Gather and Go with Brian Jewell

Gather and Go with Brian Jewell


Could AI Take Your Travel Biz to the Big Time?

December 03, 2025

Is artificial intelligence the best thing that ever happened to small tourism companies?

Dan Flores believes it may be. A longtime travel marketing executive and current head of tourism for Satisfi Labs, Dan has worked with dozens of organizations to help leverage the power of AI to extend their capabilities and increase sales. And he’s excited about what the future this technology holds for tourism entrepreneurs.

Dan joins this episode of the podcast to share how AI can give small tour companies a competitive advantage and explain why you can’t afford to delay in adopting this technology. He also gives some insights about how travel companies should organize their web content to become more discoverable by AI agents. Plus, we have news about a rollback of airline compensation rules and a hot tip about signing up for the industry’s best familiarization tours.

Insights from Dan Flores

Dan had lots of exciting perspective about how artificial intelligence tools can benefit travel professionals. Here’s what he had to say about how AI can give smaller operators a competitive edge: great things done. Here’s what he had to say about how he learned to build a great remote culture:

For a small tour operator or entrepreneur, it actually gives you opportunities. It democratizes scale. We’re seeing more solo entrepreneurs build companies that they couldn’t build in that time frame right now becoming millionaires because they can use AI to build all these things…. They don’t have to have the cash flow to hire all of these people to do it. It makes two people, three people, five or six people operate as if they had 18, 20 or 25 people.”

Plus, he had great perspectives on:

  • How to build website chat bots people want to use
  • How AI agents can save you time
  • Integrating agentic AI into your travel sales pipeline
Resources Mentioned in This Episode

Learn more about Satisfi Labs at satisfilabs.com

Follow Dan on LinkedIn.

Sign up for our OnSite familiarization tour list at https://grouptravelleader.com/fams/.

Key Moments From This Episode

1:08 — Travel News: DOT rolls back airline passenger compensation plan

2:22 — Be the first to know about our upcoming FAM trips

6:09 — The stunning growth of AI tools and adoption

8:11 — How Dan Flores uses AI in everyday life

12:49 — How AI is impacting tourism businesses

17:06 — A better way to answer customer questions

23:10 — Leveraging AI agents to serve customers better

30:06 — How close are we to fully automatic AI sales in travel?

31:46 — Optimizing your website to work with AI agents

34:48 — Will AI disrupt your travel career?

Watch the Full Interview

See the full interview with Dan on our YouTube channel.

About the Podcast

Gather and Go with Brian Jewell is a tourism industry podcast that helps group travel leaders plan, promote and lead better trips. There are also tips and insights for destination marketers and others who support the tourism trade. Each episode reaches thousands of professional tour operators, travel agents and the volunteer group leaders they serve. The audience also includes destination museum leaders, church travel leaders and other tourism enthusiasts around the world. Each show includes an interview with a smart travel pro or an insightful person from outside tourism who’s expertise can help make travel businesses better. You’ll also hear travel news, road tips and more. New episodes are released about twice monthly.

You can find Gather and Go wherever your listen to podcasts or subscribe by email.