AI Opener: 2026 Wrap-Up

by C.A. Clark

Vice President of AI

September 8, 2026

We’ve just wrapped our final session of AI Opener 2026, a collaborative exploration of the impacts of AI tailored specifically for travel organizations and hospitality businesses. This year’s program brought over 40 destinations across North America, from NTOs all the way down to small CVBs. Together, we explored, debated and investigated how AI shapes everything from visitor expectations to the tasks we perform every day.

Highlights from 2026

Over 100 individual participants from 40 destinations attended comprehensive sessions and received specific resources to strengthen their AI expertise. The program delivered:

20+ topical presenters from organizations like Google, Adobe, Scrunch, Brand USA, Future Partners, the Edinburgh Futures Institute and Destination Canada
Over 10 hours of content
Advice and insights from two global AI experts
Hands-on training through multiple Builders Club sessions
An upcoming in-person AI Bot Camp

A Year of Rapid Evolution

Since our first session in February, so much has changed in the space. Claude Design, Claude Fable, Claude Cowork, ChatGPT Images 2.0, Gemini Omni and connectors to your browser and the Microsoft 365 suite all launched this year, adding to the growing capabilities of these frontier tools.

As far as models go, Claude's Opus line leaped from 4.6 to 5 throughout the year. OpenAI’s flagship model, ChatGPT, shifted from GPT-5.3/5.4 to GPT-5.6 by the end of July and even released their GPT-6 Astra model in the beginning of September,, with each update pushing coding, reasoning and agentic capabilities further than the last.

Plus, Google is up to Gemini 3.7. The search engine giant also made continuous updates to other Google Labs products and introduced Gemini Omni, a multimedia model, allowing users to create videos from simple conversations.

On top of that, we’ve seen hundreds of new tools enter the space, from video and content creation tools like Runway, HeyGen and Descript to a growing ecosystem of task- and industry-specific tools.

Trust in the Age of AI Imagery

One topic kept repeating across multiple sessions: the balance between trust and AI imagery. It’s a topic that’s so important, we at Miles have even discussed it outside of AI Opener in our AI Roundtable for Destinations webinar series.

As image models continue to evolve, it’ll become more difficult to distinguish real photos from AI-generated ones, making trust an even more valuable currency a destination can hold with travelers. The safest approach echoes what we've discussed before: Disclose when you use AI. Just as important, genuine storytelling and imagery become essential as travelers look for the most authentic version of a destination that they can relate to and experience.

Search, Discovery and the Death of SEO?

The hot-button topic this year? How do you control what a traveler sees about your destination on AI platforms?

In the age of AI, destinations are no longer defined by their own website but by scattered third-party data like points of interest, reviews, visitor sentiment or any other mentions of your destination. The real question isn't “do we control the narrative?" but “are we even visible where the decisions are being made?”

Nowadays, destinations have to build content not only for potential travelers and Google crawlers, but also for AI crawlers, keeping the site legible to all three. Solutions that were discussed among the North American cohort of AI Opener included understanding what your reviews say about your destination and whether that matches how you're trying to position your brand. Leaning more into visual and video assets matters too. Google flagged this as an area where destinations are underinvesting in during our search and discovery session.

Just as important, ensure your third-party mentions stay accurate, as AI models tend to lean heavily on those mentions when generating their responses.

The Future of AI in 2027

Our last session of the year focused on the future of AI as we near the end of the year. One theme cut through everything: AI is moving from a tool people use to an environment people work inside, handling emails, calendars and prep work before the day even starts. That shift changes what “using AI” even means. It stops being a task you do and could eventually become the space you work in.

From how AI reshapes daily work to how travelers discover a destination in the first place, the space shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Next year will likely bring another round of evolution as significant as this year has been.

If you're looking to advance your destination's AI capabilities ahead of the new year, stay tuned for more details on AI Opener 2027, where we’ll continue to provide resources for destinations to get ahead in this rapidly changing landscape.

About the program: AI Opener is a program initiated by Group NAO in 2023. Developed collaboratively and delivered in North America by Miles Partnership, AI Opener provides education, resources and support to destinations and travel organizations across Europe and North America, including NTOs, state tourism organizations, major cities, small CVBs and hospitality organizations.