Live From Destinations International: Learn Something New About Using AI for Free

Intro: Recorded live from the Destinations International Convention in Tampa, Florida: welcome to Brand USA Talks Travel. This year's Destinations International Annual Convention promises to ignite your passion and fuel your growth, and we'll plug you into all the visionary leaders making that possible. Now here's your host, Mark Lapidus. 

Mark Lapidus [0:20]: When I think of Simpleview, I think of websites, but I'm sure it's much more than that. 

Jason Swick [0:24]: Yeah, I mean, listen, we're not only websites, we're CRM, largest provider in the space. We also do digital marketing. 

Mark Lapidus [0:29]: How did I not know that? 

Jason Swick [0:30]: I think a lot of people don't know, which is crazy to me, because from a digital marketing standpoint, we work with nearly 200 clients across SEO services, close to 100 on paid media, and growing more and more into the campaign world, I think. 

Mark Lapidus [0:41]: How long has Simpleview been around now? 

Jason Swick [0:43]: Since 2001. Started as a small company with Ryan George, got a small loan from his father. 

Mark Lapidus [0:49]: Really? "Thanks, Dad!" 

Jason Swick [0:50]: It's a true startup success story. Actually quickly turned that around and paid it off, and since then we've been on a roller coaster ride to growth. So it's a wonderful place. 

Mark Lapidus [0:58]: Is it still privately held? 

Jason Swick [0:59]: It is still privately held. We're close to 480ish type staff members right now. 

Mark Lapidus [1:04]: Much bigger than I would have guessed. 

Jason Swick [1:05]: Yeah, it's huge. It's very large. And I think when I started there, I started there in 2010, I think maybe I was the 50th employee at that time. We were in a small office, and to see things grow since then is just like incredible. 

Mark Lapidus [1:15]: So is it centralized, or do you have virtual all over the country? 

Jason Swick [1:19]: They're all over the place, right? So we've got- our main office is out of Tucson, Arizona. That's kind of the main hub, but we've got offices all over the place. And then we also still have a very distributed workforce that works all over the country. 

Mark Lapidus [1:28]: I am really pleased to welcome Jason Swick, Vice President of Strategy and Insights at Simpleview. How long have you had that title? 

Jason Swick [1:34]: I've had this title since 2020. Before that I was a VP of Digital Marketing, so I ran Simpleview's entire digital marketing services division. 

Mark Lapidus [1:44]: Wow. And you can also tell by his very professional demeanor here that Jason hosts a web series called The Layover Live. That's on YouTube? 

Jason Swick [1:52]: Well, listen, we started on YouTube for a long time. We still have all our videos up there. We've kind of moved to more audio of late. We'll do video when it makes sense to do video, to show certain things. 

Mark Lapidus [2:01]: I have a face for radio, that's why we haven't. 

Jason Swick [2:03]: Yeah, that's why my wife tells me the same thing, you know. But more and more, I think folks are consuming stuff through audio. I know, like, when I'm driving into work, Mark, I'm sure you do the same type of thing, I'm looking for something to fill that time. 

Mark Lapidus [2:12]: 100%. 

Jason Swick [2:12]: So it's available on YouTube, but also audio podcasts through Spotify and iTunes. 

Mark Lapidus [2:16]: Well, Jason, it's a pleasure to have you on Brand USA Talks Travel. Thanks for stopping by here at Destinations International. 

Jason Swick [2:20]: Yeah, I'm happy to stop by. 

Mark Lapidus [2:22]: You led a session here at DI titled Leveraging AI For Destination Marketing. It's a pretty broad topic; what are the main takeaways? 

Jason Swick [2:29]: There's lots of takeaways. I think no matter where you're turning, AI is getting into everything we're doing. 

Mark Lapidus [2:33]: It feels kinda slow to me, by the way. I have to say, like everyone talks, you bump into it everywhere. And yet when you drill down with most people about how they're doing it, they say, "Well, I use ChatGPT." 

Jason Swick [2:43]: Your assessment is spot on. It's so easy to get enamored because we've seen a video with a shiny object, right? We start getting shiny object syndrome. But really, so, in doing this, I wanted to have more of a practical session. Oftentimes I go to conferences, you do the same where there's a lot of, like, "what you should be doing," not a lot of how you do it. 

Mark Lapidus [2:59]: Or who's doing it right now. 

Jason Swick [3:01]: Or who's even doing it right now. Yeah, good point. First and foremost, I think key takeaways from the session is really embrace continual learning. 

Mark Lapidus [3:07]: Well, that goes way beyond artificial intelligence, it's true about everything. 

Jason Swick [3:10]: It's true about everything. This is just another tool in your tool belt. Right? How do I do that? Well, I have to embrace continual learning and take some responsibility on your own. Right? So I think as long as you're carving out some time in your schedule to learn, that's a key takeaway, because the space, to your point, Mark, earlier, it's so dynamic and changing all the time. Right? Secondly, I think a key takeaway is dive deep into prompt engineering. 

Mark Lapidus [3:31]: What does that mean? 

Jason Swick [3:32]: When you're typing into ChatGPT, it's only as good as the data you're putting into it and how you're queuing it. Generic input in, you're going to get generic input out. Having a sort of framework, I think, that works well, and understanding how those prompts work, is going to serve you well. Whether you're using ChatGPT, whether you're using a tool like Gemini or Anthropics' Claude, or whatever platform is your flavor for this week, understanding how prompts work and being able to effectively engineer, so you're putting the right input to get the output that you want, is something that DMOs should be spending their time on today. You know, a couple other key takeaways, I think just also understanding some of the inherent features that are built into tools like ChatGPT already. Things from a personalization standpoint to get better responses. Leveraging things like custom GPTs, which are just fine-tuning the model a little bit to get the outputs that you want, right? So for example, if I have an IT question, I can go ask anybody in my organization. 

Mark Lapidus [4:24]: Usually somebody will tell you to turn it off and turn it on. 

Jason Swick [4:26]: But I would be better serviced going to the IT person and asking them that question. That's what a custom GPT is, it just allows us to be able to fine-tune the model to take on a persona or a role that I can come back to at any different time. 

Mark Lapidus [4:38]: How do you do that? 

Jason Swick [4:39]: Let's use ChatGPT, for example. So you can go into the interface, click on "Explore GPTs." And what it's going to do is, it's going to take you into ChatGPT's GPT store, and there are millions of GPTs that are created. Anything from, like, I need you to act as a marketing strategist and help me build a strategy, I need you to act as an email marketing specialist, to just things in your personal life. My daughter just graduated nursing school, right? Before we push her out of the house, we wanted to make sure we helped her get out of the house properly. And so what we did is, we even built a GPT that was like a nursing student role, that we were able to like load up sample tests for her questions, some of the papers that she got, we were able to load that into ChatGPT so that it become this like testing buddy with her. So it was able to really help her with like putting up test quizzes and things like that. It build flashcards for her, it did all those kind of things, right? So you can do some amazing things. 

Mark Lapidus [5:30]: Is that free or is that the paid version? 

Jason Swick [5:32]: No, you can do it totally free. Now you're going to be limited on outputs, right? If you start pumping through that stuff, you know they're going to throttle you on some of that. But that is free, as of the 4.0 update, it is free. 

Mark Lapidus [5:41]: What are the key factors destinations should consider when evaluating these tools? 

Jason Swick [5:46]: Start with your goals and objectives. Like what are you trying to accomplish, right? All the tools are pretty good in their own right, but I think understanding what your specific needs are and clearly defining what your needs and your goals are, because there's different tools that are going to accelerate at different things. Okay, if you're looking for something with around content or being able to develop pretty good content, you know, ChatGPT has been historically pretty good with that type of stuff. If you're looking for something that's a little bit more research-focused, or I need to dig into some math or some deeper type data stuff, I found that Claude's pretty good with that. Long story short, I would just start with your specific needs and goals and look at the tools' ability to be able to also integrate with your day-to-day workflows, your existing systems, how easy is it to use and to get onboarded on? That's really important. And then, you know, one of the key takeaways from my session this morning, as I mentioned, was just, you know, continual learning, being committed to training. I think that's crucial. It's not enough to just open the platform. Say we have this new tool now, let's have a passive training system that we just go with. You got to be intentional about that. That means carving off time, understanding the tool and diving in deep, and then creating a culture of collaboration where that information doesn't just stay with one or two people on your team, it's getting shared across the organization, so others can benefit from those things. So that's how I do it. I take a look at your goals, I take a look at your needs, understand your workflows and figure out which tool works the best. And regardless of what you're doing, support and training are important. 

Mark Lapidus [7:03]: How do you think smaller destinations with limited budgets can leverage AI effectively? 

Jason Swick [7:08]: Even with limited budgets, I think smaller destinations can certainly leverage the effectiveness of AI, and they're very scalable, right? Listen, if you have to make a $20 investment a month to get the paid version, that is a very small investment to make, regardless of the size of your team. So tools like ChatGPT, tools like Claude, tools even like Gemini, they're very, very, very cost effective. With that being said, I think starting small measure the impact of things along the way, and then scale things up as you see fit. I mean, with ChatGPT 4.0, it being free now, them opening up things like custom GPTs, some of the new crazy stuff that's coming through vision and the features you've probably seen in OpenAI's demo, or this new stuff from Apple - but start small and scale up from there. That would be my advice to smaller DMO's. I mean, it's incredibly cost-effective, even if you have to get into the paid model, these tools are incredibly affordable compared to other MarTech out there. 

Mark Lapidus [7:57]: I can't wait till Siri gets smarter, because Siri's been dumb for so long. I yell at Siri more than I speak with her. 

Jason Swick [8:03]: She probably still doesn't listen to you. 

Mark Lapidus [8:05]: She doesn't, which is funny. 

Jason Swick [8:07]: You know, I think this integration that they're going to be doing with OpenAI, this is going to be what Apple, I think, always hoped Siri was going to be like. The idea they had years and years and years ago was a good idea, as you know, it just never came to fruition. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the new phone coming out and with some of the new integrations they're building in with OpenAI, for sure. 

Mark Lapidus [8:25]: As a VP at Simpleview, in your role, Jason, you're always looking at the latest digital marketing trends. So besides AI, what other emerging tech are you seeing? 

Jason Swick [8:34]: AI is enough for right now. From emerging tech standpoint, I certainly think the things I'm keeping my eye on is how those particular tools or how AI is going to get built into the stuff we already use today. I think that's first and foremost. But I will tell you something that really wowed me is with augmented reality. I think with virtual reality, we're kind of a ways off from that. 

Mark Lapidus [8:51]: So what's the difference? 

Jason Swick [8:52]: From an augmented standpoint, where you have a graphical interface that you're able to engage with various elements within your environment. It's not a virtual environment, it's a kind of partial, right? You're engaging with various pieces. And the example that really blew my mind with this was, my wife and I were in Las Vegas recently, right? She was doing her shopping thing, and I had some time to kill, so I went over to the Apple store and tried out the Vision Pro. Have you tried this thing yet? 

Mark Lapidus [9:13]: Yes. 

Jason Swick [9:14]: Isn't it incredible? 

Mark Lapidus [9:15]: It is incredible, but I couldn't see myself spending that kind of money. 

Jason Swick [9:18]: No. Okay. Cost aside - and that will come down, right? Whenever something new comes out, it's going to be so expensive. But I was floored at the ability and the immersiveness of it. Think about it from a destination marketing standpoint, right? There's typically not a better way to market a destination than through video and imagery. So to be able to pop this thing on as you know, going through, like the demo work, right? The demo was amazing. When they bring you into that, those environments, like they brought you into Hawaii, or when they're at El Capitan and you're there with this person walking across the road, and you feel like you're there. To me, that type of thing inspires travel, because I wouldn't think about going to Yosemite and doing those type of things, right, but after watching that, I'm like, this is, like, incredibly beautiful, because it's immersive. And I don't think that's going to replace people wanting to go there; I think is gonna get people excited about going there. So from an emerging tech standpoint, I'm curious to see where things go with DMOs around augmented reality, and getting people to bring digital into the offline world more and more at their destinations. 

Mark Lapidus [10:10]: I understand your feeling about it, Jason, but at the same time, I don't think it's scalable, because I just don't feel enough people are gonna lay down the money for the units. I just don't think until the price comes way, way, way down, I don't think you're gonna have millions of people wearing these headsets internationally. 

Jason Swick [10:25]: Could not agree with you more. So the thought of augmenting reality is really what I'm pushing on. Certainly the products as they exist today are a high cost, similar to when Teslas first came out. They were incredibly high priced, and then as production goes up, you gain efficiency, and over time, those prices come down, and a free market system drives those costs down. So looking at a lot of that stuff, the use of AI, whether it's through our phones, certainly no one's going to walk around with a giant thing on their face for a long time. Once they get that stuff incorporated into glasses - and you're seeing Meta started to do it with some of their glasses and things like that - once you get it to a place where people feel comfortable, you don't have this giant thing on your face. That's game-changing stuff for me. So I'm really curious to see where that space goes, especially with Apple making those investments. I agree with you, it's unbelievably expensive, not worth it to me, but it got my mind open to the fact that, oh, my gosh, this is what you can do with this thing, and they'll figure it out just like everything else. 

Mark Lapidus [11:11]: This is a question I ask a lot of people when I talk about artificial intelligence. I get a lot of different answers, and that's what I'm going to ask you, Jason: what publications, websites, apps, what do you look at that actually gives you more ideas about AI? 

Jason Swick [11:24]: YouTube is the place I go. Just the breadth of content. There people are on top of all the new things that are coming out, and then find a creator or two that you really like. 

Mark Lapidus [11:32]: Anybody you like? 

Jason Swick [11:33]: I listen to Jeff Su. He's a former Google employee, he's very dynamic. 

Mark Lapidus [11:38]: How do you spell that? 

Jason Swick [11:39]: It's Jeff, and then S-U. Igor Pagoni, who runs a YouTube channel called The AI Advantage. He's based out of Austria, I think, but he's a fantastic content, someone I would check out. And then I would find people that are in our space, people like Janette Roush with NYC Tourism. She is the premier leader in the space, at least as it relates to AI. Find those people that are in the space that are working on the same problems that you're working on and reach out to them. Build a network, follow them and find out what they're doing. So those would be my three suggestions. 

Mark Lapidus [12:05]: Great advice, Jason. I think we'll leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me. 

Jason Swick [12:09]: Yeah, appreciate it. Nice meeting you, Mark, and thanks for having me on. 

Mark Lapidus [12:11]: Continued success. And that's Brand USA Talks Travel, live from Destinations International's Annual Convention in Tampa, Florida. I'm Mark Lapidus, lots more episodes to follow. Thanks for listening. 

Outro [12:22]: If you enjoyed this Live From Destinations International episode, please share it with your friends in the travel industry. Production and music by Asher Meerovich. Media producer, Nthanze Kariuki, with assistance from Casey D'Ambra. Engineering, Brian Watkins, Kat Pommer, and Antonio Tyler. Art by Mimi Jung. Special thanks to Alexis Adelson, Phil Dickieson, Peter Dodge, and Colleen Mangone. More Live From Destinations International episodes coming soon. Safe travels!

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