Adventure Travel with Jason Halberstadt - MyTrip.AI

Area/Topic
Guiding, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Artificial Intelligence for Tour Operators

Jason Halberstadt
Founder and CEO
MyTrip.AI

Jason Halberstadt has been helping tour operators innovate online and grow their businesses since the dawn of the Internet in the 1990's when he moved to Ecuador from the US and started a digital marketing agency specialized in travel. He launched MyTrip.AI in 2023 to develop AI software and services to help small and medium-sized travel companies innovate in order to compete with industry giants.

https://mytrip.ai/

summary
Jason Halberstadt, founder and CEO of MyYrip.AI, shares his journey from being a guide and outdoor instructor to moving to Ecuador where he then transitioned to offering internet services to tour operators and eventually ventured into AI assistance for travel businesses. The AI assistant helps engage website visitors in personalized conversations, providing value and building trust before asking for contact information. This approach has resulted in a high conversion rate and improved customer satisfaction. The conversation with Jason Elkins focused on the importance of personalized and timely service in the travel industry. He emphasized that the first company to develop a relationship with a prospective traveler often wins the business. However, many tour operators struggle to provide quick responses and customized attention. This is where AI assistants can play a crucial role. AI assistants can greet travelers immediately, understand their preferences, recommend suitable products, and even schedule meetings with human trip planners. By combining AI technology with human expertise, tour operators can enhance the customer experience and improve their sales process.

takeaways

• Jason Halberstadt started as a guide and outdoor instructor before starting a tour operator marketing business in Ecuador.
• He began by offering internet services to tour operators and eventually ventured into AI assistance for travel businesses.
• The AI assistant engages website visitors in personalized conversations, providing value and building trust before asking for contact information.
• This approach has resulted in a high conversion rate and improved customer satisfaction. In the travel industry, the first company to develop a relationship with a prospective traveler often wins the business.
• Tour operators often struggle to provide quick responses and customized attention, which can lead to missed opportunities.
• AI assistants can greet travelers immediately, understand their preferences, recommend suitable products, and schedule meetings with human trip planners.
• By combining AI technology with human expertise, tour operators can enhance the customer experience and improve their sales process.

Learn more about the Big World Made Small Podcast and join our private community to get episode updates, special access to our guests, and exclusive adventure travel offers at bigworldmadesmall.com.

Transcript

Jason Elkins (00:00.45)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the big world made small podcast for the adventure traveler. We've got, this, I'm Jason Elkins and we've got another Jason with us here on the show. We've got Jason Halberstadt. Jason is the founder and CEO of mytrip .ai. There's a bunch of things that he's been involved with and still is involved with, but we're going to discuss a lot about himself as well as mytrip .ai. So Jason, welcome to the show. Happy to have you

Thanks so much, Jason. I appreciate it. It's exciting to be here. Yeah. Fortunately, it's just the two of us, so we won't get too confused about which Jason is, you know, speaking or which Jason, is, receiving questions. So it's just the two of us. So happy to have you here. You and I have had some conversations in the past about your business and kind of what you're doing and, and different ways that you help tour operators. I would say specifically in the kind of small crews, adventure travel, you know,

I'll ask you, what genre, when you meet somebody, what genre, what niche do you tell people that you work with? Yeah, usually tell them we're into travel marketing and technology. That's what we do. That tends to encompass most of the things that we do. And yeah, really, I started out 27 years ago with, by moving here to Ecuador, actually.

And my idea here in Ecuador when I first came was to start a tour operator because I came off of being a guide or an outdoor bound instructor. Okay. Good. Previous to previous years. And so I get, yeah, yeah, that was an amazing experience. And so I arrived to Quito and yeah, my idea was to start a kind of ecological adventure travel company. And this is 1997. Internet was just starting

And, you know, I walking around Quito and at that time there were, wow, dozens if not hundreds of tour operators that had, you little storefronts on the street, which is something you don't see much anymore. Everything's online. And so, yeah, at that point I decided that maybe a better idea, you know, instead of competing against all these established businesses, could be to offer them internet services.

Jason Elkins (02:20.556)
It was the very beginning of the internet, especially down here. You know, and so my first clients, went around explaining what the internet was, that computers can talk with each other and email you can send. You don't have to send a fax. Now you can send email. So I kind of started off in the very early days of the internet down here in Ecuador. And I actually, yeah, I'm calling in from Quito, Ecuador today. Yeah. It sounds like you kind of hit it at a pretty good time actually.

You know, you're allowed to talk about it. You got to get in kind of at the right time and you showing up there right at the beginning. It probably made a lot of sense because they'd been around for a while doing some of their stuff, their traditional ways. And you came in right at that time when the internet was kind of getting started. And it sounds like you had some, skills in that. I want to go a little bit further back, Jason, cause I really want to get into how did you get from, from where you were to where you are now? We discussed briefly a little bit of

But I want to go back a little further as far back as you think we need to go. What's that moment? Was there a moment in your past where you had that aha moment? Like I want to be a guide, an outdoor instructor. I want to do this stuff. So let's go back as far as you think we need to go and help us understand what made you go this route. Yeah, I think I fell in love with traveling on two wheels on a bicycle because when I was young, I was a competitive cyclist.

I actually started off really young, look at nine and 10, doing a group in the Midwest. And so I did Rag Bride, which is this famous bicycle ride that goes across Iowa, tens or hundreds of thousands of people that do it every year. And so yeah, starting at nine, nine years old, I started doing that. then what's it called? Yeah. Rag Bride. Rag Bride. Rag Bride. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's an acronym, the Register's annual great bike ride across Iowa. All right. The Des Moines Register.

and so, yeah, I started off, really, traveling around the United States and Canada competing, you know, sometimes some years as many as a hundred different races a year. And I visited every, lower 40th state except for like Maine, you know, on bicycle racing. And yeah, was fortunate enough to be part of, kind of a history making team when I was a junior called the seven 11.

Jason Elkins (04:45.902)
I was the first American team to race into Tour de France and, you know, you race and compete at a world level. so, so there... did you get into that? What turned you on to that? I'm curious, something with your parents or I mean, that's... I just loved to ride bikes and I guess had a bit of a knack for it and the talent. And yeah, I just loved

And your parents must have been supportive. If you were traveling around doing all these competitive events, I imagine they must have really been involved in that. Yeah, absolutely. At nine years old, my mom definitely took me on that one. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. And so that's really how I kind of fell in love with travel. I ended up doing cross country, like DC to San Francisco ride once. then, and actually I moved to Boulder, Colorado, which is like

outside of Europe is like the capital for bicycle racing. then, yeah, I got injured and then had to be a real student and live a real life. And so I was a biochemist and molecular biologist for several years. So was kind of my second career. First was cyclists. First was cyclists. Second was a researcher, biomedical researcher.

And then the company I was working on with, well actually the drug that I was working on to try to get approved for use in humans didn't work, laid off 90 % of the company, including me. So I took my severance check and went to Costa Rica. Just kind of escaped and decided I didn't want to work in another lab job for the rest of my youth.

Then yeah, I landed in Costa Rica and soon after found the job as an hour bound instructor at Costa Rica rainforest that were bound. Wow. What did I'm always curious. I've already touched on it a couple of times. I'm always curious about when somebody decides to go a different direction than the norm, you know, what friends, family think. So I'm hearing biomedical engineering, chemistry, all this stuff. And now I'm going

Jason Elkins (07:02.648)
I got laid off, so I'm going to Costa Rica. I'm not going to go look for another lab job. I'm going to go to Costa Rica, be an outward bound instructor. What did your family think about that? I've always been really independent. He'll take care of himself. He'll be fine. That's cool. Because I know sometimes some parents are very protective and really want to control and sculpture.

the path you go. And most of the people I speak with that are in adventure tourism, there's two schools. There's either one set of parents that are super like, go do what you love, follow your dreams, follow your passion. And then the other ones that don't talk to them anymore because it was, because you dropped out of medical school or law school to go be a guide in Patagonia or something like that. all right. But they were okay. Very cool. So you're in Costa Rica. How did you land the

I was actually just on, ran into the guy I replaced the first guy that the rainforest out, we're bound to Costa Rica on the bus and, arrived and like had the job interview and got the job the next day right off the bus. And he's the guy you replaced. Yeah. Yeah. The guy that I there's one of story there. okay. Yeah. He was already knew he was leaving. Yeah, he was. And he found his replacement on the bus

Yeah, it was a done deal within 24 hours. That's cool. of the, the reason I curious about the replacement part is one of the very first jobs I had in tourism. had, went to visit this place that I'd always kind of inspired and aspired to maybe working, living there. And I met the guy that was kind of running. I won't go into too many details in case anything, but I met the guy that was kind of running the place and he could not remember names to save his life.

block up and start a conversation with you calling you the wrong name. And we were there for a week. And by the end of the week, I, saw an opportunity. like, I don't think this guy's going to last very long. So yeah. So I went to the, to the owner of the place and said, Hey, you know, if things don't work out with so -and -so, love, love to come back and work with you. And I think it was a few weeks later, I got the call. yeah, anyway, your, your story was different.

Jason Elkins (09:21.966)
You met this guy on the bus, they had an interview the next day. And what was the job actually like? mean, how did that start out? What you doing? Yeah, I was taking groups of mostly high school students and then later university students on trips. The typical trip was like a 10 day to two week trip where we would do a combination of trekking. We'd usually start off up in the mountains and first

would went through this really, really rainy cloud forest. And we usually slept the first night like in mud puddles and stuff, know, camping to, you know, inaugurate the kids in the rainforest. And then, then we walked through the rainforest for several days. And we usually actually stopped and stay with families that had really, really remote farms.

So a lot of the experience was really a cultural experience where, you know, these suburban kids from the U .S. and Canada, you know, they're walking for three days and all of sudden they, you know, they arrive to this house that's, know, a little family that's completely self -sufficient, lives off the land. And yeah, so a lot of it was about, you know, those kinds of experiences. And in some ways in Outward Bound, was somewhat innovative. Ironically,

Costa Rica and New York City were bound for kind of the innovators in the cultural aspect of taking people out of their comfort zones culturally. Not only an adventure, by having a cultural experience that, for example, one family that we stayed with, had 18 children that lived off the land. A few of the kids were already off and had their own families. And the youngest one was still

know, breastfeeding and the toddler running around. And so, yeah, I kind of entered into tourism, you know, through those types of experiences where I think we really made some significant impacts on the lives of the kids really, you know, open their would think so. I've got a lot of questions about this. First though, prior to getting that job, what I've heard so far was a lot of experience bicycling, traveling around the lower 48.

Jason Elkins (11:44.056)
working in a lab, doing the research and school. What do you think it was that you brought to the interview that they hired you? Did you, had you traveled? Had you been in a rainforest before you got to Costa Rica and got this job? Was there something about your unique skillset that was ideal for the job or it was just like, Hey, we need somebody. You're a smart guy. you figured out. I spoke some Spanish and, and I had quite a bit of experience, you know, like backpacking and rock climbing

or bicycling. And so, but I did have to learn, you know, whitewater rafting and kayaking and all kinds of new bungee jumping as well as one what we did. was kind of an outward bound hadn't really done before. What was the biggest challenge? Maybe with the kids, mentioned mostly high school kids and maybe some of the older college kids, what was the

maybe challenged that you would not have expected or someone that's listening to the show that thinks, I'd love to be an outward bound guide. that just sounds so cool or any type of guide, but I mean, what was the biggest surprise or the big, the most challenging part of the water of the job? Cause you're not doing it anymore. it was very intense. Two years of living out of a backpack. it was really, really intense and not living anywhere. So that, that part of it, not being able to have a normal

is challenging, think it's a 24 -7 job. But really the most challenging is I think kind of the emotional situations you get in with kids. And Outward Bound is kind of traditionally known for problem kids. The parents kind of send them away to straighten them up or yeah, so there's frequently a lot of behavioral issues. There are a lot of like spoiled

rich kid issues that when you get them out in the forest, they can't really deal with the reality. this might go this direction when I asked that question. I wasn't going to put the words in your mouth, but I was curious about that. You weren't much older than these kids at that time, were you? Yeah, I was in my mid -20s. Yeah, I was like 25, 26. Man, I've got a couple of kids and you've been

Jason Elkins (14:08.526)
Not quite as maybe as long as I have, I don't know. But anyway, we've both been around a little while and yeah, my perception at the age of 25 about spoiled rich kids is probably, I don't know if it's changed or not, but I'm definitely a lot more patient. So I can imagine that at 25, you're just like, come on you guys, you're only a few years younger than me. What's your problem? But I also suspect you saw some pretty amazing impacts, pretty amazing, maybe, I don't know if I want to say turnarounds,

Do you remember any specific moments when you're like, man, this feels really good. I'm really helping people. Yeah. Yeah. We had this one, one particular case of a high school girl who, yeah, definitely had some physical disabilities in it. Not sure if learning disabilities exactly. but she has some, some development that disabilities, think both of her parents were physicians and have kind of, yeah, babied her and, know,

taking care of her quite, quite closely her entire life. And so yeah, she showed up and yeah, I always had a really, really hard time keeping up with the group and even, you know, lunchtime, you know, like making the sandwich. She didn't know how to cut, you know, doesn't know how to eat. So by, by the second day she was so exhausted that she was literally like passed out unconscious. we're like, you know, two days walking from a road.

And, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, we, had to basically carry her, you know, my, actually my assistant carried her. carried, we all split up his, his gear and, carried her and yeah. And she slept for over 24 hours at a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and, woke up and had like the greatest respect of the entire group, you know,

how far she pushed herself. Yeah. And yeah, from that point on, on the course she did incredibly or everything was really difficult for her, but she, yeah, she pushed through. don't have a lot of choice, you know, well, I guess you pass out and get carried out. Lucky, lucky for you. She decided to be taken more proactive approach. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's, that's, yeah, it was probably

Jason Elkins (16:34.198)
One of the most rewarding personal stories. Do the kids have you seen or read Lord of the Flies? Yeah. In the movie or reddit time ago. Yeah. You know, so as I recall, the kind of the concept is it's just a bunch of kids without any supervision and they kind of things go sideways and crazy and weird. Obviously with your groups, you had some adult supervision. you know, that was your job. but I'm curious what your perception is like when kids get in an environment like

Do they come together more or do you see the bullying and the kind of the clickish stuff or do you feel like they tend to come together and be more accepting of each other and help each other more or do you have any kind of insights into what that's like? Yeah, yeah, I think usually when you get people out of their environment, you know, in this case, school environment and you know, so somewhere

is completely foreign to everybody. I think a lot of the bullying and the kind of, you know, hierarchy and clicks kind of, kind of stop. then those tend to come together. then, you know, there's also frequently, yeah, well, one, one kid or one, one person in any, any group. If you've been working in tourism for a long time and been guiding, you know what I'm talking about? that, yeah, it can tend to be problematic. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to figure out how

deal with them. And actually one of my favorite stories is actually not with a high school student, but sometimes we would have corporate clients as well. And so once we had the entire team of the World Bank from the Central America office, or like they literally flew in a helicopter to the river. To sleep in the mud.

So I said, no, they did no sleeping in the night. They were helicoptered in and out. And, you know, we did, you know, several, you know, like trust falls and some, you know, different team building activities. that wasn't really so because there was the head of the World Bank was, you know, very like dominating, strict woman.

Jason Elkins (18:54.466)
who really is that ruled with an iron fist. But then when she was with her team in another environment where she was not prepared nearly as well as like the Costa Rican workers, hierarchy structure shifted around a little bit. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. And there, there is some mutual respect shown back to, to, workers that don't think happened very much in that, in that work. That's, that's, that's fun. I've had a few conversations with people that have done

kind of the incentive or the groups, the corporate groups and stuff like that. And it's a story that I've heard a few times and it's pretty cool. And I imagine sometimes maybe these leaders that like, you're gonna take your team out and go do this stuff out in the forest or whatever. can imagine they probably feel a little bit anxious around that because they're used to being, their identity is tied to being the boss, being in charge and being the person that everybody looks to

What are we doing? What are we, you know, that leadership role? And then you take them out of their element, put them in an element where maybe their, executive assistant has way more experience, you know, than they do. And they become reliant on other people on the team. It's probably a pretty cool, cool dynamic. You don't see other, I don't know why I want to ask this, but I'm going to ask this. Where were these, the groups of the high school kids, were they usually mixed like co -ed groups, boys and girls, or was it usually only girls or group of boys?

And I'm just going to ask you, what kind of challenges did that present? Because those of us that haven't been an Outward Bound Guide maybe have these ideas, like you take a group of boys and girls out in the woods and you got to chaperone them, supervise them. So are there any challenges that that presents that you want to discuss? Yeah, yeah, yes. I think dragging around in the mud and no showers for a week. I was waiting.

Also, they don't want to get that close to each other like, you stink. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, we'll move right on. Yeah. Yeah. And so actually from my Outward Bound days, actually my very last course with Outward Bound brought me to Ecuador. had the privilege of designing and putting together the first university course, the Rainforest Outward

Jason Elkins (21:16.558)
had it was like a month in Costa Rica, a month in Ecuador and a month in Peru. Yeah. And as we have with the same people for 90, 90 days, day and night definitely ended my career. After that, wanted to look for something else to do. And so I ended up landing in Quito. Okay. And that's where we pick up where we left off a few moments ago.

You ended up there and you saw these tour operators with their street front shops and some young person standing out front selling hiking trips or bicycle trips or mountain climbing trips or whatever. Right. Yeah. And you're like, man, instead of opening up a shop right next to them, I can help them figure out how to take their business to the next level. It sounds like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so I literally, yeah, went door to door to all these shops and started talking with them about

what the internet was. then, yeah, I launched a couple of websites, one's Ecuador Explorer, and that was kind of like a guide to Ecuador. And so we had links out to all the different travel, to our operators and travel providers. so, yeah, really over the years, yeah, I ended up helping hundreds and hundreds of small companies. Did you see any, did you see any patterns or any obvious

Cause I imagine some people are very much like, yeah, I see it. This is what we need to do and help us do it. And then I'm sure there were others like, no, I don't think people are looking online. I don't, you know, and I cause we have that in everything, right? We, I mean, we're going to discuss artificial intelligence here in just a moment. So this seems like an appropriate place to start is what did you notice with these operators? take a hundred operators, you go door to door, talk to a hundred of them at that time.

What were the patterns that you saw? Was it the older tour operators that had more resistance or what did you kind of identify at that time? Yeah, think a lot of, in Quito at the time, there were a lot of foreigners, lot of Europeans and a couple Americans that had small travel company. And so I think they tended to be like the most receptive because they kind of understood their market.

Jason Elkins (23:42.796)
back home and that they, that yeah, the internet was going to be the way that they could most easily reach. And they're also probably early adopters, just their nature, their personality. That's why they're living in Ecuador. That's why they started a business. they're open to that risk. They're not risk averse, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Early adopters risk takers. Absolutely. And yeah, what else? Yeah. Yeah. It's mostly that, that, you know, attitude and the hunger

you know, just to grow a business and to reach foreign markets. Cause that's, yeah, that's what all tourism was about, especially in those days. It was like all receptive tourism. Right. It was the only game in town. And that was about, you said 20, 25 years ago? How long ago? Yeah, it was like 27 years ago, 97. 27 years ago, you were pitching websites to people that had never seen a website. Yep. Or weren't that familiar with it. I mean, it was all brand new. So how do you feel now, 27 years later?

Now, let's jump forward to what you do now and how you help your clients basically generate more business, find more clients, find more guests to share their experiences with them. Kind of seems very similar to me as an outside observer. Yeah, I largely do the same thing. but now it's with AI and there's a lot of people that have amazing websites, but the AI is like, whoa, that's something totally new. How do you

I think I like my website, I've invested a lot of my money in my website and you probably get a lot of the same objections, kind of the same thing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. think it's a very similar situation of the late 90s where the internet was new and kind of exploded in terms of use and it was obviously it going to be the next big thing. And so yeah, I think there's a lot of similarities between where we are now with AI.

And, and, back in the early internet days, yeah, in many, different, different aspects. mean, there was tons of investment that went into the first .com boom and there was a bust. And so, yeah, I kind of find myself in a similar situation of having to explain back then what a website was and what email was, is now explaining what AI is and how you can use AI.

Jason Elkins (26:06.094)
to help the business. So we're going to definitely discuss that. And for our listeners that are listening, I think this is a great opportunity for me to ask you, mytrip .ai, what is that? don't need to, you know, this is not going to be a great conversation about the in -depth intricacies of AI and how it all works and all that stuff. But what are you, how do you describe what you do for your clients now? Like 27 years ago, we all can imagine

You need a website because people are going online, looking for play, looking for stuff. need a website. Everybody now gets that. So how do you, so how do you, how do you explain now what you're doing and what, and how it can help your clients or, or other people, doesn't necessarily have to be your client. There might be someone else listening out here that will never work with you, but might benefit from this. And I appreciate your, your graciousness to share. sure. what I would say is, well, our, our main like flagship product that

that we have right now is our AI assistance. so AI assistance in the case we're talking about now is a way that you're going to have a company AI, an AI for your company that understands your company, understands how you work, understands what you sell, how you sell it. And you can put this AI assistant on your website by like a chat interface.

So that when somebody visits your website, you're actually greeted by someone say, hey, can I help you plan the trip to wherever you are or actually about actual page to a page that you're on. If you're on a page about Antarctica, I want to take a trip to Antarctica. it's a way to really quickly initiate a relationship with a potential customer by your website, help them. Yeah, I think that is a.

huge part of the formula here is that AI enables us to help people at scale and in a way that we weren't able to before at scale. Yeah, most of the companies I work with, they provide extremely personalized service. So when you go and chat with somebody on a website, you're actually chatting with a human, which is fantastic, but you can't, if you get hundreds of thousands of visitors to website, you can't greet.

Jason Elkins (28:28.17)
every single person with a human. And so it enables a tour operator or anyone selling travel to give something first, help somebody advance on planning their trip before you're asking something from them, like filling out a form with their personal data and taking the time to do that and explain what you want. We find that it's much more satisfying for many people

have a conversation, extract all the information about what my dream trip is in the form of a conversation versus filling out a form. I'm curious because I know chat GPT and a lot of this AI stuff really was in the forefront within the last couple of years. And I remember before that you go on a website oftentimes and a little box would pop up and how can I help you today? And if you did engage, was typically, please wait. You know,

wait until we can connect you with somebody or please give us your email address and we'll have somebody reach out to you. All of our agents are busy right now, you know, and frankly, it was kind of a negative experience. Yeah. And, but I think I'm just curious. It feels like a lot of people are still, they had a negative experience with that in the past. So when they go to a website now and a little box pops up and says, how can I help you today? It's like, yeah, that's gonna, that's a total waste of time. So they just ignore it. They close it out. They this then that.

And I suspect that's a challenge you have when you're dealing with tour operators, because probably the tour operators might have some of this mindset as well. They've been on a website three, four years ago and they got annoyed by the little thing popping up and they just have this attitude that those things are just annoying. Do you run into that very often and how do you address that? sure. It's all a number game, numbers game. Every hundred people that arrive to your website, how many initially engage in a conversation and how many end

you know, leaving their contact information and then being, being satisfied, with, with, with, the interaction. And so, yeah, yeah, definitely. There's, there's a high percentage of people that just, yeah, click the X and, you know, close, close the chat window. but those that, that do initiate a chat, we're, we're finding that an extraordinarily high percent of people, we're talking over 60%.

Jason Elkins (30:54.97)
of people that initiate a conversation end up actually leaving their personal information. Which is a conversion rate that is totally unheard of in this industry. It's usually low single digit. know, of every hundred people that come to your website, you get two, three, contacts. Yeah, two, three, four percent. And so I think the magic here is, yeah, engaging someone in a conversation, offering to help someone.

and then actually helping them before you asked for their contact. It's that trust thing, right? It's, it's, it's whether you're on the street doing business, maybe 27 years ago, you're walking down the street and you have a conversation with a tour operator because you look, cause you want to go mountain biking. And if you just walk up and they say, give me your credit card or give me, what's your name? What's your phone number? I'll send you some information. You know, you got to have a little bit of a conversation and say, you know what? And,

provide some value and then once you provide that value, it's like, okay, now I've got an opportunity to do business with you. So it sounds basically the same kind of normal human nature, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's the way that humanity has interacted in, yeah, like 99 .999 % of our history. And that's really only since the internet, yeah, that we turned into form filling.

Because there's basic kind of like laws, like I don't remember the guy's name, but he's a business professor, marketing professor at Arizona State University. Can't think of it right off the of my head, but he wrote a book kind of about, you know, just outlining the different laws of law. I just remember the law of reciprocity was one that he discussed. don't, he didn't come up with it, but he wrote a great book.

And the law of reciprocity says that if you give me something, I'll give you something. And when you become aware of these things, you see it on the street. could be the waitress at the restaurant that leaves a handful of candies with the check. More than you would think are reasonable. It's not one piece of chocolate per person. It might be four or five chocolates per person. And then it's like, wow, she obviously gave us more than she's supposed

Jason Elkins (33:17.794)
or whatever, and then it's reflected in the tip. and, but it's also, you know, it's, think, so these things actually still apply with technology. can, you know, people are still people, even if one of the entities having the conversation is not a person, not a real person. It's really quite ironic, no, that, that enables us to kind of return to this old school, pre -internet sort of interactions.

Yeah, because it's really hard to give something if it's just a static website. I think websites are great. I love that, you know, but it's just static. It's hard to really give somebody something when it's not engaging. It's it's it's just sitting there. The information's there, but you got to go find it. You know, the only way I can give you something with my website is make the navigation easy. So hopefully you'll stick around. But it's really hard to give something of value and maybe.

three or four years ago, they'd pop up an ad or something. do something now, we'll give you 20%. But that's not tailored to a specific customer where I think the AI gives you the opportunity to really figure out what does the person want? Why are they here? So I can give them some of what they want with the promise that, okay, I've given you what you want, now let me help you give, now let me figure out how I can give you more of what you want. So let me put you in touch with a real person. So it's cool. Absolutely. Yeah. also - Go

yeah, for years and years, I've kind of framed before AI, I've framed it, travel marketing in general is like a race to relationship. know, the company that is first, you know, found by perspective traveler and then develops a relationship with them and helps them actually advance on their traveling pattern. Yeah. Most of the time, the first company that wins that race to relationship is the one that wins the business. Yeah. And that's across the board. It's not just tourism.

Yeah. But sometimes we forget, I think as tour operators, we pride ourselves so much in our customized attention and that we, everything is kind of bespoke and we really want to, we don't want to give you a cookie cutter solution. We're going to customize this for you, but they got so far that it takes a week for them to respond to a lead or.

Jason Elkins (35:40.076)
Or once they do respond to a lead, like, I don't have anything to show you because we do everything custom -made. So give me an hour of your time on the phone and da da da da da. And by that point, you it's, you've kind of already lost an opportunity a lot of times where you're right. think, and it's in every business. I worked in real estate for a while and maybe this term is universal, but I remember it was the golden hour, you know, the agent, cause when people decide they're going to buy a house, they tend to just go out and Zillow

Ooh, I like this one. I like this one. I like this one. And they end up in 14 different real estate databases. And the first agent that connects with them and provides them some value. And hey, I saw you're looking at this house. Let's go take a look at it in person. Boom. That's their agent. You know, unless they screw it up. I remember real estate is if you're going to sell your house, something like 80 % of people end up listing their house with the first agent that looks at their house, the first agent that walks in that are the

The first agent they meet really isn't either way saying that. And, and I think in, especially in the smaller niche adventure travel space, sometimes maybe we forget that time is important, you know? Absolutely. It's really a race. It's a race to developing a relationship with, with the traveler. And so I think the days of feeling out of form of, I want to go to wherever.

and then waiting 24 hours or so for a response. think those days are numbered. Yeah. And it would say generally most agent, most tour upwards put it right on their form or in there if they have a response email, which is even more sophisticated than that's the next level. But it would be like, you know, we'll get back to you within 24 to 72 hours or two to three, you know, one to two business days, not, not including weekends, holidays. So the person literally

You know, they were trying to figure out a price or trying to figure out what will it cost for me to take my family to Galapagos. And they couldn't figure it out on the website because we'd hide stuff because it's all customized. It all depends on what you want to do. And then we say, fill out a form and we'll get back to you in 48 hours. And it's like, that's too much. mean, that's I wouldn't sit still. I mean, I use the Internet to book stuff all the time. And if I can't find the answer to my question or feel like I'm making progress towards an answer,

Jason Elkins (38:03.426)
then I'm just going to skip. I'm on to the next place. So, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so what we're finding is with these AI assistants, you know, they greet people immediately start to, to help them kind of, you know, define what their, different preferences are, who they're traveling with, why they're traveling, what do they want to see? What do they want to do? And then, then if you're able to, you know, point people to specific products that you offer that match,

match what they want or build a custom package. The AI can recommend an itinerary and then say, okay, but let's plan a meeting with a human trip planner to go over the details and they'll be able to give you an exact quote and everything at that point. so, yeah, I think it's really enabling kind of real time at scale, not the complete sales

process or the complete customer service process, but working together with a human trip planner is the way the customer have the best customer experience. Yeah, because that first part of the experience, I mean, it's kind of touches on what we've been discussing, but it's the first part of the experience super critical. It's that first impression, right? So which means that the AI assistant needs to be a good one, you know, and I've had some conversations with you about.

training them and making sure that that is a good first impression. Because if they make that good first impression, well, it's just critical. know, if it's a bad first impression, I went on to, you'd sent me a sample of, I don't know, sample or working demo of one of your assistants. And I was messing around with it. I was like, I'm going to see if I can trick it. And I said, you know, I had this whole conversation about wanting to take a cruise with the GopGhost. then at the last minute, yeah, by the way, my kid has autism.

And, you know, I really worried about that. Can you, you know, do you guys have trips that are well suited that I don't remember the exact response, but it blew me away. It was like, okay. You know, and it was just like, felt this sense of, these guys, I know it's a chat bot. know it's AI, but they did a good job creating the AI. It's working. gave me confidence and it gave me, and it was just a very, kind of a compassionate, like, Hey, we understand there's challenges, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And specifically mentioned a couple of them that.

Jason Elkins (40:24.494)
It was really, really cool. I don't know why I'm sharing that, but yeah, I think that training is important. Pardon me. What's the, I'm sure it's the same as it was 27 years ago, but what's the biggest obstacle when you have a conversation with a tour operator? What's the number one objection that comes up for you? know, it's nowadays with these AI assistants is that we offer a personalized service. It is the number one objection that we get.

But I think just what we've been talking about, AI can do a pretty good job of being personalized. In fact, a lot of experts say that AI is really, really good. That's one of the strengths, being able to put responses and personalized conversations for each individual. I think a lot of times it's not just personal service, but it's just good service. It's just timely service. It's the kind of service that you would expect if you walked into

tour operator in the 90s and started having conversation and you figured out your trip and booked your trip via conversation. I guess I'm curious like so when a tour and I can completely understand how a tour operator could come to that objection because they're very proud of the fact that they offer specialized service. I get that. get that. That's like part of their identity as especially as a small tour operator outbound, inbound, whatever. So I get that. And then I'm like, okay,

What are the options if you really feel like we need to get a personalized service? The options are have a form, complete this form, which is a generic form that asks you questions that are completely irrelevant to your situation, or not enough questions to really figure out anything. And then we'll get back to it in a day or two. Alternative B would be to hire somebody to have somebody on call.

with their phone in their pocket, ready to respond anytime somebody goes onto the website and says, yes, I want to have a conversation with an agent. That agent might be at the dinner table with their family, middle of the night. And what kind of quality? I mean, do you have a team of really high performers that all are willing to take calls in the middle of the night? Probably not. So you're probably hiring somebody that's new that is willing to do

Jason Elkins (42:44.91)
Yeah, on the other side of the world that doesn't know your business. Yeah, exactly. Or have a trained, I'm going to say trained AI assistant because I think there's a difference. A trained AI assistant that's familiar with your business that 80 % of the time is going to do a pretty good job. 90%, maybe, maybe more. I don't know. Let's say 80 % of the time they're like, man, spot on. Because you know what? Real people don't do much better than that. That's right.

You know, you call me in the middle of the night. I'm probably not going to do an 80 % excellent job. It's probably going to be a little lower. So you've got an AI assistant that is trained that, and sometimes they're like, geez, I, you the assistant might get it wrong, but they're like, but if they're trained to say, you know what, I'm not sure, but I'm going to help connect you with somebody that can answer it. Yeah. That you've got to help out further than, just fill out a form. So I mean, is that kind of, that's kind of the answer, right? To overcome that objection. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. just curious. I would hope so. Yeah, I'm not sure how to completely answer the objection satisfactorily because, it's not a person. But what we do try to do is emulate the same type of service that your human agents give and give the AI assistants the knowledge that your

your human assistants do, which it can be challenging, but at least they understand your entire website. You can upload your documents, policies, pre -trip packing lists, et cetera, et cetera. So that the IAS has a knowledge and then you can give it a lot of direction and a personality and style so that it somewhat mimics the way that your human. And I'm envisioning the assistant.

as the term implies, assistant is really to help the people handling the sales, to help the operations team, the sales team, not replace them. Cause I think that's not, you know, I can see where somebody might be like, no, we offer personalized service. They're imagining like the grocery store where they used to have lanes that you'd get in line and you'd wait and you'd have a conversation with somebody as you're paying for your stuff. And they fired all the cashiers and now they have a bunch of automated checkouts.

Jason Elkins (45:06.092)
Maybe there's opportunities to reduce workforce, but the idea is to have the assistant, you're to have more sales, more travelers, more opportunity to hire more team members to scale it, right? We mentioned the word scaling earlier and your team, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think if I was a new salesperson on a team that had an AI assistant, I feel like I could use the AI assistant as well, right?

Like, I don't know everything. I could probably go right to the AI assistant and say, Hey, I'm working with a client that wants this, this and that. So it seems like a help on both sides, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. One, one configuration of our assistance is just that as a co -pilot for trip planners. So it's not a for a public facing bot, but a, an internal tool where people say, yeah, help me make an itinerary of five days with these different things. The budget.

And yeah, really facilitates the work of the person. so, yeah, I get to talk to a lot of small business owners and CEOs, and I must always encourage them to not think of this at all by AI as a cost -saving measure. Definitely think of it as a way to provide a better experience to your users, a better travel experience in general.

time they see an ad to their first contact with your company to actually, you know, making the sale traveling and the follow -ups that that the entire process can be enhanced and improved. I bet, I bet a traveler that's getting ready to get off the airplane in Bogota, Colombia could probably go on their phone. They've got the app they've got. They're connected with their tour operator. They probably say, Hey, remind me, who's picking me up. Right.

And, or, or, Hey, what's the phone number of the person that's supposed to be picking me up and AI can just do all that stuff at nine o 'clock on a Friday night. And anybody that's worked in the travel business for any amount of time knows how cool that would be. If your client did run into an issue that they could get an answer right away without you calling, because I worked in the business long enough that I know sometimes you come in Monday morning and there's an email sitting in your inbox.

Jason Elkins (47:23.224)
from a guest that was traveling on Saturday and they're like, hey, the driver's not here. And now it's Monday morning. And I'm like, man, no. Why didn't they call the number that was in their trip plan? Or why did they send me an email? Why did they do this? Why did they do that? And a lot of those things can be avoided. Number one, number two, the other thing that came up for me when you're discussing that was, again, anybody that's worked as part of a team in the travel industry has had the newer associate, the newer person on the team.

that sits right next to them, maybe back before COVID when we used to actually sit in the same office. But you've got, you know, you've got your junior trip planner sitting next to you and they get an inquiry and they don't know where to go. They don't know where to start because they haven't done this one yet. So it's every five minutes. Hey, Jason, hey, Jason, how long is the layover here? What is the this? What is that? And you're spending so much time answering questions that are in your database in your head or are in the website or are in your notes.

but this new associate doesn't know where to go look for them. And wouldn't that be great if they could run stuff past the AI? Hey, enough. Could ask in me, ask Amelia or whoever our chat bot is, and then I can review it maybe at the end, just whatever. But I see a lot of opportunities that I wish I'd had 15 years ago when I had team members sitting next to me asking those questions. Yeah, there are a lot of studies about how AI is impacting.

different roles in businesses. And one of the overriding tendencies is that younger, less experienced people can really get a lot more benefit. It can really help them to perform at a much higher level, know, level of their bosses. And so, yeah, absolutely. It gives trip planners, I guess, superpowers in some ways. You know, they always have that knowledgeable

coworkers sitting right next to them. Yeah, because most of the time, as I recall, you know, in my experiences, most of the time, the information that my colleague was trying to get was written down somewhere. It was in a trip planner document. It was in an itinerary somewhere. was somewhere in the reservation system. It was somewhere on the website, but they, it was a challenge. You know, they weren't sure

Jason Elkins (49:46.328)
So they would say, maybe their question is, Jason, where do I find this? I know it's in the documents somewhere, but where do I find it? And that's where AI is really, really helpful because AI, your assistants have already read, categorized everything in the written documentation so that when the associates like, long can you stay in Thailand without a visa?

AI can respond to that really quickly, much better than going to Google and trying to figure out which documents the most updated because your AI assistant's pulling from your documents that you've already kind of vetted, right? Is that kind of how works? Exactly. Our AI assistants, they run and it's getting a little bit technical here, but it's called retrieval augmented generation. what it means is when you speak to a chat

instead of going to say OpenAI or ChatGPT, it's going actually to this database of all of your documents and of your website that's inside of an AI database. so you retrieve in your chat, you retrieve information from your database and it's not like invented.

by chat GPT. there for you. I'm happy you mentioned that word because I think that's a lot of it. People, their experience of what they've heard about AI is chat GPT just makes stuff up or it pulls from unverifiable sources and you have no idea where the information came from. But with your, in your case, you're really narrowing it down to what you give it to work with. Exactly. Yeah. Technically it's called a context. You know, all of this documentation about,

who your business is, all of your policies and all the information. It draws from that and then augments that retrieval of information with OpenAI, Chat2BT to put it in a conversational format. So it can ask, well, what should I pack on my trip to the Galapagos Islands? And then it may say, well, what time of the year are you going to go? And so it

Jason Elkins (52:03.096)
dig down and find the correct answer. you're traveling in January, your documents might say if you're traveling in January, make sure you take mud boots or something, just example. then I suspect also it can then go augment that with saying the average temperature in the Galapagos in January is X. And that might not be in your documents anywhere, but it's relevant. It's, you know, I don't know. mean, is that kind of how that works when you talk about augmentation? Yeah, yeah. can.

Yeah, if you configure the system, so say if you don't find the answer in your documents, then you can go either look for it on the internet as one option, or you can go to the large language model. You can go to chat .pt and try to get an answer from there. But the problem with going directly to the language model is what's known as hallucinations. so, yeah, you have to kind of understand that these large language models are taking the

entire corpus of the internet. So every word that's been written on the internet and they're kind of compressing it down like the essential knowledge and the logic and the reasoning into something that can fit onto a hard drive, like onto your computer hard drive. And so when you kind of decompress that, you lose a lot of facts and small details. so that's where a lot of the hallucinations

come in is it kind of has to, it really wants to, you know, tell you what you want to hear. It really wants to do a good job for you. So it does tell you what you want to hear. And if it doesn't actually have that fact in, you know, in its memory, although it doesn't have exactly memory, then yeah, it will make up something. kind of fill in the gaps, really. What I'm hearing is just to kind of fill in the gaps. Yeah, exactly. And so really the way that you avoid that is

when you're asking a question that you get your information, factual information from a Google search or from your company documents and not from the large language model directly. Interesting. Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. Which is why, because I've come across and seen a couple of things, like I'm on YouTube way more than I should be. And I see like, create your own assistant, create your

Jason Elkins (54:24.014)
chat bot, you know, and it's like an eight minute, eight minute video, but it's, there's, it's like everything. There's a lot more to it than that. I've also seen a lot of things, you know, create, make a free website, you know, in 15 minutes. Yeah. I'm sure that that's something that, you know, it's a perception thing, but part of the things that have come up in this conversation, why it's important to have it trained correctly. And cause you, you don't want it operating at 20%. It doesn't really help to have a quick conversation

all your website visitors if it's a really bad conversation. So what do you want to say about kind of the importance of hiring the right person or doing it the right way, whether it's you or somebody else? what do you want people to know? your analogy to, you know, here's a free website builder. I'll go in and build my own website as a really good one. Yeah, some people may be able to do that well, but most people will find that they make a kind of a crappy website.

And so I think the same thing happens if you go and find a free or low cost, make your own chat bot for your company. Yeah, it'll probably. Well, the thing is you don't know what you don't know. If you've never built a website and everybody's telling you, yeah, there's places you can go and build a website for free. Then you're like, okay, well, why would I pay thousands of dollars for somebody to build a website?

When I keep hearing, I don't have the time and energy to go do it, but I keep hearing that I can do it for free. So I'm reluctant to pay somebody else to do it, even though I don't want to spend the time to do it, but it just sets a benchmark for what you think a website should be worth. But then anybody that has actually built decent websites, good websites, or worked in marketing realizes, yeah, that's a, yeah, you technically can build a website for free.

but actually having it do what you want it to do and maintaining it and keeping up with it and all that stuff is a whole nother level. And I know like a lot of these tour operators that you're working with, they're, you know, kind of leery about having someone out there that's, that's not representing them well. So we need to, I imagine that that's part of overcoming that objection with them as well as how do we make sure that the chat bot is kind of acting like somebody on their staff. So how do you go about that? Yeah, it's, it's really a matter of a lot

Jason Elkins (56:45.996)
testing. And so we've even set up an entire testing platform where we create an AI assistant, a separate AI assistant that poses as a typical client of the company and has given a goal to purchase or schedule a trip for one of the products this company is selling. And

It actually goes and has a conversation with our AI or it could be other other AIs or other people even in theory and goes through the process of trying to accomplish something, you know, be it booking a trip or finding out a piece of key information they need to plan their trip. And so that way we can really simulate many, many, even thousands or hundreds of thousands

different situations, different types of clients that have different questions and needs. And we can really, really test the assistant then under many different conditions. And then we have another AI assistant, which is a chat critic who goes back and they analyze the transcripts of each of the chat and grades the assistant on how well it's responded to the person's questions, how well it's facilitated.

the person to be able to accomplish their goals. And so from there, we kind of the system's performance and then give feedback to our developers and eventually to the system itself of how to self -improve. I don't know if you let it slip out, if it came out, or if it's just poured out.

part of your normal conversation here, but as I was listening to you, I heard you say it has a conversation with our chat bot or another chat bot or even person. That's what I heard. I don't know if that's exactly what you but what came up there was what I'm hearing you say is you could take your secret shopper chat bot and have it engage with a real person and then have your critic evaluate that conversation as well. Couldn't you? Yeah. Yeah, you can.

Jason Elkins (59:08.078)
I'm sure there's companies thinking about this stuff, but I'm thinking if you've got a call center, you could also do it with voice transcripts, I'm sure. Exactly. You could have a secret shopper that's an AI secret shopper engages with a real person and then the system evaluates that call and looks for areas of improvement. Yeah, exactly. You can also do the same thing with existing call transcripts or chats or even email histories as well and analyze that how well did this

attend to the needs of the traveler. Wow. I've worked in sales in a few different roles. And I remember at one point it was, we're recording all the calls so we can go back and listen to the calls. It was a lot of pressure. Honestly, it was like, I don't really want my bosses listening to my calls because I know I screw things up. Everybody does, or I shouldn't say screw things up, but there's always areas for improvement no matter how good you are. And we all have our own ideas about how things should be done. And I'm imagining if

If I'm an employee sitting there in a sales role or consulting role, and I've got AI is going to go evaluate every conversation. have every text I have, like probably a good thing, but most people are going to have a hard time getting their head around being judged and critiqued by AI. But it's actually really interesting. That's a whole nother conversation though, isn't it? Yeah, for I guess, it starts off as AI critics and

eventually become your boss and then we're really in trouble. My sales manager is a chat bot. But I can, there's so many uses, right? That really benefit, actually really benefit the entire team and the client. Okay. But that's a rabbit hole. don't know. Is there anything else you want to touch on with that? I guess it's quite a rabbit hole. But yeah, our really, our intention is to really

Give tools to tour operators that are going to help them automate and improve really each step of the process and the entire traveler life cycle. From the very first time they see a marketing, an ad to clicking on the landing page. Yeah, it's going to be all personalized in the future and for a market of one person. So you'll be receiving

Jason Elkins (01:01:31.956)
emails that were in marketing materials and even website contents that were created just for you and designed to help to motivate you to purchase the product. Which brings us back around earlier where you're speaking about, you know, some of your potential clients have this, well, we really like to personalize, everyone to personalize, personalize, personalize. And what I hear you saying is through the use of some of these tools, you can actually personalize things a lot better than you can with

Obviously a form, we talked about a form, but also just kind of those automated emails when someone fills out the form and they get an email back, thanks for connecting with us. Those are really hard to personalize other than maybe a name. know, dear Mike, hey, it great hearing from you. look, you know, but that's a lot of work to customize an email without AI. So yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, almost impossible. Say like you say, like an autoresponder that comes from reform.

Yeah, very difficult. But with AI now, it's actually, it's not that difficult. You can ask follow -up questions and other, yeah, the types of follow -up questions that a real trip planner, human trip planner would ask if they were attending the email. And I suspect with your chatbots and just all these different things, you could actually probably even demo that take because some companies do have live.

people that are responding, you know, you go onto website and the box pops up and you've got a live agent, they're having a conversation with you. And it would be interesting to see a side by side of that because I've had enough live conversations, frankly, with people on websites. Yeah, it's a person, but I don't know about you, but I always get the feeling that they're having five or six conversations at once. You know, cause they ask me a question, I respond to the question and then I wait and I wait and I wait. And then they come

And then three or four messages down there, they've like, they're asking me the same question. I just answered two or three questions earlier because they've got so many different conversations going on. And then you get to the end of it and they say, okay, is there anything else I can help you with today? And I'm like, you didn't even help me with what we started with, you know, and it gets frustrating. And I suspect a well -trained chat bot be a lot more responsive, a lot quicker

Jason Elkins (01:03:56.268)
Maybe more relevant, less likely to forget where they are in the conversation. And that would be an interesting side by side, wouldn't it? To demonstrate. Yeah. Yeah. You can test that. There, there, there is so much stuff. It's like, you know, I actually imagine that's probably one of the challenges working with this stuff is stay, you know, staying focused on kind of core products. Cause I'm sure every day you come up with five or six new ideas of different ways you can use the tool

At some point you just got to take action and move forward, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, you have to come back, say focus, focus, focus, because the others are a thousand one things that you could do in AI, you know, enables you to do them relatively easier than before. yeah, yeah. You still have to focus and yeah. Yeah. That would be my challenge. I think my ADHD is a little bit too active for me to sit down and say, okay, this is my goal today. And it's, I get pulled in a lot of different directions and especially every time I go into

you know, chat GPT or any sort of AI thing. It's like, it, it's a great, for me, it's great ideas. It's a really good idea source when I go there and it turns me onto things I didn't even think of. I'm like, yeah. Wow. Like I'm like, how do I do this? And it comes back and says, well, there's three or four different ways. then I'm like, Ooh, the third way. I never would have thought of that. And now I feel you start making associations between things. And after a long full day,

totally forgot what I was working on and what I was really trying to accomplish. I've created a whole nother project and, you know, especially with website, you know, I it for a amount of website design and, some copywriting stuff and it's yeah, I get, get distracted. So anyway, Jason, we've discussed a bunch of things about you personally. And actually one of things I wanted to mention about your story is, interesting because you're, I'm going to use the word a little tech

I don't think that's a negative thing. think that's a, that's a positive thing, right? You're kind of a little bit of a tech nerd, but you're also competitive bicycle racer, climber, guide, naturalist, all these things that you've done. think, I've spoken with a lot of people and I don't see that interesting mix very often of somebody that really has his chops in tourism, adventure tourism, just to travel in general, as well as on that tech side.

Jason Elkins (01:06:19.212)
So I would imagine that that kind of puts you in a unique, a unique spot when you're having conversations with your clients. Yeah. That's kind of the job that I've made for myself as being the travel tech expert. And so, yeah, my job to keep up with the latest things that are happening and yeah, hopefully able to guide my clients and my company in the right direction as far as technology goes. Yeah. I've been following you for a while and it seems like you're getting a great, great response and you,

I haven't been following you for 27 years. I suspect you've had great response for all of those years. And it's, it's real fun to kind of watch and communicate with you as you go through this stuff. Jason, is there anything else that I should have asked, forgot to ask, or that you want to make sure our listeners know about you, your business, AI in general, travel in general, is there anything that we did not touch on that you want to make sure we do touch on before we wrap it

No, I think we've got most of our thing. Just if, if people want to get in touch with me, they can find me on LinkedIn. was a pretty unique name, Jason Halberstadt. There's only a couple of us, but both of lived in Boulder, Colorado. So I'm the one that's now in, yeah, it works in the travel and, yeah. So yeah, please find me on LinkedIn and connect and let's continue the conversation. And we'll have your website linked in the show notes as well. I'd encourage anybody, you

anybody that's listening to this that's interested in kind of what's going on in that space. Jason's a great resource. I love that you mentioned LinkedIn because you do post some really useful information and articles there as well. So I think anybody that's remotely interested should at least follow you on LinkedIn, but better yet, I've had a few conversations with you and it's been really, really super interesting. So thank you so much for joining me today, sharing some of your time with our listeners and I appreciate

Well, thank you, Jason. It's really, really been a pleasure. And yeah, I'm looking forward to keeping talking. All right. Thanks, Jason. Bye. Take care. Bye bye.