At the eighth annual Points of View Summit, everyone is just happy to be there. Which is not to say that that's not usually the case for this assemblage of travel specialists and editors. But flight delays from the government shutdown left many of these usually unfettered frequent fliers uncertain as to whether or not they'd make it to New York. The fact that turnout is high means morale is the same, and the day is off to a solid start.
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After welcome remarks from senior features editor Rebecca Misner and Global Editorial Director Divia Thani, we were off to the races with a day of panels concerning everything from foodways in the South Carolina lowcountry to the changing face of tech in travel (hello, AI!) and the value of finding those “in-between” spaces. Read on for a recap of the days' events.
Authenticity in travel
The morning’s first panel, on the subject of authenticity in travel, was hosted by Articles Director Lale Arikoglu. Panelists included Julie Earle-Levine, media strategist and founder of Julie Earle-Levine Consulting who is deeply embedded in Australia’s tourism industry; Thierry Teyssier of Dar Ahlam and regenerative travel company 700,000 heures Impact; and David Rockwell, founder of Rockwell Group who has designed extensively for hospitality.
“The modern traveler is eager,” said Arikoglu, "more so than ever before, to dig into a destination. They’re looking for real, authentic travel experiences. But what does that mean exactly?” The consensus amongst the panelists was clear: travel cannot be considered “authentic” without intentional connection to the people that live in a given destination. If you will, the relationship between traveler and local must be symbiotic. As an example, Earle-Levine spoke about the transformation of Australia’s tourism industry with regard to the country’s Indigenous peoples. “Not long ago, you might have seen ‘indigenous tourism’ represented as a didgeridoo player, perhaps even a white player,” she said, “and now you’re seeing Discover Aboriginal Experiences, a collective of more than 50 Indigenous-owned operations, kind of running the show. [Travelers can] walk with the Palawa people in Tasmania, or learn about rock art in Uluru.”
For Teyssier, connection is a matter of scale. “When we were younger and backpacking,” he says, “we were naturally connected to communities. But we were young and we had time.” Now, overtourism and the shortening lengths of trips—”we used to travel for months!”—make organic connections difficult to stumble into. Rockwell felt similarly, and plans his own travels such that he can spend 10 to 15 days in a single place, getting to know the “in-between places” where life actually happens. Using Guadalajara, where he spent the formative years of his childhood, as an example, these spaces may be the market where locals shop or the interior courtyard of a home as residents and guests come and go.
Foodways and culinary connections in the lowcountry with Hilton Head Island
Next up was Hannah Towey, associate editor of transportation & travel news for Condé Nast Traveler, who was joined by Andrew Carmines. Carmines is a fixture on Hilton Head Island for his work at Hudson’s Seafood House on the Docks. It’s an impressive operation: 90% of the seafood served at Hudson’s is harvested directly from the surrounding waters (the restaurant sits, as its name suggests, dockside on Skull Creek). Their Shell Ring Oyster Co. grows, according to Carmines, “half a million oysters every year” as well as “about half a million clams.” In recent years, Carmines has observed increased consumer interest in where their food comes from, and subsequent delight that so much of the fresh seafood on the menu has only just been pulled from the water.
How tech is changing travel
The next order of business was technology’s influence over the way we plan, execute, and experience our travels. For this, Erin Parker, Traveler's Global Executive Director of Audience Development, Analytics & Social, was joined by: Cynthia Egan, director, travel industry at Meta; Tom Marchant, co-founder of Black Tomato; Angela Watercutter, senior editor at Wired; and Tracey Weber, SVP and General Manager of Expedia. It was not long, dear reader, not long at all before talk turned to artificial intelligence.
It’s not just that people are using AI chatbots like ChatGPT to plan their itineraries. Some people are doing that, but AI’s impact on your travels actually starts much sooner—and many may not realize that it’s even influencing them at all. That’s because AI powers the recommendation systems on apps like Instagram (a Meta product) and TikTok that feed us travel videos and inspire us to book trips. If you found out about St. Anton from a reel and booked a trip there because of it, you can thank the AI algorithm for running the numbers and deciding you’d like it. It was right! Discovery is now controlled, largely, by AI.
But that’s not the only way it’s seeping in. Expedia rolled out an AI planning tool that can then lead directly into their booking platform. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Black Tomato is dabbling in a planning tool of their own that allows agents to navigate their information sphere with increased ease. Watercutter shared that she’s seen a rise in AI companions with customizable personalities—an Australian backpacker, say—who can accompany solo travelers on their adventures.
Shifting perspectives on all-inclusive resorts
This past summer, we ran an article with the headline: “All-Inclusives Are So Back—Because We Are So Burnt Out.” To unpack why we think this to be the case, Ana Tomicevic, Vice President and Global Brand Leader, Hyatt’s Inclusive Collection joined associate editor Matt Ortile for a chat. Tomicevic has seen families, couples, and solo travelers alike coming in droves. Unsurprisingly, couples as a category continue to account for a bulk of business, and Hyatt is calibrating their programming in order to help couples strengthen their relationships. In the family department, team Hyatt has turned their attention to Generation Alpha (children born between 2010 or so and today) as they call the shots. “Decisions are made by Gen Alpha,” Tomicevic said, “They say where they want to go, they say ‘I saw this on TikTok.’” All-inclusives, long associated with lesser albeit complimentary food options, are also recalibrating their offerings to meet health- and ethically-minded travelers’ demand for locally-sourced fare.
Tony Shalhoub
Capping off the day was a conversation between Jesse Ashlock, Traveler’s Deputy Global Editorial Director & Head of Content in the US, and the actor Tony Shalhoub, who this year began hosting the travel show Breaking Bread on CNN (for more bread content, check out our package of the same name). “I feel like it must mean something that both of the actors who played brothers in Big Night,” said Jesse, “wound up doing food shows on CNN. Did you talk to Stanley [Tucci] when developing the show?”
“I basically just do whatever Stanley does,” Shalhoub joked, and the room agreed it was solid life advice.
The wide-ranging conversation started with a breakdown of Breaking Bread’s season one stops. Lebanon, where his father was born, was Shalhoub’s no-brainer. But when violence there made travel unfeasible, he pivoted to São Paulo, home to a large Lebanese population. Other stops included Marseille, Wisconsin (where Tony grew up), Iceland, Tokyo, and New York City (where Tony lives now.) Marseille was a particularly poignant stop for Shalhoub—it’s where his father spent about a month in immigration processing before continuing on to the United States. “We knew about the France to New York part, he went through Ellis Island” said Tony, “But we didn’t know about the Lebanon to France part.”
The chat ended with a travel-oriented take on the Proust questionnaire. See Tony’s answers below.
Airplane meals?
“Oh, sure. I don’t discriminate. I may not eat everything on the plain, but yea, sure. I have more than one pet peeve actually. People complaining about airplane food. Shame on us. We can fly across this country in five hours, watch a movie, have people give us drinks and food, and you have to freaking complain about that? It’s not a restaurant.”
Plane drink? It used to be champagne, but since I’m not drinking now it’s a lot of coffee and sparkling water.
Favorite airport? Denver Airport is pretty beautiful.
What do you have to have with you on a flight? Always good to have a book with you, I think, because it helps you to sleep. And I usually take an Emergen-C, something with electrolytes that forces me to drink more fluids and get my immune system buoyed up for what might be on that plane—but I’m not complaining.
Window seat or aisle? Aisle.
Check or carry-on? I like to check, especially if I have a connection.
Where are you going next? We’re taking a family trip to St. Lucia. Never been.
Tough one: you get a one-way ticket anywhere in the world, at any time in history, but you can’t come back. Where are you going? I would choose to go to Lebanon prior to the First World War. That would be the time when my father was young, before shit went down, and there was a certain kind of idyllic existence they had in their village where there was plenty.
