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Is Disney a media company or an experiences company?

Disney dropped its end of fiscal 2025 results this week. Here is how it looks:

Entertainment: Full year segment operating income increased 19% to $4.7 billion
Experiences: Record full year segment operating income of $10.0 billion

In case your math isn’t great, Disney makes more than double the money on experiences than it does on its entertainment business.

Maybe over here in the experiences world we aren’t so surprised by this ( I was a little surprised TBH), but I’d suggest this isn’t the average woman-in-the-street perception of what business Disney is really in.

On their renowned creator podcast this week, Colin & Samir broke this down through the creator lens bringing in parallels with Mr. Beast and his Beastland project in Saudi Arabia as well as other sold out stadium style events like those run by Dude Perfect and others. I also saw comments from creators in Japan this week, talking about the Netflix launch of the last season of Stranger Things talking about how they think Netflix is on the cusp of creating theme parks

But then it really got interesting (for us here in travel) when Colin & Samir talked about businesses that were coming the other way. Those who had the experiences first and then worked that into a prominent media and merchandise offering.

The example they used were Run Clubs but many of you who read this newsletter have already done the hard bit around building experiences that people already love – something these creators are needing to figure out.

What most of the experience companies don’t have is the media side, where they have formed a compelling narrative that people want to tune into every day. Most brands move straight into product demos and “buy my thing” on their socials – which is the total wrong thing to do.

The best form of marketing is to have someone else point the spotlight on you. Pointing it on yourself is just an ad and everyone can see that.

And in here is the land of opportunity in 2026.

Outside of Disney, who is doing this best?

The answer is, not many – so again this opens the opportunity to stand out. Whilst you’d expect someone like Airbnb to be crushing this, I’d say the best I’ve seen at any level of scale is Get Your Guide (GYG).

The GYG creator program is not exactly a unified storyline on the brands own channel but rather thousands of storylines on individual creator channels where GYG is always the hero.

At Videreo, this is where we take some inspiration by offering this same type of creator program but running it “as-a-service” for any brand, like for example Intrepid’s Urban Adventures. We’ve built all the workflows and all the tooling. We’ve leveraged AI to make operations smooth for scalability and we’ve built the data flows and dashboards so brands, destinations and agencies can see at a glance how it is all performing.

What I’d love to see are some brave brands working with creators who use their experience as the backdrop for storytelling. Brands need to trust in the story being told, because it won’t always be about them – but they will always be there as the place the story unfolds.

For example, if I owned a luxury resort, then this off season I’d be inviting a bunch of creators to play out their own version of a White Lotus style storyline – each bit playing out on each of the individual creators’ channels but being threaded together on the brands owned channel.

There are a ton of ideas like this we can help execute (and measure).

The other brand worth keeping an eye of is arrival.com.au which has been launched as a travel company that most of us in the industry would recognise, but is built on the back of a social media duo – The Inspired Unemployed and their 2.3M followers on Instagram.

Videreo is the place where you can have your own creator program for your brand up and running by tomorrow.

Contact me to learn how we can make this happen for you.

Whilst on Disney – there was also this article this week about how Disney is embracing AI in its animation.

This content is provided by the (interim) newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

Expedia announces its first Chief AI & Data Officer

Expedia is not standing still in the AI world. This week they announced the appointment of their first ever Chief AI & Data Officer in Xavier (Xavi) Amatriain.

Xavi has cut his teeth at giants “building world-class AI systems at Google, LinkedIn, Netflix, and multiple startups.”

The Expedia announcement says Xavi’s remit will be to develop “our long-term AI and data strategy, accelerating how we use generative, agentic, and adaptive technologies to power proactive, predictive, and deeply personalized travel experiences on a global scale.”

On his own post about the announcement Xavi said “I am convinced that travel is one of the verticals most ripe for AI disruption right now. There is a reason why almost every Generative AI demo starts with a travel planning use case—it is the perfect problem space. But to move beyond demos and actually make travel better, you need two things: scale of data and deep domain expertise. Expedia has gathered both over many years.”

If you’re reading this, you too are probably likewise convinced.

What most excites Xavi who pretty much could’ve chosen his own place at almost any company is “applying state-of-the-art AI to consumer-facing products that impact millions of people”.

We look forward to seeing how this shapes the future of Expedia.

McKinsey drops monster 27-page report on agentic commerce

McKinsey continues to pump out the large and well researched information that we can then drop into ChatGPT to get our own summary.

This week is a big deep dive into agentic commerce – something we really should be reading every word of (and you can on the link here).

After the success of turning the last monster McKinsey effort into an AI podcast with NotebookLM – I’ve done the same for you here and released it yesterday as a “bonus” episode. The major bonus is you don’t have to hear my voice on it!

If reading the full report is beyond your current limits of time and attention – you can listen to the summary whilst going to grab a coffee here.

Other great reads! Tahnee Perry writes one of the best newsletters out there when it comes to AI + Marketing, often with a strong lens on travel in the examples used.

Strong recommend:

Zero to Unicorn

Weekly trends, tools & tips for travel, marketing and AI.

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Google gives travel people tips on where you need to focus (Video)

CA Clark from Miles Partnership alerted me this week that some of the presentations for PhocusWright are now up and available for those of us who couldn’t make it.

This one from Google seems important. (Video link).

It was hosted by Google's James Byers who described himself as doing search at Google specifically for travel. James tells us the “context unlocks magic”. Longer queries have a lot more context and nuance inside them, and this type of “search” should be responded to with an equally nuanced response.

In CA’s post the “takeaway for destinations seemed to be – your niche content matters more than ever. James showed an example of someone planning an Ireland road trip, asking for "live music" recommendations. The AI didn't pull that from a feed—it pulled it from a pub's website mentioning live music starts at 9:30 pm. That's the kind of specific, experiential detail that surfaces in these long, contextual queries. His advice: LLMs need verified data, photos and local expertise to answer these complex questions accurately. Get the "niche bits of nuance" and human voices out there. The AI is finally good enough to find them and match them to the right traveler.”

Also don’t forget that Google now also indexes Instagram!

At Videreo we’ve got some experiments running this weekend around the World Cup draw and the host cities and how we might be able to match some of the inevitable flood of inquiries about these cities as soon as the ball drops for each country being matched to a destination.

What EXACTLY did Sam Altman say about booking travel with OpenAI

We reported here a week or two ago about the comments attributed to Sam Altman about being able to book travel and where advertisers might sit in that, if at all.

This was given some additional impetus when Google intimated it could (and would) do something similar – only to walk that back when some of their biggest advertisers started seeing their stock prices tank…

Given this is the new battleground for travel at the macro level, the new “front door for travel” I wanted to track down a video of the conversation Altman was having and hear the words straight from his own mouth.

This week I found it – it’s worth a watch (given we are ultimately all just pawns in these gladiators’ games).

The direct quote that means the most here: " ' . ."

The Slack group fires up over digital Identity

No link for this one. You need to be in the Slack Group to see what the full conversation is about – but this one on Digital identity caught mt eye.

I asked GPT to summarise the main points for us all:

Summary of the Conversation About Decentralised Identity (DI), Multi-Agent Systems & LLM Memory

Christian Watts – “Is there still a place for DI?” + Preference for Centralisation

Opens by asking whether Decentralised Identity (DI) still has a meaningful role.
Argues DI may be getting steamrolled by the emergence of a few dominant entry points (Google, OpenAI, etc.).
Believes travel doesn’t need DI, unlike health/finance, which already solve identity in silos.
Skeptical about multi-agent systems on the user side; thinks the complexity pushes everything back toward a single, centralized LLM that can hold the necessary context.
Says humans don’t care about privacy/security enough to adopt DI: “When you install an OpenAI app, you give full access and no one cares.”
Thinks saved preferences ("is vegetarian", “prefers chicken to fish”) are too static and not useful; the LLM’s live contextual understanding will outperform fixed preference profiles.
Concerned that memory + agents could become messy.

Mike Coletta – Complexity & Adoption Context

Notes the debate around centralized vs decentralized systems is extremely complex and varies by geography.
Later endorses Alex’s expertise and directs Christian to Alex’s DestinationAI presentation for deeper context.

Alex Bainbridge – Strong Defense of DI for Multi-Agent Systems

Provides the most detailed argumentation.
Says multi-agent ecosystems inherently require decentralized identity:
- Example: Consumer asks Agent A → Agent A asks Agent B → Agent B asks Agent C.
- Without DI, passing identity/context between agents creates legal liability.
Suggests the LLM will orchestrate multiple tools in parallel (weather, plants flowering, walking routes, etc.) and then combine into itineraries.
Raises value chain questions: who creates the value and who gets paid when many tools/agents contribute?
Pushes back against Christian’s “LLM memory solves everything” view:
- Memory is contextual, changes by trip, travelling companions, situation, etc.
- Memory is helpful but nowhere near the entire necessary context.
Clarifies that:
- LLMs do not share memory with apps.
- Tool definitions can ask about the user, but OpenAI’s protections prevent actual sharing unless explicitly allowed.
- Problems arise when an agent subcontracts work to another agent → data flow becomes messy.
Discusses enum values vs free-text preferences:
- enums are essential for legacy systems and internationalisation.
- free-text preferences are valuable for LLMs because they act as ordering factors, not just filters.
Clarifies decentralised self-attested preferences ≠ decentralised identity:
- You don’t need DI for most sightseeing use cases (restaurants, tours), because providers only know the lead booker.
- Only certain cases (e.g., diving certificates) truly require identity.

Core Tensions in the Debate

1. Is DI Needed in Travel?

Christian: No — travel doesn’t need identity, and centralised LLMs will dominate.
Alex: Yes — only if we build multi-agent systems. Otherwise identity sharing becomes a legal/technical nightmare.

2. Should the Future Be Multi-Agent?

Christian: No — too complex; better handled by one LLM with full context.
Alex: Yes — agents will specialise; LLM will orchestrate them.

3. Is LLM Memory Enough?

Christian: Yes — memory + contextual reasoning replaces static preferences.
Alex: No — memory is only part of the picture and cannot capture all context flows.

4. What About Security & Privacy?

Christian: Users don’t care, so DI won’t gain adoption.
Alex: Even if users don’t care, systems need DI to manage legal and technical interoperability between agents.

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Marketplace Spotlight: Propellic

In huge news, Brennen Bliss, the founder of Propellic has been named in the Forbes Top 30 under 30 for the USA.

The article goes on to explain “Alongside this recognition, his Austin-based agency, Propellic, is distinguished as the sole AI-focused travel marketing agency on the list. Propellic leverages artificial intelligence across brand strategy, creative, search engine and LLM optimization, paid media, analytics, and performance marketing to help travel brands grow globally.”

To that end, Brennen posted this week about a question he gets asked weekly: “Is "AI SEO" just a scammy rebrand of regular SEO?”

Brennen explains “Here's the truth: most "AI SEO" content is either fearmongering or hand-wavy theory. But travelers ARE using ChatGPT and Gemini to research trips, and there are two concrete things you can test right now.”

To see what those things are now, check the post.

Big congrats to Brennen and Propellic who have always been generous supporters of this newsletter.

If you have a B2B business underpinned by AI and looking for people to notice you, you can sign up to the marketplace for peanuts (top right corner, 5 mins, bring your logo).

I’ve priced for bootstrapped startups but also accepting larger companies too.

Automatic for the people: Green

Oliver Green announced his departure from Carpe Diem, the European powerhouse in day tours and experiences where Green served as CMO.

Seems Oli is not just taking a well-earned break but this week dropped an incredibly handy explainer on how any business of any size can get going on building their own automations to start to build true productivity gains.

These are types of tips that can only come from someone who has been in the trenches, doing the work that many of our readers here are doing. In short, Oli gets it and understands both the tools but also the audience capability set.

You can read the article yourself on Oli’s LinkedIn which I think could be a must follow going forward.

Slack Group!

Podcasts and Sponsors

Podcasts now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts:

New podcasts are now showing up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for your easy listening pleasure!

The special FREE education series continued this week with Santiago Rodriguez introducing us all to our very own statistical analyst AI co-worker.

Jump in – follow along and get real usable and actionable insights for your business immediately and for free. Best to watch and listen all at once some maybe try this one on YouTube.

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Most clicked last week was the link to the Qatar Airways AI videos.

That’s it – you’ve made it to the end of this edition. Happy Thanksgiving to those who are celebrating it! If you’re thankful for this newsletter – you can always buy me a coffee.

I’ll be putting the result of the most clicked post in next week’s edition so you can see where others are focusing. If I’ve missed something, you’ve got a tip or any feedback at all – you can simply reply to this email and it will come straight to me. I’m doing this for You so please don’t be shy to tell me what you think

Glossary

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Artificial intelligence leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind. (source IBM)

Generative AI (GAI) is a type of AI powered by machine learning (ML) models that are trained on vast amounts of data and are used to produce new content, such as photos, text, code, images, and 3D renderings. (Source Amazon)

Large Language Model (LLM) is a specialized type of artificial intelligence (AI) that has been trained on vast amounts of text to understand existing content and generate original content.

ChatGPT – Open AI’s LLM; sometimes referred to by its series number GPT3; GPT3.5 or GPT4. These are used by Microsoft & Bing.

Gemini – Google’s suite of LLM.

If wanting to go even deeper into the AI lexicon – check out this handy guide created by Peter Syme for the tours & activity sector