For the destination marketing organization (DMO), the goal is to create a more unified way for visitors to navigate the city—powered by first-party data from across its partner network.
“From our perspective, it’s really about creating a connected city and a connected experience for visitors,” said Sarah Townes, chief marketing and innovation officer at Experience Columbus.
The DMO has worked with Satisfi Labs since 2019, using a multi-channel chatbot across its digital platforms. The new program extends that approach beyond the DMO’s own channels, bringing participating partners into a shared system.
“To be able to connect the knowledge base that each of us has within the destination together to create a seamless guest experience is really what we’re most excited about with this program,” Townes said.
From a visitor perspective, the experience begins through familiar entry points, most often a chat interface on the destination’s website, or the websites of local partners. But it is also available through connected screens in the welcome center and the Experience Columbus mobile app.
The system is designed to provide real-time, location-specific information, such as events, activities and recommendations, based primarily on content from local partners.
As part of the initial rollout, a select group of DMO members have joined the program, with plans to expand participation over time.
While attractions were among the first to volunteer, the goal is to broaden the program over time so that any partner could participate, Townes said.
For Experience Columbus, a key advantage is the ability to extend AI capabilities to members such as non-profits, that may not have the resources to build their own tools.
“This really gives them the opportunity to be part of that shared knowledge base,” she said.
As more partners are added, the expectation is that the system will surface more comprehensive and relevant responses by drawing on a wider range of first-party inputs across the destination.
“The more attractions, dining destinations [and] retail locations that we get to be part of the platform … the more connectivity and educated answers and optimal experience through those answers will be provided to the end user,” Townes said.
First-party data as the foundation
A central element of the initiative is its reliance on first-party data from local partners. Each participating DMO member was equipped with an individual AI agent, which surfaces first-party data specific to that stakeholder.
According to Dan Flores, head of tourism at Satisfi Labs, “Each agent is independent by design. An agent deployed at a specific location sources its content dynamically from that location’s own website as its primary source of truth, supplemented by other reference sources relevant to them, such as review sites. The platform dynamically pulls and updates this content, so answers reflect real-time information from the partner’s own digital presence.”
Townes said this self-produced content is usually the content brands, attractions and organizations feel best about. “I think the benefit of this is you are getting the latest, greatest, best-quality responses and information out of this type of connected city experience versus a … standalone AI tool.”
Townes, who has worked with Satisfi Labs since her time as VP of marketing at Mall of America a decade ago, said that training the chatbot was previously a more manual process, requiring the organization to input information, prompts and frequently asked questions.
Now, while stakeholders are still able to input content manually when desired, much of the process is automated. “It's a very low maintenance tool for us and for our partners.”
The "agentic" vision for connected AI
Satisfi Labs describes the initiative as an “Agentic City” program, a term that reflects both its current capabilities and its longer-term vision for connected AI agents across a destination.
According to Flores, the distinction lies in how agents are deployed and how they can interact across a shared platform.
“What makes this an ‘Agentic City’ rather than a collection of traditional chatbots is that the shared Satisfi Labs infrastructure enables agents to connect, hand off conversations and share context with one another,” he said.
Rather than functioning as standalone tools tied to a single organization, the system is designed to support interactions that move across venues—for example, allowing a visitor to transition from a conversation with one attraction to another without leaving the chat interface.
For now, success is defined primarily by adoption, with a goal of expanding the number and diversity of participating locations and gathering data on “visitor behavior and intent,” Flores said.
“Ultimately, we will surface anonymized, aggregated trends from all partner agents in a single dashboard, allowing the DMO to see themes across their entire partner ecosystem.”
Looking ahead
Future development will aim to layer more advanced capabilities onto the network, particularly around actions and automation.
“Phase 2 will focus on applying agentic features across agents in the city while identifying appropriate use cases for cross-agent actions based on real visitor data,” Flores said. “The platform already supports agentic capabilities like triggering emails or SMS from within a chat conversation (e.g., “Notify me when tickets go on sale”), and the goal is to identify where these types of automated actions can create the most value across the city network.”
Experience Columbus is focused on implementing the Agentic City program across the destination.
According to Townes, the DMO is working to “integrate it across all of our digital platforms and encourage our partners to do that as well, and then [we] hope to be able to expand out to other touchpoints around the city.”
Tags: Sarah Townes, Experience Columbus Dan Flores Satisfi Labs artificial intelligence (AI)
