Destination Marketing Is Now AI Marketing: Brand USA and Spain’s Playbook for 2026

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Destination marketing is changing fast, and this session makes it obvious why. In this Skift Take Sessions episode, Wil Slickers sits down with Skift tourism reporter Bailey Schulz to unpack the biggest takeaways from Skift Global Forum, where Skift CEO Rafat Ali speaks with Fred Dixon, CEO of Brand USA, and Miguel Sanz, President of the European Travel Commission and Director-General of Turespaña.

Wil and Bailey break down the three shifts that matter most right now: why the next battleground is influencing how AI models recommend destinations, not just buying ads; why airlift and new point-to-point routes are unlocking secondary cities and changing visitor flows; and why overtourism has become as much a perception and management challenge as it is a marketing one.

Then you’ll hear the full on-stage conversation, including Fred’s view on how Brand USA is rebuilding its global platform and Miguel’s argument that destinations need more marketing, not less, if they want demand to spread beyond the usual hotspots.

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All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Skift Take Sessions podcast. I am sitting here with our global tourism reporter, Bailey, who just came back from maternity leave. Bailey, how are you doing today?

No, yeah, thank you so much for having me and for giving me an opportunity to bring up the maternity leave and just how fun it’s been the past few months with that new journey of parenthood.

But I’m excited to be back at Skift, excited to be on the podcast for the first time for me. So I got excited when you reached out and asked me to be on. But yeah, excited to kick off this conversation.

Well, I’m excited too because yeah, we barely got to talk when you first joined the company and then went on maternity leave.

And then obviously I didn’t want to bug you during that time, but you had some great articles go out. You actually got to cover this session that we had for our transatlantic summit for those who are listening.

We held this back in, I believe, September. And this session specifically was between Fred Dixon and Miguel Sanz, and obviously our CEO and founder, Rafat.

But I want to go into one of the first kind of thoughts or questions I had for you, which is destination marketing is no longer ads and influencers, but it’s more around the influence of AI.

So basically Miguel, throughout this session, says that the new job is not just building a website or buying media, it’s actually shaping what?

ChatGBT, Gemini, Claude and other models recommend as a lot of consumers are actually going to these LLMs for their inspiration, for their itinerary planning, for you name it, right?

So what’s the most important implication for destinations that still think marketing equals campaigns rather than training the LLMs to find them?

Yeah, I think you brought a really interesting point in that conversation where there might be some people looking at a country like Spain and all of the tourism that that country gets. And it’s like, okay, everyone knows about Spain.

Everyone knows about Barcelona. Like, why do we need marketing dollars to go toward a destination like that? What’s the point?

And he brought up a really good point that it’s like these DMOs wear a lot of hats these days and juggle a lot of things.

And so it’s not just promoting these big cities and spending some money on marketing where it’s this, these new roles of, okay, you’re spending money on things that might not even be on your website anymore.

It’s making content that not only influences like these real people, these real travel agents, but you’re influencing what sort of answers are spit out by chat, GPs and whatnot.

And so, yeah, I think from from what he’s saying that as long as you’re you’re making content that’s describable by these different models, this can really help destinations, including some of those that might be a little more off the beaten track.

Yeah, I totally agree, Bailey.

And I think this is actually really important that you brought up the secondary markets just because of how important they’re going to need to implement these new innovative ways to be discovered outside of kind of relying on the main market in their

destination or in that country. So really good point. One of the things I really actually do love too is the live tourism example. I’m a big fan of Formula One.

So I think live tourism of something like that is really important.

3:07

Overtourism Management

But also over tourism, which we talked about with, you know, examples could be Barcelona, where, you know, locals were spraying water with water guns on tourists at one point due to the amount of tourism that was happening.

And Miguel kind of states that this is more of a perception problem rather than actual fact. And I would love to get your take on this because I do feel like there has to be some truth, right? If we’re covering it and not just skiff, right?

Like there’s actual coverage on ABC or Fox or CNN around this. And so, yeah, we love to get your take if this is actually just perception. And how destination is actually going to hedge this?

Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting point that you bring up.

They discuss about this perception issue in the Obertourism, where what Miguel talks about in the session is how DMOs have sort of a role in addressing that.

Even though he does call it more of a perception issue, like you said, I think this is something that is having real world effects. So it’s not only, okay, we’re going to put out a campaign and that’s it.

It’s dealing with things like when there are these big concerts or sporting events that do come to town, these DMOs are sort of stepping in and helping these destinations make certain adjustments to make sure they can handle those crowds and are

prepared for that sort of thing. So I think they brought up things like garbage pickup, making sure you’ve got the flow of travelers right.

And kind of another layer on that too is like we were talking about earlier is putting out that messaging to try to help alleviate too many people at once in certain destinations.

So it’s getting the word out on, okay, maybe you don’t want to go to Barcelona, but there’s like this other destination nearby that like also has all these great things to do.

I know it’s something that we’re seeing these DMOs be interested in pushing and it’s also something that we’re seeing travelers be interested in with kind of going to these places and be like, oh my gosh, I saw this beach on a TikTok that no one goes

to that I want to post myself. And so those two are sort of happening at once, which I think is a big focus right now for these companies.

Yeah, 100%. It’s an interesting point, right?

Like we have the push for the main destination or the big attractions that we all know and love, the Instagram moments, but there’s these other Instagram moments, the secondary ones, the ones are like the hidden gems, the secret cove that maybe

nobody knew or a fun cliff and mountain climb that you can go do rather than the popular treks of like Everest, right? Like there’s tons of secondary markets that are really getting that spotlight now due to the discovery of not just DMOs, but

travelers that are kind of going off the beaten path. And so yeah, the power of the internet and social media.

All right, Bailey, thank you so much for joining me today as the listeners are going to get ready to listen to the actual session with Fred and Miguel from our Transatlantic Summit.

So I’m super excited and obviously for the listeners, stay tuned on skift.com where you see other pieces that Bailey covers throughout the year are on tourism. So thank you, Bailey.

Yeah, thanks for having me.