Thursday, October 1, 2026

4:55 PM - 5:25 PM

Progress

---

Details

Cycling tourism is being told, like every other sector, that AI will transform it. Some of that is true. A lot of it is being sold by people who don't understand cycling, and some of it would do real damage if we took it at face value. This session sits between hype and hope. The hope is harder, because it asks us to make choices: where AI genuinely helps, where it gets in the way, and where the honest answer is that the technology isn't ready for the problem we're asking it to solve. We'll work through three live areas: marketing, discovery and payment; operations, where data quality matters more than clever interfaces; and the rider experience itself. Underneath all three sits a question this community is well placed to lead on. Who owns the systems we rely on, where does the data sit, and what happens when the terms change. The session ends with a short Things from the Future workshop, so people leave with better questions to take back to their organisations rather than a list of tools to buy.

---

Speaker