What happens when a traveler chooses your destination without ever visiting your website?

In this keynote, Eric Hultgren explores how AI is fundamentally changing destination discovery and why traditional measures of digital success are becoming less reliable. From ChatGPT-generated itineraries to Google's AI-powered search experience, travelers are increasingly getting answers before they ever click.

Eric breaks down the rise of zero-click travel planning, the growing importance of AI visibility, and what destination marketers need to do today to remain discoverable in an AI-mediated world.

Along the way, he shares practical frameworks for evaluating destination content, building AI-ready campaigns, creating organizational AI policies, and identifying the questions your destination should "own" before someone else does.

Key Topics:

• Why website traffic may no longer be the most important metric

• The rise of zero-click search and AI-generated travel planning

• How Google, ChatGPT, and Claude decide which destinations to trust

• Why YouTube has become a critical AI visibility channel

• The difference between AI dabblers, producers, and AI-native organizations

• Building content for retrieval, not just publication

• How to identify the traveler questions your destination should own

• Creating scalable AI workflows for campaign development

• Why clarity beats cleverness in the age of AI discovery

• Practical ways to audit your destination's digital presence today

Memorable Quote:

"The influence begins before the click. AI is just one more tool travelers are using to decide where to visit."

Key Takeaway:

The question is no longer whether travelers can find your website. The question is whether AI can find, understand, and trust your destination before the traveler ever arrives.

About the Speaker:

Eric Hultgren is National Director of Content for Advance Travel & Tourism and a leading voice on the intersection of AI, search, storytelling, and destination marketing. His work focuses on how emerging technology is reshaping traveler behavior and what marketers must do to remain visible, trusted, and relevant

In this episode of Field Notes: Insights and Observations for the Travel Marketer, Eric Hultgren reads a piece from strategist Ryan Winfield and Sara Dyer is back to explore two of the biggest questions facing destination marketers right now: How is AI reshaping search behavior, and what does it really mean when 90% of marketers say they're using AI?

Ryan Winfield shared his findings on Linkedin from a review of 24 destination marketing organizations' analytics accounts, comparing 12 months of performance against the previous year. While organic search traffic declined by 14%, referral traffic from ChatGPT increased by an astonishing 446%. The conversation explores why "zero-click" search experiences and AI-generated answers are changing traveler behavior, what this means for SEO strategies, and why organizations should focus on creating unique, authoritative content that AI systems can't easily replicate.

Sara Dyer tackles another widely cited statistic: nearly 90% of marketers now use AI. Rather than focusing on adoption alone, she argues that AI is rapidly becoming infrastructure—more like email or collaboration software than a standalone marketing tactic. As AI becomes commonplace, the competitive advantage shifts away from access to technology and toward human judgment, original thinking, proprietary data, and the ability to ask better questions.

Together, the discussion offers a practical look at how travel marketers should think about visibility, authority, and differentiation in a world increasingly shaped by AI-powered discovery.

Key Takeaways

• Organic search traffic may be declining, but AI-driven referral traffic is growing rapidly.

What separates the travel marketers who see what's coming from the ones who are always reacting to it? It's not more data. It's a different way of looking.

In this keynote, Eric Hultgren makes the case for trading the archeologist's mindset — reconstructing what was — for the anthropologist's — understanding what's becoming. The difference shows up in your content, your campaigns, and whether you're leading your audience or chasing them.

Along the way, he walks through a jaguar tracker in the Amazon, a peanut butter sandwich that became an NFL licensing story, a shoe store in Brooklyn that turned a Tuesday into a purchase, a black box at a Michigan electronics company, and a fudge shop employee who didn't bother to put down her salad.

What connects them: wonder dies from overexposure. The longer you've been in a space, the harder it is to see it. And the harder it is to see it, the harder it is to tell a story that makes someone move.

This isn't a session about AI tools or content calendars. It's about the skill underneath all of it — curiosity as a competitive advantage, play as a professional practice, and the compass over the map as a strategic posture.

If you work in travel marketing, DMO strategy, hospitality, or destination storytelling, this one's for you.

Topics covered:

No guest today. Just a question that won't let go.

Sara Dyer traces her own honeymoon research—bouncing between ChatGPT, TikTok, Instagram, friends, comment sections, and back again—and arrives at something uncomfortable: she can't remember most of what influenced her. She remembers the feeling. She remembers Greece rising to the top. She doesn't remember the campaign.

That might not be a problem. It might be the point.

This episode makes the case that travelers don't experience marketing—they experience an ecosystem. And the best marketing might be the kind that's completely invisible by the time someone books: no single video that closed the deal, no campaign they can cite, just a slow accumulation of signals that moved them from uncertain to confident.

Worth sitting with if you spend your days measuring impressions and wondering whether any of it lands.

ChatGPT narrowed the destination. TikTok sealed the deal. This episode, Sara Dyer joins Eric Hultgren to break down her actual honeymoon research process—and what it reveals about the real job travel content needs to do in 2025.

They open with two news items worth paying attention to: OpenAI reportedly wants to abandon the chatbot format entirely in favor of a context-aware super app, and what that pivot could mean for Gemini's dominance. Then Eric unpacks Obsession—the horror film with a $750K budget that's made $152M and keeps gaining audience each weekend—as a case study in the kind of experience that only works when you're trapped in it. The parallel to travel marketing is not subtle.

The bulk of the episode is Sara walking through how she and her fiancé Max actually chose Greece: ChatGPT for the shortlist, TikTok for the conviction. She watched 30–40 videos. She can't name a single creator. And that's the point.

What you'll hear:

Most destinations aren’t short on data—they’re short on decisions.

In this episode of Field Notes, Eric Hultgren sits down with three operators who live at the intersection of data, strategy, and real-world application: Frida Bahja, Ktimene Axtell, and Josh Gibson.

The conversation cuts through the noise around “more data” and gets to the harder question:

You’ll hear:

And then it pivots.

Eric reframes the entire conversation through the lens of zero-click search and AI decision-making, where travelers don’t visit your website, but still make decisions about your destination.

That shift changes everything:

This isn’t a conversation about tools.

If you're responsible for growth, storytelling, or strategy in travel—this is the episode that forces a reset.

What if the job of a DMO isn’t to grow tourism…

In this episode, Eric sits down with Nate Wyeth, Chief of Staff at Visit Bend, to unpack a deceptively simple idea:

If the community doesn’t benefit, the destination eventually breaks.

This is a conversation about regenerative tourism—not as a buzzword, but as an operating system.

And it starts with a North Star Nate has been chasing for two decades:

How do we grow in a way that actually benefits the people and places we serve?

Tourism isn’t just an economic engine.

It’s a relationship:

Break that relationship…

1. Community isn’t a stakeholder—it’s the starting point

Because:

If you ignore that… you’re borrowing time.

2. The real definition of sustainability

It’s not branding.

It’s literally in the word:

Sustain = make it last.

That forces a shift from:

3. The balancing act every DMO avoids (but shouldn’t)

Tourism creates:

But also:

The job isn’t to eliminate one side.

4. The smartest resource allocation analogy you’ll hear

Most DMOs:

Walk into a casino and drop everything on the first slot machine.

Better approach:

5. Why some communities “get it” faster than others

It’s not geography.

It’s people.

Places like Oregon work because:

That’s the unlock.

6. How to build buy-in (even in skeptical markets)

You don’t start with:

“We need sustainability.”

You start with:

Then expand the aperture.

7. The “toddler on a sugar high” economy metaphor

Right now, tourism feels like:

The real question:

What happens when the sugar crash hits?

Smart DMOs are already planning for that moment.

8. The most underrated discipline: postmortems

The industry bias:

What’s missing:

Nate’s take:

If you don’t learn from failure, you’re just repeating it faster.

9. Collaboration isn’t optional—it’s structural

Visitors don’t respect boundaries:

So DMOs can’t either.

The Bend model:

Everyone at the table.

Because impact doesn’t stay in one place.

If your AI talk is about being found,

Most destinations are still optimizing for:

This is about:

There are really two futures for DMOs:

Nate is clearly building the second.

If this hits, here’s where to start:

Catch more episodes of Field Notes for grounded conversations with people shaping the future of travel marketing.

Fresh off a keynote in Massachusetts, this episode is a live drop of Eric Hultgren’s latest thinking on AI for Travel 2.0

It starts with a simple story: a traveler who books a trip, adjusts her schedule, and plans her entire experience…without saying a word.

That’s not the future.

And it leads to a harder question:

If a traveler never visits your website…did you actually lose?

We’ve entered a Copernicus moment for marketing.

Your website is no longer the center of the universe.

Less important to humans.

In this episode, Eric sits down with Scott Larson, President & CEO of Visit Central Oregon, to unpack how destination leaders navigate uncertainty, prioritize what matters, and make long-term bets in a short-term world.

From accessibility as both a moral and market imperative to using the World Cup not as a campaign—but as a test, this conversation is a masterclass in disciplined thinking.

This isn’t about doing more.

1. Why most conference energy dies—and how to keep it alive

Momentum isn’t about inspiration.

2. Accessibility isn’t a feature—it’s a system

The real insight:

3. The missed opportunity in travel UX

“Here are 5 trails… one of them works for you.”

Future state:

“Tell us your needs → we’ll show you only what works.”

What happens when a destination decides it’s not just selling visits—but protecting a place? In this episode, we head to the Oregon Coast to talk with Stacey Gunderson about the evolving role of DMOs in a world where tourism growth, environmental responsibility, and community trust are all colliding. This isn’t a conversation about campaigns. It’s about philosophy.

From seafood trails and cross-industry collaboration to the real (and often unmeasurable) ROI of stewardship, Stacey Gunderson offers a grounded look at what it takes to build a destination brand that people don’t just visit—but respect.

🧭 What You’ll Learn

1. How to filter signal from noise at conferences The shift from “take everything in” to “know what actually matters” comes down to strategic clarity—and collaboration opportunities.

2. Why trails are really about ecosystems, not itineraries The Oregon Coast Seafood Trail isn’t just a product—it’s a platform for local businesses, partnerships, and layered visitor experiences (beer, wine, seafood all working together).

3. The subtle power of “Coast Like a Local” It’s not just a tagline—it reframes the visitor mindset from consumption to participation. → You’re not visiting a place. You’re borrowing it.

4. Stewardship as a marketing function (not a side initiative) From social content choices to on-the-ground infrastructure, stewardship shows up everywhere: What you post What you don’t post How partners align What behaviors you normalize

5. The hardest question: What’s the ROI of doing the right thing? You can’t always measure it. But you can see it: Cleaner beaches Better visitor behavior Stronger emotional connection Long-term sustainability This is marketing beyond attribution.

6. AI adoption—intentionally slow, strategically aware The Oregon Coast approach: No rush to deploy AI-facing tools Focus on making content AI-readable and discoverable Real concern about environmental impact Watching, learning, and choosing moments carefully It’s restraint as strategy—not hesitation.

🔑 Key Takeaways Visitors don’t think in regions—DMOs do. Collaboration beats territorial thinking. Behavior is shaped by signals, not rules. Show, don’t tell. Stewardship is brand. If it’s not embedded everywhere, it’s not real. Not everything that matters can be measured—but it still compounds. AI readiness ≠ AI adoption. Structuring your content may matter more than deploying tools (for now).