Hitting the Road: What We've Learned about the Travel Industry at Recent Conferences

Travel is in our DNA (literally and figuratively), and the last few weeks were packed with great conversations, fresh ideas, and a lot of momentum for our partners. We've attended several conferences over the last few weeks. We hope you had the chance to stop by and see us at our booth and grab some Bandwango swag (we have Bandwango-branded Tide to Go pens!). Here’s a quick look at where Bandwango’s been lately and what we brought home.

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First stop: deep in the heart of Texas, where the Texas Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus (TACVB) was inthe famous cattle town of Fort Worth. Our Sales Director Elyssa Hammond took center stage—literally—to talk about how Bandwango is helping DMOs across Texas and the US drive more visitors and measure their economic impact. Fun fact: Elyssa hand-sewed the top she wore onstage.

During TACVB, Destinations Texas rolled out Conference Quest powered by Bandwango—and the response was all smiles. Attendees loved the gamified competition, and there was healthy competition to check in as much as possible in order to climb the leaderboard. Destinations Texas is already ideating on how to make the gamified challenge even bigger and more challenging next year.

Our next stop was Olympia, Washington, for the OneWest Annual Conference. This one took some travel chops for our Sales Director Kate Skidmore, who flew into Seattle and then drove two hours to a remote waterslide lodge (yes, you read that right). Sadly, the waterslide was closed, but the remote location turned out to be a boon—participants stayed together, made real connections, and had meaningful conversations.

When participants were unsure what to do each evening after the conference, Kate had the answer—using Bandwango. She built a “Best of Olympia” pass on the spot, giving participants fun options to explore their surroundings.

Next up: North Lake Tahoe, where Kate attended the CalTravel Summit. Instead of fluorescent lights and conference rooms, CalTravel decided to focus on the outdoors, getting attendees outside to explore their beautiful lakeside surroundings. Participants were encouraged to hike together, and sessions leaned into two timely themes. The first was building bridges in the travel and tourism community: with several members of the California Legislature on stage, the conversation centered on collaboration and how our industry can build bipartisan bridges that actually move policy forward. The second theme was building resilience in international travel: leaders shared pragmatic strategies for sustaining global demand for US travel destinations in a complex political climate.

Our fearless CRO, Jay Alson, hopped to the other side of the pond for the Simpleview Summit in Brighton, UK. In this beach town, he created a Visit Brighton pass for summit participants to enjoy. He also took the main stage with Nic, CEO of Go New Forest, to talk about the New Forest Card—a local savings program that helps residents and visitors support independent businesses with offers across dining, shopping, attractions, and accommodation. It’s a community-first approach that aligns neatly with Bandwango passes by rewarding discovery while driving measurable impact for partners.

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A few themes across all of the conferences:

• AI is already reshaping tourism, but the winners are pairing it with real-world experiences. Teams are leaning on AI to summarize visitor feedback, tailor trip ideas, and surface the right offer at the right moment. Bandwango fits naturally here: passes capture intent and on-the-ground behavior, giving DMOs clean zero-party data they can use to train smarter recommendations.

• The travel industry is all about resilience and relevance. With shifting regulations, air travel changes, and evolving traveler sentiment, destinations are focusing on flexible campaigns that meet visitors where they are. Thoughtful, low-friction offers—free trails, culinary challenges, neighborhood passports—let DMOs welcome international visitors with easy entry points while tracking redemptions and economic impact.

• Innovation wins when it’s practical. The most exciting ideas were the ones that made life easier for partners and visitors. This is exactly where Bandwango can help—we can build and launch pass programs quickly, layer in gamification when it serves a goal, and turn engagement into measurable outcomes.

• We love being a part of the DMO community. Whether in Texas, Washington, California, or the UK, the energy was the same: people were excited to be together and talk about how to promote travel and boost local businesses. Passes, quests, and Bandwango experiences provided a shared canvas for destinations, partners, and visitors to connect during the conferences.

Interested in learning more about building an easy-to-use "best of" pass for your destination? Reach out to sales@bandwango.com or visit bandwango.com.

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