How AI can Superpower our Sustainability ambitions! And other lessons from Virtuoso's inaugural Impact Summit!

Last week I was honored and proud to speak at Virtuoso Travels first-ever Impact Summit, hosted at the breathtaking Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Chateau in Lake Louise — truly one of the most beautiful places in North America. It was the perfect backdrop to speak about two of the biggest forces shaping the future of travel: AI & Sustainability.

To start, we’re at an inflection point. AI is no longer an emerging tool, it’s an omnipresent one. And sustainability is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s an existential imperative. The key question: how do we use AI to superpower our impact?

As many of you know, this intersection is personal for me. My dad was an AI guy in the '90s. I founded Utrip in 2011, the first AI trip-planning company. And today, I’m fully immersed in the world of AI; advising, investing, and building in the travel and hospitality space. I also serve on Virtuoso’s Board, where I’ve seen firsthand how deep our Networks and the industry’s commitment to sustainability truly run. And I have been fortunate to learn from Jessica Hall Upchurch and so many other brilliant folks over the past decade.

So here’s the gist: AI, when used effectively, is one of the most powerful tools we have to make travel more sustainable.

First, a Quick Primer on AI

There are three categories of AI we need to distinguish:

• AI (Artificial Intelligence): This includes tools like generative AI, computer vision, and recommendation engines. These are tools for people and businesses — and they’re available now.

• AGI (Artificial General Intelligence): Coming soon. Think Bots with cognitive abilities similar to an educated human adult. This will usher in a new class of “AI employees” across every sector.

• ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence): A still-distant future where AI outperforms even our best human experts at nearly everything.

In the near term, it’s the first category, AI tools, that offers the most tangible opportunity to drive sustainable outcomes. Especially when used along with an AI Swarm.

Why Swarm AI Matters for Sustainability

Swarm AI refers to a constellation of AI Bots, each specialized, working together toward a common larger goal. Think of it as a collaborative team of AI's, not as a single monolithic Everything-Bot that is nearly impossible to train. More on Swarms Here.

Here’s why I believe this architecture is uniquely powerful for the travel industry:

1. Lower barriers to entry. You don’t need $10M and a full AI team to get started. Small and midsize businesses, the backbone of travel, can tap into this now.

2. Faster to build, easier to iterate. You don’t have to get it perfect before launch. You can improve the swarm slowly over time, sustainably and affordably.

3. Inherently collaborative. Just like in human networks, swarms allow different players to contribute their unique strengths. This is sustainability in action: distributed, inclusive, and efficient.

Real-World Use Cases in Travel Sustainability

Across the Virtuoso network and beyond, so many players in our industry are already using AI to accelerate our collective sustainability goals. A few examples...

• Food Waste Reduction: Companies like Winnow are using AI-powered cameras to track and cut food waste in hotel kitchens and buffets. The results? Less waste, higher margins, happier guests; the win-win-win we all seek!

• Wildlife Protection: In Africa and other regions, partners are using computer vision to monitor animal and herd health and detect poaching activity in real time, protecting biodiversity while enhancing their impact.

• Energy & Emissions Monitoring: You can’t reduce what you can’t measure. AI is being used to track energy use, carbon output, and mitigation strategies across the world, unlocking data-driven decisions.

Storytelling & Personalization: GenAI is helping us tell richer, more personalized stories and to communicate in more inclusive and persuasive ways. These new capabilities aid our sustainability efforts in two ways.

First, we know that Sustainability is the joint effort between the head and the heart, and thus, to bring people along for the sustainability journey we need to communicate to both the head and the heart and of course to communicate our vision to different types of people (scientist, financiers, owners & operators, regulators, travelers, etc.). We also know that each of us absorbs information differently. For some, narratives are most compelling, while for others it's charts, graphs, or raw data. For me, audio is best but for many, a detailed report is more compelling. GenAI can help us communicate our sustainability goals and results faster to more people in many more ways, effectively recruiting people to our sustainability efforts and magnifying our impact!

Second, GenAI can be used to help us combat overtourism by showcasing underrepresented destinations with compelling, personal narratives. Yes, Venice is magical, but so are dozens of places most travelers have never heard of, where a win win win outcome is easily achievable. Better, more personal trips + spread of the economic benefits of tourism to more places + a reduction in the negative impacts of overtourism to individual locations = a better industry for us all!

Sustainability is about both the head and the heart. AI can help us play to both. It lets us measure and optimize like never before, and it lets us storytell at scale, engaging more people in more ways. But the tech is just a tool. We, the humans, have to decide what to do with it.

Start with your goals. Clarify the impact you want to make. Then choose the right tools to amplify that mission. This is not a call for AI for AI’s sake. It’s a call to use the most powerful tool of our era to solve one of the most important challenges of our lifetime.

If you're working on AI-powered sustainability solutions, in travel or beyond, I’d love to hear from you. Let’s keep learning from each other, and let’s keep building.

Here is a link to the recording of this talk that I created in my room after the fact; it lacks the energy of the stage, but most of the content is included.