Mark your calendars: the virtual Travel Trends Summit is back October 28 to 29! This year it’s going Beyond AI, opening up two full days on everything it takes to build, grow, and lead in travel right now, not just the AI piece of it. Julie Thorner, our Founder, is taking the stage as a speaker once again.

Julie’s joining Christian Wolters (Intrepid), Tahnee Perry (Perry Co.), and Dan Flores (Satisfi Labs) for a panel called Agentic Marketing: Who’s Really in Control?. They’ll be digging into a question we think about constantly at Liquid Spark: as AI agents start making more decisions on a traveler’s behalf, who’s actually driving?

It’s a natural next step from where Julie left the conversation at last year’s Summit. She talked about agentic AI moving brands from interruption marketing to invitation marketing. A year in, that shift isn’t theoretical anymore. This panel is going to get into what it really means for the brands trying to earn a traveler’s trust.

Registration for Summit V3 is free this year, thanks to TourRadar and the full 2026 sponsor roster.

Back in April, she sat down with Dan Christian for a Company Spotlight episode, going from Wall Street to whitewater guiding to building Liquid Spark, plus where AI fits into it all. It’s a good warm-up before the panel, even if the AI conversation has moved fast since then.

If you’re in travel marketing and trying to make sense of where AI is actually taking this industry (versus the hype), we’d love to see you there.