There was a time when the internet felt like a neighborhood instead of a marketplace. People gathered in forums because they genuinely wanted to help one another. Blogs reflected the personalities of the people writing them, and travel recommendations often came from someone who had actually wandered the streets, eaten at the local café, or stumbled upon a hidden overlook they couldn't wait to tell others about. It wasn't always polished, but it felt authentic. More importantly, it felt human.

Today, the internet feels different. Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how content is created, search results are increasingly filled with AI-generated summaries, and social media is crowded with content designed to satisfy algorithms rather than connect with people. We scroll through beautiful photographs without always knowing whether the place is real, read compelling stories without knowing whether a human wrote them, and interact with accounts that sometimes blur the line between person and program.

I recently watched a video by Joey Schweitzer discussing his concern that bots could eventually drive real people away from the internet. Whether that prediction comes true isn't really what captured my attention. His comments raised a much bigger question. As technology becomes increasingly capable of imitating human interaction, what happens to the value of genuine human experiences?

Ironically, I believe the answer is encouraging. The more artificial our digital world becomes, the more valuable authenticity will become.

Authenticity Has Always Been What We Were Looking For

I spend much of my time building two companies that appear to have very little in common. Destinations & Detours helps people experience the world through thoughtfully designed travel, while Super Storm creates conferences, retreats, and events that bring professionals together to learn, collaborate, and build relationships.

On paper, those businesses seem completely different. In reality, they're built on exactly

the same foundation:

People still need people. I use artificial intelligence every day, and I have no intention of stopping. It helps me research more efficiently, organize ideas, solve problems faster, and spend less time on repetitive work. Used well, AI is one of the most valuable tools available to entrepreneurs, creators, and advisors.

The mistake is assuming the tool itself is the destination. Technology can make us more efficient, but it cannot replace the curiosity that starts a conversation, the trust that develops between two people, or the perspective that comes from sharing an experience together. As creating content becomes easier, creating authentic relationships becomes harder. That scarcity is exactly what gives authenticity its value.

The Moments I Remember Most Were Never Planned

I've been fortunate to visit all 50 states and more than 30 countries, and when I think back on the experiences that shaped me most, very few were attractions I intentionally planned to see. They were conversations with people whose lives looked different from my own.

One afternoon, while exploring a quiet town in North Carolina, I wandered into a local coffee shop and struck up a conversation with the owner. Before long we realized we were both lifelong North Carolinians, yet we knew completely different versions of the same state. My family's roots are in the mountains of western North Carolina. Hers were in the farmland of the east. We spent nearly an hour comparing stories, traditions, and the communities that shaped us, and I left realizing just how diverse one state can be.

Before I left, we connected on Instagram, and years later we still keep in touch. Nothing about that experience could have been planned. No travel guide would have recommended it, and no algorithm would have predicted it. It happened because two strangers were curious enough to begin a conversation.

Another memory stands out just as clearly. While visiting England's Cotswolds, Courtney and I had the opportunity to dine at the chef's table of a well-known British chef. Watching him prepare each course and hearing the stories behind his food was remarkable, but it wasn't my favorite part of the evening.

The people around us were. One couple had traveled from Germany. Another was from France. As the evening unfolded, the conversation naturally drifted from food to family traditions, regional customs, travel, and everyday life across Europe. Courtney and I learned as much from the guests sitting beside us as we did from the chef himself. Looking back, I remember the conversations far more vividly than I remember the menu.

That evening reminded me that travel isn't simply about seeing different places. It's about meeting people who help you see the world differently. Those conversations didn't happen because technology connected us. They happened because travel placed us in the same room and curiosity did the rest.

AI Changed the Way I Think About Travel

I'll admit something I haven't shared often. When I was planning Destinations & Detours, I seriously questioned whether launching a travel company made sense. Everywhere I looked, people were asking whether artificial intelligence would replace travel advisors, and the question lingered in the back of my mind long enough that I nearly talked myself out of pursuing something I cared deeply about.

Then I realized I was asking the wrong question. AI can build an itinerary in seconds. It can compare hotels, summarize reviews, recommend restaurants, and organize logistics faster than any human ever could.

Those capabilities will only improve over time, and I believe travel advisors should embrace them. What technology cannot do is truly understand the traveler.

It doesn't know when someone needs a slower pace because they're exhausted. It doesn't recognize that one family values spontaneous exploration while another prefers detailed structure. It can't sense that the conversation with a local coffee shop owner might become more meaningful than the attraction everyone says you have to visit.

Information is becoming almost limitless. Human judgment, empathy, and

understanding are not. That realization didn't weaken my confidence in becoming a travel advisor. It strengthened it. The future of travel isn't about competing against technology. It's about using technology to create more opportunities for meaningful human experiences.

The Same Principle Applies to Business

I've come to believe the same lesson applies to conferences, retreats, and live events. Artificial intelligence can write presentations, summarize meetings, recommend networking connections, and automate follow-up emails. It can make event planning dramatically more efficient, and that's something event professionals should absolutely embrace.

Yet companies continue investing millions of dollars every year to bring people together in person because information has never been the primary reason people attend conferences.

People attend to build trust. Some of the most valuable moments at any event happen outside the scheduled agenda. They happen during coffee breaks, over dinner, while walking between sessions, or during conversations that no organizer could have predicted. Those moments often become partnerships, friendships, mentorships, or ideas that shape someone's career long after the event has ended.

Research supports what many of us have experienced firsthand. Freeman's 2025 Trust Report found that 95 percent of attendees reported greater trust in a brand after participating in an in-person event. At a time when trust feels increasingly difficult to earn online, that statistic should make every business leader pay attention.

Technology helps us organize events. People give them meaning.

The Future Belongs to the Most Human Companies

For years, businesses competed by creating more content. More articles, more videos, more emails, and more social media posts. Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed that equation because creating content has never been easier, and before long there will be more information online than any of us could consume in a lifetime.

That doesn't make authenticity less valuable. It makes it rarer. The companies that stand out over the next decade won't simply be the ones producing the most content or adopting the newest technology the fastest. They'll be the ones that use technology wisely while protecting the parts of their business that should never be automated. They'll invest in relationships instead of just reach, conversations instead of just clicks, and communities instead of simply audiences.

Authenticity isn't becoming valuable because AI is replacing humanity. It's becoming valuable because humanity is becoming easier to recognize when we encounter it.

The Journey Still Belongs to Us

When I first started thinking about Destinations & Detours, I worried artificial intelligence might eliminate the need for travel advisors.

Today, I believe the opposite. As our digital lives become increasingly automated, people will seek experiences that remind them what cannot be automated. They'll seek conversations that weren't scripted, friendships that weren't recommended by an algorithm, and journeys measured not by how many places they visited, but by how many people changed the way they see the world.

I believe the same will be true in business. The organizations that thrive won't simply have the smartest technology. They'll have the strongest communities. They'll create spaces where people feel seen, heard, challenged, and inspired because those experiences cannot be downloaded or generated.

The internet will continue to evolve, and AI will continue to reshape nearly every industry. I believe that's something to embrace, not fear. But no matter how sophisticated technology becomes, it will never replace our need to belong, to connect, to explore, and to understand one another.

The internet can inspire the journey. It can help us plan it, share it, and remember it. But the journey itself has always been, and always will be, profoundly human.