Balancing Destinations Through AI-Driven Insights - powered by Rome2Rio
Summary
This session, powered by Rome2Rio, presents a partnership between the global multimodal travel platform Rome2Rio (CEO Wendy Olson Killion) and Brazil's national tourism authority Embratur (Strategic Development Lead Vivian Toledano) to tackle over-tourism and uneven visitor distribution using AI-driven intent data.
Wendy opens by framing the core problem: tourism demand is not too large — it is poorly distributed. The travel industry systematically routes travelers to the same popular hubs at the same times via the same carbon-heavy routes, congesting top destinations while leaving secondary and tertiary regions underutilized. Rome2Rio's position early in the travel planning journey — capturing intent, not just transactions — gives it a unique data lens. The platform serves hundreds of millions of users across 240+ countries and territories, offering routing across all multimodal transport types (planes, trains, buses, boats, and more) in 25 languages with 20,000+ transport operators. Critically, Rome2Rio pairs AI at scale with human-verified routing and scheduling data, including digitization of offline/non-digital transport schedules from local experts worldwide.
The AI layer enables Rome2Rio to surface personalized options for travelers — cheapest, fastest, most sustainable — before booking decisions are made. This 'intent data' allows destination partners to see demand pressure building long before it shows up in booking statistics, enabling proactive redistribution rather than reactive crisis management.
Vivian Toledano presents Brazil's challenge: a continental-scale country (roughly the size of Europe) with 27 states where inbound tourism concentrates overwhelmingly in Rio de Janeiro and a few other hubs, while hundreds of rich cultural and natural destinations remain largely unknown to international travelers. Embratur's response is a two-pronged strategy:
1. Plano Braziliz — a national marketing plan with customized regional strategies, locally implemented across all 27 states, designed to coordinate destination development and promotion at scale.
2. Vive Brazil — a portfolio of 101 curated experiences across the country, specifically supporting small local businesses and lesser-known destinations. Example: a coffee route in Chapada Diamantina (near Salvador), an interior destination with minimal international profile. Also highlighted: Chapada dos Veadeiros, Lençóis Maranhenses, and the Amazon as destinations requiring complex multi-modal access (air + land + boat).
Vivian cites two key data points driving Embratur's strategy: a Booking.com survey showing 71% of travelers want AI recommendations for sustainable choices, and a McKinsey study identifying ease of getting around a destination as the second most important factor in destination selection — a critical insight for promoting less-known places where infrastructure confidence is low.
The partnership activates Rome2Rio's platform to solve the 'last confidence barrier': a traveler may be inspired to visit the Amazon or Chapada Diamantina, but if they cannot clearly see how to get there, they will default to Rio. Rome2Rio's multi-modal routing content, paired with destination inspiration content, bridges this gap.
The session closes by reframing AI not as a tool to suppress demand but to redirect intent — making sustainability and commercial success mutually reinforcing rather than competing. A Q&A moment surfaces the question of barrier-free accessibility information for travelers with disabilities; Wendy acknowledges this as a known gap, noting they are exploring LLM integrations to expand accessibility content without degrading core product experience.
Key Takeaways
- •Rome2Rio reaches hundreds of millions of users across 240+ countries and territories, operating in 25 languages with 20,000+ transport operators — and its data captures traveler intent before booking decisions, making it a predictive signal for destination demand pressure.
- •Wendy Olson Killion's core reframe: 'The imbalance is not too much demand. It's how we distribute that demand.' This positions over-tourism as a distribution problem solvable by data and design, not by suppressing visitor numbers.
- •71% of travelers want AI recommendations for sustainable travel choices (Booking.com survey cited by Vivian Toledano), and 60% want experiences that positively impact local communities — establishing clear consumer demand for the responsible travel model both organizations are building.
- •McKinsey research cited by Embratur: ease of getting around a destination is the second most important factor in destination selection, particularly for lesser-known places. This makes multi-modal access clarity (Rome2Rio's core product) a strategic tool for unlocking demand for undervisited regions.
- •Brazil's Vive Brazil initiative comprises 101 curated experiences across the country supporting small local businesses — a concrete operational example of how national tourism authorities can productize sustainable dispersal rather than just promote it rhetorically.
- •Plano Braziliz is a national marketing plan with differentiated regional strategies deployed across all 27 Brazilian states, representing a rare example of top-down national coordination of destination development at continental scale.
- •Rome2Rio explicitly digitizes non-digital and offline transport schedules from local experts worldwide — a competitive differentiator that makes truly remote or informal transport networks visible to international travelers, directly enabling secondary destination access.
- •Vivian's insight on the data funnel: 'It's not always about awareness or inspiration — sometimes the challenge is distribution.' Embratur uses a data-driven team to assess each market and destination by funnel stage, determining whether to invest in awareness, consideration, or access/distribution.
Transcript
We switch over to AIdriven insight and we address this mainly but not only to destinations. Balancing destinations through AIdriven insights. It's a session powered by Rome to Rio and I promise you it's not only for destinations. That's because AI is something that is not only on the user interface. It keeps you gets you a new new insights and the new new approach of data. So please welcome Wendy Olsson Killian the CEO of Rome to Rio and Vivian Tolidano strategic development lead of Emberur or V...
