Remember Couchsurfing ? It was a website that allowed you to stay with locals (for free) and always had a plethora of events and meetups you could attend no matter where you were in the world. It was one of the best ways to meet locals and travelers on the road. It was one of my favorite sites. Pretty much everyone on the team here used it a lot over the years. My Director of Content, for example, was not only an avid traveler who went on multiple multi-day trips with strangers thanks to Couchsurfing, but he was also a host, and he was even featured in a calendar they made one year! I used it to stay in places like Copenhagen, London, Oxford, Munich, Broome, Paris, Osaka, Athens, and so forth and so forth. I mean, I loved it. I met people in cities like Lyon just to hang out, did meet-ups in NYC, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and so many other places. But ever since the site started charging around 2013, and then instituted a paywall during the pandemic, fewer and fewer people have used it.
Artificial intelligence (A.I.) is all the rage these days. Everyone is talking about how it’s going to change the world. It’s making waves in design, art, graphics, and contracts. But will it change travel? I actually don’t think it will that much. At least, not in the near term. Here’s why: The internet is littered with failed companies that tried to reinvent travel planning. They failed because people actually want to plan their travels, as it gives them ownership of their trip. People like researching restaurants, finding hotels, reading blogs and guides, and figuring out what to do. All this lends a sense of discovery to the endeavor. Planning a trip gives people an emotional connection to their experience. Companies that tried to remove that have failed or pivoted to booking corporate travel. Which is why I don’t think people will say, “Hey Google! Make me an itinerary for Hong Kong! ” any time soon. First, AI isn’t that great yet. It still scrapes (steals) content from