Helping 100+ tourism operators understand what AI could mean for their business.
AI KEYNOTE · DESTINATION CENTRAL VICTORIA · MAY 2026
Destination Central Victoria brought together more than 100 tourism and hospitality operators to understand one of the biggest shifts affecting the visitor economy: how AI is changing the way businesses work and how travellers discover, compare and choose where to go.
Caroline Kennedy designed Hearts & Minds in the AI Era, a practical keynote that cut through the hype and showed operators how AI could save time, reduce friction, improve communication and help their businesses get found, while protecting the human experience at the heart of tourism.
The central question:
How do we use AI to make the business better without losing what makes the experience human?
100+ TOURISM OPERATORS
Tourism, hospitality and visitor economy businesses from across Central Victoria.
PRACTICAL AI APPLICATION
Real tools, operator examples and use cases businesses could apply immediately.
AI + CUSTOMER DISCOVERY
How AI is changing the way visitors search, compare and choose experiences.
FROM: AI CURIOSITY
Trying to understand what AI means, which tools matter and where to begin.
TO: PRACTICAL ACTIONN
Identifying real business constraints, testing useful AI applications and taking the next step.
Client
Destination Central Victoria
Engagement
AI keynote incorporating practical examples, audience participation and action planning
Audience
100+ tourism, hospitality and visitor economy operators
Region
Hepburn, Macedon Ranges, Central Goldfields and Mount Alexander
Keynote
Hearts & Minds in the AI Era
Focus
Practical AI, AI discovery, business efficiency, visitor experience and human connection
The Brief
AI was moving quickly, but many tourism operators were trying to work out what actually mattered for their business.
For an industry built around experiences, relationships and human service, the question wasn't simply what AI could do. It was where AI could create practical value without undermining the very things visitors value.
Caroline designed the keynote to make AI understandable and commercially relevant to operators with very different levels of technology experience.
Rather than focusing on technical complexity, the session connected AI to familiar business challenges: time, bookings, customer enquiries, marketing, reviews, administration, staffing and the way travellers increasingly search for recommendations.
From AI awareness to practical application
Understanding AI is one thing. Knowing where it matters is another.
For many tourism operators, AI was moving faster than their ability to work out what was genuinely useful and what was simply noise.
So Caroline deliberately didn't deliver a technical presentation or a catalogue of AI tools.
Instead, she connected AI to the realities operators already understood: attracting visitors, responding to customers, marketing their business, managing reviews, reducing administration and creating memorable experiences.
The keynote was built around three shifts:
WORK
AI is changing how everyday business tasks are completed.
DISCOVER
AI is changing how visitors search, compare and decide where to go.
ACT
AI is increasingly moving from answering questions to helping complete work.
Designing the keynote around the business
Caroline designed Hearts & Minds in the AI Era specifically for tourism and hospitality operators across Central Victoria, with widely varying business models, resources and levels of AI experience.
Rather than relying on abstract technology examples, she used familiar visitor scenarios and practical business problems to make AI relevant to the room.
One scenario asked AI:
“We've got six hours, two kids, one Nan, a budget under $200, and we want good food and something memorable. Where should we go?”
The technology could produce an answer.
The more important question for every operator in the room was:
Is your business in that answer?
What Caroline Kennedy Delivered
01 · FROM AI HYPE TO PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Five useful places for operators to start.
Caroline narrowed the enormous AI conversation down to five practical use cases relevant to tourism and hospitality operators:
Guest enquiries
FAQs, menus, dietary needs, parking and accessibility.
Guest insight
Analysing reviews, identifying repeated complaints and finding opportunities to improve the visitor experience.
Marketing communications
Campaigns, EDMs, social content and event descriptions.
Meetings and administration
Recording, summarising and creating follow-up actions.
Hiring and rostering
Job advertisements, interview questions and onboarding support.
Rather than giving operators dozens of possibilities, Caroline identified the first three as higher-impact opportunities and encouraged businesses to start where the work repeats.
02 · REAL OPERATORS. REAL CONSTRAINTS. REAL APPLICATIONS.
Showing what AI looks like inside actual tourism businesses.
Caroline brought the technology to life through examples of Australian tourism and hospitality operators already applying AI to real business constraints.
One local example involved an operator using an AI phone-answering assistant called Sadie.
The problem wasn't a lack of customers. It was calls arriving during peak service, when employees needed to be present with the guests already in the venue.
Sadie could answer common questions, provide menus, respond to dietary enquiries, support event enquiries and help with bookings.
The important lesson wasn't the technology itself.
The operator had decided what the AI should and shouldn't do.
AI didn't replace the hospitality. It protected it.
The repetitive work moved to the technology. The human team retained the work requiring judgement, care and presence.
03 · START WITH THE CONSTRAINT, NOT THE TOOL
Where is your business leaking?
Caroline challenged operators to stop beginning with the question:
“What AI tool should I use?”
and instead ask:
“Where is the biggest constraint in my business?”
Time. Money. Bookings. Energy. Guest trust.
A phone that isn't answered during peak service. Hours spent writing social content. Incorrect information appearing online. Repetitive guest questions consuming employee time.
Then find the AI application that fits the constraint.
Every useful AI application starts with a business problem, not a technology.
Across the operator examples, Caroline identified the same pattern: start with a real constraint, put AI close to the workflow that matters, keep humans accountable at judgement points and measure business outcomes rather than excitement about the tool.
04 · PRACTICAL TOOLS TO TAKE BACK TO THE BUSINESS
Not a software catalogue. A starting point.
Caroline gave operators practical AI reference cards organised around business needs, including AI phone answering, guest messaging and review analysis, operations and marketing.
Rather than recommending technology for technology's sake, the tools were connected to specific business problems so operators could identify an immediate application relevant to their own business.
05 · FROM SEARCH TO AI DISCOVERY
Is your business in the answer?
Then put the discovery material here.
- Websites changed who got found.
- Online booking changed who got chosen.
- Social media changed who got noticed.
- Reviews changed who got trusted.
- AI is beginning to change who gets recommended.
Caroline demonstrated how travellers can increasingly ask AI detailed questions about where to stay, eat and visit and receive a direct recommendation rather than simply a list of search results.
The question for operators became:
Is your business in that answer?
Operators were shown practical ways to strengthen the information available about their businesses across their websites, Google Business Profiles, FAQs, reviews and other trusted sources, making it easier for both people and AI systems to understand what they offer.
Protecting what makes hospitality human
AI wasn't presented as a reason to remove people from tourism and hospitality.
Caroline challenged operators to think more carefully about where technology creates value and where human attention creates value.
In tourism, some of the most important moments depend on welcome, local knowledge, judgement, empathy and connection. The opportunity is to use AI to remove or prepare the work that gets in the way of those moments.
AI belongs backstage. The front of house is sacred.
The objective isn't hospitality with fewer people. It's hospitality with less friction.
By using AI for repetitive administration, preparation, analysis and routine enquiries, operators can create more capacity for the work people do particularly well: serving customers, solving problems, building relationships and creating memorable experiences.
From inspiration to action
Caroline ended the keynote by asking operators to turn what they'd learned into one practical move:
- ONE CLEAR CONSTRAINT.
- ONE USEFUL AI TEST.
- ONE PRACTICAL MOVE THIS WEEK.
Rather than trying to transform an entire business overnight, operators were encouraged to identify one genuine business constraint and test whether AI could improve it.
The message was simple:
Confidence does not come first. Action does.
The response
More than 100 operators. Strong audience response. Practical application beyond the room.
Demand for the conference exceeded expectations, with more than 100 tourism and hospitality operators attending from across Central Victoria.
The keynote was extremely well received. Destination Central Victoria's Interim CEO, Paul Matthews, shared that everyone he had spoken to had loved the session and found it incredibly valuable.
That feedback continued after the conference. Caroline stayed for the post-event drinks, where operators approached her to talk about what had resonated, the ideas they could see themselves applying and how useful they had found the practical approach to AI.
And the session was designed to keep working after the event. Every attendee left with a practical take-home pack of tools, prompts and resources to help them experiment with AI and apply what they'd learned inside their own businesses.
The measure of a useful AI keynote isn't what people know when they leave the room. It's what they can do differently when they get back to work.
Caroline delivers AI keynotes for conferences, executive teams and leadership events, tailored to the organisation, audience and business context.
Want your leaders to move from AI experimentation to practical application?
Every keynote is built against the brief on an alignment call first. Send the agenda and the audience, and we will tell you which of these is the closest match.
Or call 1300 88 53 94
Frequently asked questions
What Clients Say About the Work
Results that prove themselves.
“It was a transformational experience. You asked me a lot of questions and made me see things from different perspectives, which enhanced my leadership and self-awareness. The organisation grew from $37 million to around $65 million. Coaching is absolutely critical. Thank you for the gift you gave me, Caroline.”
“Caroline doesn't waste time on things that are not going to make an impact to your world and your business. What she's truly done for me has unlocked the limitations that I had in my own mind and encouraged me to think really, really big, bigger than I ever thought and imagined I could do. I've achieved some pretty remarkable things.”
“Caroline invited us to see AI as a cognitive load partner, not a replacement or a threat, emphasising that while AI can support us, critical thinking remains our uniquely human edge.”
“Having that external advice and counsel that is very sound, trusted, with deep experience… you can't get that internally. You recognise those strengths and build upon them, but also challenge me in a way that gives me confidence.”
“I’ve worked closely with Caroline at three organisations, and it’s been transformational each time. Her contribution to the executive teams’ development allowed us to deliver tremendous growth. Caroline can see patterns and insights in numbers and behaviours, the likes of which I’ve never experienced before.”
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