Josiah Mackenzie

📃 Brand USA, a destination marketing organization, aims to drive international travel into the US, benefiting American citizens, businesses, and travelers. The organization embraces travel as a tool for diplomacy and empathy. Janette, serving as SVP Innovation and Chief AI Officer, focuses on preparing the industry to leverage new technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and AI, including predictive and generative AI. She discusses the transformative potential of AI in content creation and decision-making, emphasizing the importance of staying competitive by being "smart" rather than outspending other destinations. Janette's background in theater and tourism, along with her experience at Broadway.com and NYC Tourism, provides her with a diverse perspective on the use of AI. She became particularly interested in AI following the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022. Her role at Brand USA involves ensuring the industry is AI-ready by 2030, recognizing that knowledge work is continually evolving. The discussion touches on the significance of AI for efficiency and ethical business practices and the need for a framework to guide AI adoption within organizations, encouraging a balance of top-down and bottom-up approaches for successful integration. Janette stresses the importance of leading with wonder and embracing the fun aspects of AI to inspire innovation in the workplace.

🏨 On January 3, 2025, Martin Soler, a former hotel GM turned marketing strategist, discussed in a podcast episode how AI technology is transforming hotel operations, emphasizing experimentation, specificity in applications, and AI's role in streamlining work, improving communication, and maintaining competitiveness. Topics included AI adoption camps, benefits of AI dictation, AI for hotel GMs, marketing, documentation, stigma, confidentiality, security, corporate tool caution, and AI in RFP processes for meetings and events. Additionally, resources and a music credit for Clay Bassford of Bespoke Sound were mentioned.