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Airbnb is a truly fantastic business that was founded in 2008, and through a great deal of innovation, hustle and fortitude, has grown into an absolutely incredible platform. Like Google, it’s really hard to picture life without it. Firmly centred in the hospitality industry, Airbnb actually carved out its own subsector by giving every homeowner the opportunity to rent out rooms in their homes on a short-term basis. And with the assurances offered by a secure platform acting as the mediator, this new hospitality subsector burst onto the scene. While Airbnb does work with some Business owners that have put their Bed and Breakfasts onto the platform, the vast majority of Airbnb’s supply side are everyday homeowners that are looking to make some extra cash. And the demand side of their platform is comprised of short-term renters, Business Travellers, vacationers, adventurers, staycationers, etc.

With Pathfinder, our supply side is entirely focused on small tourism Businesses, with three broad pillars of Where to Stay, Where to Play, and Where to Shop. The Where to Stay side will have a little bit of crossover with Airbnb when it comes to the Bed and Breakfasts, but that’s really it. And to be honest, most Bed and Breakfasts are on Airbnb because there simply isn’t any other platform for them. Airbnb was built for local hosts, not for Businesses. Overall, Pathfinder will be a better fit for Bed and Breakfasts because it’s built for Businesses and business needs. And we’re also the home of Lodges, Resorts, Ranches, Camps and Outfitters. The Where to Play pillar offers a wide variety of activities and entertainment, and the Where to Shop pillar showcases unique local Businesses that offer tourism-centric gifts, like novelty shops, locally-focused clothing and local culture.

Pathfinder has more overlap with Airbnb on the demand side, but at any given time, and for a variety of reasons, everyone is looking for something different. Plus, Pathfinder is designed for exploration, where Travellers harness the power of an interactive map to explore the world around them, and discover the experiences and adventures they didn’t know existed.

Airbnb Experiences is a newer arm of the Airbnb family, and is positioned to give local hosts and experts the opportunity to share a curated experience they’ve created with a group of people, either online or in person. These experiences could revolve around almost any activity, such as dancing, cooking, tours, magic, comedy, music, fitness, etc. Like Airbnb’s accommodations, many of these experiences aren’t offered by Businesses, but instead they’re offered by regular people looking to offer a local and unique service to a group of people, and ideally make some extra cash.

Now of course, if and when some of these hosts reach a certain metric of success with their offerings, there’s a good chance they’ll pivot into becoming a full-time service provider, which is awesome. Because the packages listed on Airbnb Experiences are offered by local hosts, who are not necessarily Businesses, there’s no easy way for the platform to identify them ahead of time to encourage them to get onto the platform. And so the platform mostly relies on these hosts to opt into the platform on their own and maintain a profile. This means that depending on the area, the availability of Experiences can be extremely sporadic, inconsistent and limited.

Pathfinder works entirely with Businesses, and showcases the full range of these Business’ experiences. Specifically, on the Where to Play side, Pathfinder offers almost everything you can imagine, with outdoor and indoor activities and adventures, indoor recreation and activities, events, festivals, theatres, museums, art and culture, live performances, etc.

Pathfinder’s correlation to VRBO is very similar to that of Airbnb, where the vast majority of VRBO’s listings are created by local hosts that are offering their own homes. The biggest difference between them and Airbnb though is that VRBO only offers the entire home, never just a bedroom, or a part of the house.

So again, Pathfinder works entirely with Businesses, and showcases the full range of their products and services. Pathfinder is a platform designed for Businesses, where they build a profile that holistically represents their promotional needs. And Pathfinder is also designed from a discovery perspective, where Travellers can engage their curiosity and discover things, instead of just keyword searches or digging through popularity lists and advertisements.

TripAdvisor is a very robust system, a trailblazer and offers a lot of benefits to its users. One benefit is a large amount of user-generated content, such as reviews and photos, which provides valuable information for Travellers in making informed decisions about where to stay, eat, and visit. TripAdvisor also covers a large number of travel destinations, hotels, restaurants, and attractions around the world, which, to date, makes it one of the best resources for Travellers looking to plan their trips. And it offers a comparison tool that allow users to compare prices, locations, and amenities of different options, making it easy to find the best deal.

There are some drawbacks with TripAdvisor too though. For example, TripAdvisor content can become outdated quickly, which means some of the information may no longer be accurate, especially for rapidly changing travel destinations. TripAdvisor also may not provide complete information about all aspects of a travel destination, such as local customs and culture, leaving Travellers with a limited understanding of their destination. Bias and manipulation are other big ones that plague TripAdvisor, as Businesses may manipulate their overall score by posting fake or biased reviews, or by suppressing negative reviews. And conversely, jaded Travellers, customers, or vendors can easily create fake accounts and post a fake negative review about a Business. TripAdvisor's user-generated content is also largely unmoderated, which can result in the posting of inappropriate or offensive content. This all impacts the reliability of the information provided on the site.

While TripAdvisor has done an incredible job improving the connectivity and access to information in this massive and diverse industry, and has given Businesses a place where they can be showcased and where Travellers can find them, there are a few key niches where Pathfinder will provide notable improvements. For one, TripAdvisor is heavily structured around reviews, as it was initially designed to be a review system. Plus, it’s been designed so that the reviews are entirely under the Travellers’ control, and actually skew to their benefit. And as discussed earlier, reviews in general are highly subjective, fakable and difficult to moderate. This becomes especially apparently when you pair one-sided reviews with a platform that doesn’t tie them to an actual transaction. That opens up its reliability to even further scrutiny.

Pathfinder will incorporate reviews into its matrix of tools, but they’ll be done in a way that equally benefits the Businesses and the Travellers with a mutual review system, where Travellers will be able to provide comments and descriptions about their experience with a Business as well as a rating on a few key parameters, and Businesses will also be able to review their experience with the Traveller. And these reviews will be tied to actual experience purchases through Pathfinder, which will imbue a higher degree of credibility and reliability to each of these shared reviews. The goal of these communications won’t be to tear down a Business, to criticize it, or to enact petty revenge, but rather the intention will be to share information, offer insights, and to help make our wonderful tourism products and services as great as they can possibly be.

TripAdvisor also relies heavily on popularity algorithms to manage what it promotes and showcases on the platform when Travellers perform a search. This heavily skews what Travellers are shown, and limits their ability to organically explore and discover on this platform. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of information on here, but when algorithms are continuously manipulating the data, it definitely changes a Travellers journey with a platform. But to be fair, TripAdvisor wasn’t designed to showcase every Business in a fair and egalitarian way, and actually it wasn’t really designed to showcase Businesses at all. Aside from reviews, it’s actually designed to showcase experiences; to harness the power of popularity algorithms, funnel the showiest and most popular experiences to the top of the promotional funnel, and sell as much of them to as many Travellers as possible. And of course, to monetize on ads. At its core, TripAdvisor is a monetization system, not a tourism system. It just happens to focus on the tourism industry, and it certainly does a better job than most, but in no way has it been designed for the benefit of tourism Businesses.

This is why we’ve built Pathfinder365. Pathfinder won’t incorporate popularity or financially influenced algorithms, and it’s the only true community-focused tourism marketplace that’s been built for the needs of small to medium sized tourism Businesses, and for the exploration benefits of Travellers. Pathfinder is also built on an interactive map, which gives Travellers full control of their discovery journey, and enables Businesses to be stumbled upon. There’s no other tourism platform that is specifically designed to allow for this type of organic discovery. Travellers can literally scroll across the map and explore everything there is to see and do and where to stay, without any algorithmic interference. Or they can use the keyword search and filters, but these will also be under their control.

Pathfinder is designed to put tourism Businesses centre stage, not just the things that some of them sell that qualify as experiences, which actually eliminates a large swath of this very diverse industry. Instead, Travellers will be exposed to every small to medium sized tourism-related Business in their region of interest, and everything that these Businesses want to showcase to the world.

With a Pathfinder365 Community Membership, Businesses can market the full array of their experiences, promote all of their products and services, display all of the events they have coming up, shout out any announcements they have, showcase all of positions they need to fill, advise on their seasonality status, let the world know their Business is looking to transition ownership, and much more. Businesses will have access to a full suite of promotional and marketing tools, a community of allies, professional resources, and a variety of specialists.

And Travellers will have access to a fantastic suite of tools that have been designed to connect them with a community of Travellers, share things that matter to them with their social scene, and enhance their ability to organically explore and discover the world around them. On Pathfinder, the power of promotion will be put back in the hands of Businesses, and the power of discovery will be put back in the hands of Travellers.

Let’s face it, Google is incredible. It started out as the little search engine that knew it could, and through ingenuity, persistence and a far superior algorithm, it won the day and became both a noun and a verb that absolutely everyone is familiar with. Every tech startup sets out hoping to achieve just a fraction of Google’s success. And when it comes to travel, tourism activities and accommodations, Google certainly offers some benefits. Google Search is designed to provide relevant results based on the user's search query, making it simple to engage with and easy for Travellers to find some of information they’re looking for…amidst a lot of irrelevant rabbit holes.

Google covers a wide range of travel-related topics, including information about destinations, accommodations, activities, and attractions and with its integration on Google Maps, it allows users to easily see the location of accommodations, attractions, and other points of interest. Google also uses the user's search history and other data to provide more personalized results, making it easier for Travellers to find information that is relevant to their interests and preferences. And of course, Google’s speed, convenience and accessibility makes it incredibly useful for users to quickly find some of the information they need, limiting the number of sites they might have to explore.

You’ve probably caught onto a theme here by now, and yes, Google Search has some disadvantages as well when it comes to tourism. With so much information available, it can be difficult for Travellers to sift through the results and find the information they need. And unlike travel websites and apps, Google Search does not curate the information it provides, which can lead to irrelevant or outdated information. There’s also a bias towards advertisers on Google, which can impact the relevance and accuracy of the information provided. Unlike travel review websites like TripAdvisor, Google Search does not feature user-generated content, other than the Google Reviews, which can limit the amount of information available to Travellers.

Overall, Google Search can be a valuable resource for Travellers, but a system that’s more centrically focused on promoting small to medium sized tourism Businesses, and that allows Travellers to review everything they might want to see, activities they might want to participate in, and accommodations they might want to stay in, offers far more value. This is just one of the many facets that sets Pathfinder365 apart from general search engines like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. Travellers will often find themselves spending a lot of time being manipulated down rabbit holes that the Google algorithms, internet spider librarians, and paid ads want them to run down; which aren’t usually the rabbit holes that the Travellers are interested in.

Google absolutely has its place though, and I can’t imagine a world without it. It’s powerful and incredibly useful (although ChatGPT is definitely giving it a run for its money), but when it comes to travel, tourism and hospitality, Pathfinder365 is a very different beast, and gives Businesses the experience they deserve, and gives Travellers the experience they want.

Oh Facebook, how we love, hate, mistrust and yet sometimes can’t live without you. First, let’s discuss the pros of using Facebook for travel, tourism, activities, and accommodations. Facebook has over 2.8 billion monthly active users, providing a vast audience for travel Businesses to market their offerings to. Facebook's advertising tools allow travel Businesses to target specific demographics, interests, and locations, ensuring their ads reach the right people. The platform also provides a space for travel Businesses to interact with potential customers, respond to inquiries, and showcase their offerings through photos, videos, and other content. Users can share their travel experiences and recommendations, providing valuable word-of-mouth marketing for travel Businesses. Compared to traditional forms of advertising, Facebook advertising is relatively inexpensive and allows travel Businesses to reach a large audience for a small investment. And finally, Facebook provides Businesses with data and insights on their audience and ad performance, allowing them to make informed decisions about their marketing efforts.

Flipping things around, the steady decline of organic reach on Facebook means that Businesses may have to pay an ever-increasing amount in order to reach their target audience, reducing the cost-effectiveness of using the platform. With so many Businesses using Facebook to market their offerings, there is a lot of competition, making it difficult for travel Businesses to stand out. And remember, this isn’t a tourism site, so tourism Businesses are competing with other tourism Businesses, as well as every other type of Business out there. Facebook frequently changes its algorithms, which can have a significant impact on the visibility and reach of travel Businesses' content and advertising efforts. Users are becoming more wary of sharing information on Facebook, which could negatively impact their willingness to engage with travel Businesses on the platform. Creating and managing a successful Facebook presence can be time-consuming, requiring regular updates and engagement with followers. Plus, being a social platform, people spend a lot of time being social on Facebook, so Businesses are often inundated with tire kickers and curious inquirers, most of which will never convert into paying customers. They’re just consumers of your time.

While many tourism Businesses have profiles on Facebook, and Facebook offers a variety of useful features, like TripAdvisor it wasn’t designed for tourism or for Travellers. TripAdvisor was designed as a monetization engine, housed under a tourism façade, and Facebook was also designed as a monetization engine, but is housed under the pretext of social media. There’s also a great deal of statistics indicating that the younger generations don’t have Facebook accounts and have no interest in this type of social platform. If this trend continues, Facebook will become a dead zone for B2C.

It has also become very apparent that Facebook employs incredibly clever, but not particularly noble algorithms. One aspect of this complex algorithm is to determine what content will be most engaging, to keep users on the platform for longer periods of time, which will expose them to more ads, and thus generate more revenue for Facebook. To determine what content will be most engaging Facebook's algorithm uses a variety of data points, such as a user's past behavior, interests, and preferences. For example, in the past, if a user has engaged with posts or pages that are politically polarizing or controversial, Facebook's algorithm will likely show them more of this type of content, particularly since this type of content is more likely to elicit a strong emotional response, which then results in a higher level of engagement, with more posts, more shares, more comments, more likes, etc.; feeding the algorithm even more, and fuelling it to show you even more of this type of content. Similarly, if a user has engaged with content that is emotional, sensational or traumatic, the algorithm is more likely to show them more of that type of content in the future.

And being human, for some reason our negative emotions tend to be displayed more vigorously than the positive ones, and fascinatingly, we also tend to spend more time with content that elicits these strong negative emotions; not because we like it, but I think it’s because we want to confront it, to challenge it, to understand it, and maybe to get in its way. Kind of noble if you think about it. But unfortunately, all the Facebook algorithm sees is more time spent, higher engagement levels, and a means to greater revenue.

And finally, because Facebook is a social media platform, not a Business success platform, it may remove important features from time to time, such as job postings. If a feature or tool is important to tourism Businesses, Pathfinder won’t remove it, but instead will continue to develop its use and enhance its value to our community of Businesses. We want our Businesses to be successful, and we want them to see Pathfinder as an ally who listens to them. And we want Travellers to feel the same.

Tourism Organizations, City Marketing Organizations (CMOs), and Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) are all entities that promote tourism to potential visitors. They typically look to draw attention to a particular region, enhance the visibility of that region’s tourism opportunities, and enrich its revenue channels with new tourism dollars, aka, interprovincial or international Travellers. Each of these entities is a critical participant in the overall tourism ecosystem, and each plays a vital role in its success.

- Tourism Organizations: A tourism organization is a company, association or government agency that promotes and markets a specific destination and/or a particular sub-sector to potential visitors. They can also be focused on supporting a particular aspect of tourism, that indirectly benefits the growth and economics of the industry, such as HR or research. These organizations usually focus provincially or nationally. Their goal is to enhance tourism, promote its growth, and generate revenue for the local economy, whether that’s directly or indirectly. Some examples of these are Hospitality Saskatchewan, Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC), Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada (ITAC), and Tourism HR Canada.

- Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs): DMOs are organizations that promote and market a specific destination, such as a region, province, or country. They aim to position the destination as a desirable travel destination and to increase the number of visitors to the area. Some examples of these are Cypress Hills-Grasslands Destination Area, Tourism Saskatchewan, Bonjour Quebec, Tourism Nova Scotia and Destination Canada.

- City Marketing Organizations (CMOs): CMOs are organizations that focus on promoting and marketing a city sector. They work to attract both Business and leisure Travellers, and promote the city's unique features and attractions. Often with a emphasis on conferences and events, festivals, trade shows, travel writers, foodie bloggers, etc. Some examples of these are Discover Saskatoon, Visit Calgary, Discover Halifax and Destination Vancouver.

The activities of these organizations typically include creating and promoting travel packages, producing marketing materials such as brochures and videos, establishing a network of contacts with other entities, and organizing events and activities to attract visitors. They may also work to develop partnerships with hotels, airlines, and other travel-related Businesses, often in the form of sponsors, premiere vendors and featured partners.

There are several reasons why it can be challenging though to use Tourism Organizations, City Marketing Organizations (CMOs), and Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) to find travel, tourism, activity, and accommodation options. While these organizations provide basic information about travel destinations, they may not provide a comprehensive list of all the available options. This can make it difficult for Travellers to compare different possibilities and make informed decisions. These organizations may also have a bias towards certain options, such as hotels and attractions owned or operated by members or sponsors. This can limit the information available to Travellers and make it difficult for them to find all of the possible choices.

Another challenge these organizations face is a lack of internal resources to keep their information up-to-date, meaning that Travellers may be relying on outdated information when planning their trips. Plus, they typically provide information through brochures, websites, or other static forms of media, which may not allow Travellers to interact with the information and really dig into it. Also, these organization rarely employ some of the more complex technology options that are available, and they don’t equip their community with Business or travel enhancement tools. To put it plainly, they’re not technology Businesses and they never will be. Instead, their online presence usually consists of websites that are content management systems…a lot of data. Another thing to note is that these organizations typically focus on promoting a specific region or city, meaning that Travellers may have to search multiple sources to find information on all the destinations they are interested in visiting.

Nationally focused organizations will obviously look to shine a light across an entire country, but here again, they’re designed to promote a region as a whole, and increase its attractiveness overall, to bring in international visitors and boost the economy. The mix of provinces and Businesses these Travellers visit doesn’t usually matter much to a national organization; they just want to see the overall spend per visit hit a nice high metric.

The typical mechanism for this is to promote a country with a broad brush that highlights the Businesses, experiences, activities and accommodations that offer the most attraction value to visitors. We call this a keystone approach. Essentially, tourism organizations promote their region’s overall tourism by harnessing the brand value of keystone tourism Businesses, which offers a positive umbrella effect over the entire destination. This approach broadly nurtures the travel-value of a geography as a whole. Basically, they endorse a handful of the best looking, fanciest, and most interesting Businesses in order to promote the whole. So other than the keystone Businesses and an assortment of novel operations, tourism organizations rarely promote the actual tourism Businesses in their region.

And to be honest, this isn’t what they ever set out to do. These organizations are by no means equipped to shine a light on every small to medium sized tourism Business that operates in their region. They just can’t. They are not built for this. But this is yet another reason why Pathfinder365 was developed, to support tourism organizations to more thoroughly promote and showcase their respective regions. And doing it in a way that connects and harmonizes the efforts of every CMO, DMO and Tourism Organization across Canada, while filling in the many gaps that these entities are not designed to fill.

Travel agencies are Businesses that assist individuals and organizations with planning, booking, and managing travel arrangements. They offer a range of services, including flight and hotel bookings, package tours, destination planning and travel insurance. Overall, travel agencies offer a range of services designed to make it easier for individuals and organizations to plan, book, and manage their travel arrangements. They can provide comprehensive travel solutions and help Travellers save time and money on their trips.

There are several reasons why it can be challenging though to use travel agencies to find local travel, tourism, activity, and accommodation options. Some of these include limited local knowledge, dependencies on partnerships, higher costs, inflexibility, and limited customization. While travel agencies can provide a range of services and make it easier for Travellers to plan their trips, it can be challenging to use them to find local travel, tourism, activity, and accommodation options that are tailored to individual needs and preferences. Plus, when looking to travel and explore locally, like your own city or province, very few Travellers would ever consider using a travel agency for that type of situation. And really, travel agencies are generally structured to send Travellers to other countries, and rarely have much focus on their own local regions.

Travel agents do play an important role in the full spectrum of the tourism trade though, particularly international travel agencies looking to send Travellers to Canada. Pathfinder is not a travel agency, nor a hand-holding travel concierge, but instead we maintain a vast trove of Canadian tourism Business profiles, information about these Businesses, their experiences, activities and accommodation options, and a suite of travel tools. So, it’s not unreasonable to consider the possibility that international travel agencies might actually look to incorporate Pathfinder into their own toolkit, as they endeavour to assist their international Travellers with their Canadian adventures. Which actually makes them an ally and a superuser.