Visit Phoenix CEO on Leading AI Strategy and Being Chill About It

I learned a lot about how DMO leaders can confidently integrate AI processes into their organizations after speaking with Ron Price, CDME, president and CEO of Visit Phoenix.

Price is somewhat new to AI but his staff have been doing cool things with various LLMs for a while. He says his primary role with AI is providing the Visit Phoenix team with an enabling environment for success built on a culture of trust. Price accomplishes that by inspiring everyone to experiment with AI, be aware of the liabilities, share their wins, have fun with it, reach out to others for advice, and most of all, validate everything.

Although, what stood out for me the most talking with Price is his calm and clear approach to AI, basically inferring (in my words, not his)...

"We got this. We might do something amazing today with AI or we might not, but either way we're fully committed to seeing what it can do. We're also going to figure this AI thing out by collaborating with our many DMO industry friends. Because AI is going to change everything in a hurry, and we at Visit Phoenix are not going to be caught staring out at a Sonoran sunset while the world passes our city by."

That's the vibe I got. That's leadership. That's what being a CEO means, at least for me. AI is confusing, sure, and CEOs have to worry about their boards and electeds. The thing is, we're more than two and a half years into generative AI now, and it's not going to wait for CEOs to decide if they can "trust AI" or not.

I think we can all learn from Price a few things:

• We can de-escalate all the hubris and hand-wringing surrounding AI by being open to possibilities and having a clear set of principles, especially related to responsible AI use and verification.

• You can have fun with AI and focus on business outcomes at the same time.

• The DMO industry needs to collaborate and share best practices more intentionally to accelerate AI education, innovation and integration.

• We must encourage DMO staff to use AI today so they can steer the future of our industry tomorrow.

Price likes talking about AI. I would encourage any DMO CEOs on the fence with AI to reach out to him.

Greg Oates: Ron, how do you use AI?

Ron Price: I use AI every single day, going back now about a month and a half. I'm just fascinated and interested in what it's able to do. I wouldn't say I'm an early adopter, of course, although there are some people who aren't even on it yet.

Me personally, I use it for everything, like if I'm curious about something that's happening within the region. Or maybe I want to quickly compile a lot of data to help solve a problem or answer questions as I get ready for different meetings. More or less, my brain is always just firing, like, "What if we tried this or that?" And so, this year has been a cool realization about what AI can do, and seeing how it's pulling all the sources through to validate what it responds with.

We have also integrated AI with Microsoft Copilot. We pay for everyone to have access to that, and then we also have a ChatGPT Team account for our staff.

GO: Where else are you seeing value with AI at Visit Phoenix?

RP: In our world, it's marketing, it's content. I love being surrounded by people who can write really well. It's an art to me, and I don't possess that art. It's like someone playing the piano. I'm in awe of that. So AI gives people the ability to write better, and it's okay to lean into it. Don't feel threatened by it. AI is able to give you that one golden nugget, or it suggests that one good idea that can really help someone when they're writing.

Here's the fun part. Every day, we're learning something unique. We have the Cronkite School of Journalism in Phoenix, and some of the students are here. We kind of give them free rein, and we're also teaching them at the same time. The way that they use AI is amazing. It's fun to walk down the hall to see them because I'm always like, "How did you write that? How did you create that image? How did you pull that data and research together?" It's just a different generation.

We're also seeing where our people are asking AI things like, "If I'm a salesperson, how do I influence a group to come here in the middle of the summer for a conference? Why is it fun to be here for a conference when it's 110 degrees out?" And what does AI have to say? Well, one thing that's great about, say, Grok, for example, it's pulling from all these little texts on Twitter, or X. They're from people saying, "Hey, I know it's summertime in Phoenix but look what I got to do."

Overall, AI is just a fun environment to play in. We're not going to use everything. It's just another tool that we get to use.

GO: Does your staff using AI increase your organization's impact in the community?

RP: We not only focus on growing tourism in our community, but we're also joined at the hip with economic development. We look at our role as we're here to build a better community through tourism. And so, when you think about utilizing all the data out there, we always ask ourselves, "How could AI help us consolidate that data and crunch the numbers faster to give us a clearer picture of what we think we know?"

For example, how much business that comes in through our leads touch our priority sectors? And of those sectors, which ones align extremely well with what we're doing here at Visit Phoenix? Is it semiconductors? Is it bio-med? Is it something that leans into the engineering side because of what ASU and the Department of Defense are doing? We've seen we can go back and look at the data and get a better picture of those things now.

Also, as an example, we have a high propensity to book business around the semiconductor space. So we're utilizing these AI tools to quickly do research like, "Give me a list of the top semiconductor conferences that take place around the world." The responses are quicker and the results are better versus doing a traditional Google search. It's able to pull from a lot of different sources, so that's another way we're using AI.

“Overall, AI is just a fun environment to play in. We're not going to use everything. It's just another tool that we get to use.”

GO: How do you define the role of a CEO to guide a DMO forward with AI?

RP: Setting up the rules of the game is important. There are areas of liability we have to be aware of about what you can and can't be pulling in. Those are the types of things we needed to figure out, you know, basically, "What is our rule book for using AI?"

I like giving people the ability to use AI as they will. I think it works best whenever people know that it's a tool we want them to utilize. And if it can help us at the end of the day tell a better story, be smarter as we go after business, and be smarter with our analytics to help build our marketing strategy stronger, then use it.

I try to build a team of leaders so they're CEOs of their own divisions, and I want them to be thought leaders in their areas. Also, I think AI enables us to get to answers quickly, but, and this is important, how do we validate those answers?

We're really good at Visit Phoenix when it comes to validating answers, but we're usually doing it by going the long way and understanding how AI responded like it did. We're reading source by source by source, and then we kind of come to our own conclusion. It's like we're not just focused on the punch line of a joke. We can also tell you the structure of the joke. You always have to validate.

We get excited about using AI because it just puts us in a new position. I think it's good to have a CEO that supports that, but that support comes from a trust within the organization. I trust that people are going to utilize AI to help make us better.

GO: What keeps you up at night regarding AI?

RP: My fear is how do we control and ensure that someone isn't producing something negative on our behalf, and then launching it to the world, and using this incredible tool to hurt us? Because there are people that are extremely gullible who believe whatever they're looking at. That's kind of where my brain goes sometimes. It's only because of what I've already seen these tools can do.

I think across the DMO industry, we'll have some "ahas," especially when we get together in various forums to exchange ideas. We need to be talking with each other about, "Here are some things that work really well with AI, and here are the headwinds." And then, "These are the things you need to realize could happen with AI, and here are some ways you can mitigate those problems."

The more we can learn from others about how they're using AI, the better. I think what you're putting together about AI strategy with all your insights is going to be extremely valuable.

GO: Thank you. So, what are you thinking about next with AI?

RP: As AI continues to grow, and we've talked about it here internally, what is the value of a website? In fact, we just started our next fiscal year, July 1. Website visits is no longer a key metric that we're going after.

As a leader, I like knowing what's three steps ahead. We currently have these tools, but how are they going to change the way we make decisions going forward? At some point, a lot of what we're talking about now is going to be white noise. And what then? It doesn't mean our jobs of promoting a destination change. It means we're going to get so much better at telling our story through so many different avenues. I believe that our reach is actually going to broaden.

We're still going to be responsible for promoting our destination and selling our destination, but how we tell the story and how we show the story is going to change as these tools evolve. Back in the day, a lot of us were reading about Moore's Law and how things just keep improving and getting cheaper, especially in technology. Now we're moving into a space where the rate of growth with AI is going to be something we've never seen before.