Gather and Go with Brian Jewell

Is group travel the cure for America’s crisis of belonging? Dan Berger has been searching for belonging his whole life and believes that shared travel experiences have been critical to helping him find it. After launching several travel enterprises of his own, he joined the staff of WeRoad, where he helps others find the beauty of belonging through an innovative approach to group travel. Dan joins this episode of the podcast to explain how travel planners can make their trips master classes in

The public is increasingly using AI to research their trips. Are they finding you there? Vitaliy Levit believes tour operators — even small ones — should be discoverable in AI search. And he knows how to make it happen. As the founder of Gondola, he spent years helping tour and experience get noticed on search engines and is now focused on doing the same for artificial intelligence engines. On this episode, Vitaliy goes into detail about how tour companies can make sure AI systems are surfacin

In 1960, Nashville’s college students sat down at lunch counters — and stood up for a different future. Nashville is famous for its music, but its Black colleges helped shape something even bigger: the Civil Rights Movement. Students trained in nonviolent protest faced harassment, beatings and arrests as they challenged segregation in the city’s downtown stores. When a bombing targeted the attorney defending them, thousands marched through Nashville, setting the stage for a confrontation that h

Sometimes your best protection from a travel disaster is as thin as a sheet of paper. Jeff Ment believes that having well-crafted legal documents can make the difference between a peaceful problem resolution and a lengthy legal nightmare. And he would know — after working as a travel agent, a tour guide and an airline salesman, he found his place in the world as a travel attorney. On this episode, Jeff shares the most common legal mistakes most tour operators and travel professionals are makin

Is recruiting a “pied piper” the key to building successful group trips? Ali Raymer things so. After years of leading student trips as a high school English teacher, she launched Peace & Pearl Travel Co. and stumbled upon a recipe for partnering with community luminaries to create meaningful group trips that rack up big sales. On this episode, Ali shares her formula for identifying great pied pipers in places you might not expect. She breaks down her marketing approach and shares some warning

Group travel makes a massive impact on America’s economy — and we’ve got the data to prove it. On this episode of Gather and Go, Fred Ferguson and Lew Myers of the American Bus Association share the results of a brand new economic impact study that demonstrates just how important group travel really is to destinations and businesses across America. They break down how the market has grown in the last 12 months, the biggest challenges facing the group tourism industry, and how travel pros can us