Travel Manitoba VP on Winning in the AI-Powered Answer Economy

Cody Chomiak, vice president of marketing at Travel Manitoba, believes that the success of destinations and their travel industry partners will increasingly rely on how well they answer AI search queries.

He calls this new competitive landscape the "answer economy."

"The brands and companies that have the best answers to consumer questions in AI search are the ones that are going to win," says Chomiak. "We know that people are changing the way they're searching for things. So if we're not properly addressing these questions in a way that's being pulled into these large language models, then ultimately we're going to be missing out." 

Chomiak is a man on a mission. He's a leading voice in Canada advocating for intelligent AI strategy at innumerable industry events and all across Travel Manitoba's channels.

A few months back, he developed an LLM Brand Sentiment Study focusing on, "What does AI think of your brand?" He tested, compared and documented how various AI models deliver answers to traveler queries about Manitoba, and the results are proving invaluable for informing both content development and operational strategy. Click the link above for the full explainer video.

That LLM sentiment study should be a best practice for every DMO, just for starters. Influencing how AI models then answer questions about your destination is a whole other thing, but it begins with an audit like Chomiak developed.

“The brands and companies that have the best answers to consumer questions in AI search are the ones that are going to win."

Answer Economy in Action

There is growing awareness among DMOs about how to optimize website discoverability for AI search more effectively. One low-hanging fruit is developing FAQs that answer common questions in AI queries. This is becoming standard practice for more and more organizations as the evolution from search engines to answer engines scales and accelerates.

Chomiak and his colleagues are developing an extensive FAQ list for Travel Manitoba's website. The team is producing answers for the most common questions that people are asking about Manitoba inside AI search/chat platforms. Those answers are written in conversational language that mirror the questions themselves. The FAQ will then be uploaded into the backend sitemap of Travel Manitoba's website where AIs can quickly and easily access the information.

First, though, a visitor organization needs to actually know what those common questions are. Chomiak relies in part on Matador Network's GuideGeek AI chat platform, which Travel Manitoba uses to capture every conversation that travelers are having directly with them via the chat tool.

"Preparing for the answer economy and the shift in search, our team is working on a 200-FAQ strategy that's going to directly address a large set of travel inspiration questions and destination triaging questions," explains Chomiak. "We actually took all of the conversations from GuideGeek that we had over the past year. We synthesized those down to understand where there were patterns and where we might have information lacking, and we're using that to help inform our FAQ strategy. So that, I think, has been a huge help."

GuideGeek AI at Rendez-vous Canada 2025

Looking ahead, Manitoba is hosting the annual Rendez-vous Canada tradeshow at the end of the month, bringing together international buyers and national sellers in a marketplace event. An industry showcase like this, similar to IPW in the U.S., is a big deal for the host destination. Chomiak is a co-chair of the host planning committee.

Travel Manitoba is again using GuideGeek to help connect the 1,400+ international buyers and domestic suppliers. The organization's WhatsApp channel is integrated with GuideGeek AI, which turns WhatsApp into a 24/7 travel guide and event communications platform fluent in 50+ languages.

Further, Travel Manitoba has created 11 different tours all across the province to Churchill, Riding Mountain, the Pembina Valley, etc., in addition to more than 20 city tours exploring Winnipeg. But Manitoba isn't Canada's most top-of-mind visitor destination in the global marketplace, so attendees have a lot questions in dozens of languages about a lot of really basic things.

WhatsApp with GuideGeek is basically like hiring a whole team of volunteers to answer countless DMs on the fly during a large event with myriad logistical challenges.

"It's a big lift to put this together; I mean, it's really a whole village," says Chomiak. "We have a very international delegation, so I truly think the WhatsApp version of GuideGeek is one of the biggest competitive advantages of GuideGeek, because what attendee wants to be on a specific website chatting all day?"

Travel Manitoba is driving exposure and adoption of the event's WhatsApp chat by placing QR codes in strategic venues and other high-traffic places for attendees to access.

"So if I'm a visitor, I can scan a QR code to go to my WhatsApp and the Rendez-vous Canada chat thread. That to me is gold," he says. "So now at all the hotels and throughout the destination, people can scan it and ask something like, when are the shuttles running? And it will be able to give them the shuttle schedule, what schedule they're on, where the host night is, where they can go to get a great cocktail, and endless other things. So it's such a great pairing, especially because of all the languages that GuideGeek operates in."

That's also what the answer economy looks like in action.

Chomiak adds: "We're really excited to roll this out because this will be the first Rendez-vous Canada that has this feature."

Lastly, Travel Manitoba's staff at Rendez-vous are using the GuideGeek AI chat on their website when meeting with global buyers. Suppliers often access their websites and share pages specific to particular questions from buyers during the sales conversation.

Now, the staff just types whatever questions are being asked into GuideGeek to find the relevant site pages, versus hunting and clicking around the menus and navigation bar like in the past.

"Our team is actually using GuideGeek while they're having in-person conversations, because it provides such a personalized curated collection of the content immediately," explains Chomiak, "It's so much more efficient and faster than using our website the old way, right?"

Keep an eye on Chomiak. He's a one-man wrecking ball of the old ways.