough to build context and confidence, rather than bouncing between platforms for marginal gains.
Authenticity Is the Non-Negotiable Guardrail
Growing concern as usage rises: As AI becomes more common, authenticity remains a major worry, especially around visuals and content that “feels generated.”
Use AI to offload busywork, not the magic: The goal is freeing time to focus on storytelling, community connection, and creative decisions.
Travel has a built-in reality check: If the marketing isn’t real, the traveler experience exposes it instantly. That makes authenticity a practical necessity, not just a nice-to-have.
Small Teams Are the Norm, Systems Are the Strategy
Most teams are small: 63% of survey respondents reported working on teams of 2–5 people.
Success isn’t headcount, it’s clarity: 2026 performance is increasingly about focus, streamlined execution, and repeatable workflows.
Tool sprawl is a tax: Too many platforms create context fragmentation, slowing humans down and making AI less effective because the “source of truth” gets scattered.
Simplify to scale: The trend points toward fewer, broader tools and cleaner workflows to reduce complexity and increase speed.
Practical AI Examples From Destination Teams
PR automation (Visit Sarasota): A workflow where media mentions trigger AI to read and categorize coverage, match it to relevant local partners, and support stakeholder reporting. High-reach mentions (10M+ unique views/month) automatically create an Asana task and draft a social post with partner tags.
Blog audit GPT (Visit Slocal): A custom GPT that reviews a blog URL, checks whether businesses are still operating, suggests updates, and provides recommendations, turning a tedious maintenance workflow into something repeatable and fast.
Return to Owned Channels (Even as Web Traffic Declines)
A shift toward what teams can control: Many marketers are leaning into owned channels as budgets tighten, teams stay small, and attribution gets more frustrating.
Websites are a rising priority, despite traffic drops: While website traffic is down (noted as roughly 20–30%), teams are reporting that remaining visitors may be more engaged and deeper in consideration.
Websites also “feed the machines”: There’s growing focus on structuring content for both humans and AI discovery, so destination content can show up as AI-driven search and chat behaviors expand.
Email is resurging: Email remains low-cost, consent-driven, and controllable, making it a reliable channel in 2026 planning.
Staying Ahead Means Making Time for Experimentation
Resilient teams build in learning: The webinar emphasized that staying current now requires time set aside for experimenting with workflows and tools.
Set guardrails: Experimentation can be a rabbit hole, so suggested approaches included: timeboxing learning (for example, a set hour per day or a single weekly block) and maintaining a running list of “AI ideas to try” without letting it swallow the day.