New pilot with Google highlights the future of travel discoverability
The pilot reflects Visit California’s broader effort to help destinations and businesses remain visible as the way travelers search and plan continues to change
Lynn Carpenter, Senior Vice President of Marketing
April 13, 2026
As traveler behavior evolves, Visit California is helping the state’s tourism industry adapt to a new era of discovery shaped by AI, conversational search, predictive tools and more personalized trip planning.
That work was on display during the AI Pavilion at Outlook Forum, where Visit California outlined its evolving approach to discoverability, digital strategy and content development. The session also served as the setting for a key initiative: a new pilot program with Google focused on local discoverability. Introduced alongside David Pavelko, who leads global travel and local partnerships at Google, the pilot reflects Visit California’s broader effort to help destinations and businesses remain visible as the way travelers search and plan continues to change.
The Visit California & Google local video content pilot addresses a growing challenge for destinations of every size: ensuring that local businesses, neighborhoods, events and experiences continue to surface as travelers expand beyond traditional search habits and embrace tools that synthesize, recommend and personalize information. Instead of typing a few keywords and sorting through links, travelers are asking more detailed questions and expecting results tailored to their interests, timing and location.
Visit California is drawing on a deep library of statewide content and a broad network of local destination and business partners to help California leverage short-form video content and remain visible where travel decisions are increasingly being made. That content ecosystem gives the state a strong foundation at a time when freshness, specificity and trust matter more than ever. At the AI Pavilion, Visit California also highlighted a broader shift in how it is thinking about digital performance, with increased focus on engagement, discoverability and the wider content environment surrounding California travel planning.
The Visit California & Google content pilot builds on that foundation with a practical focus on optimizing video content for local discoverability. It is designed to help communities and businesses strengthen the information travelers encounter when searching for seasonal things to do, places to eat, events to attend and neighborhoods to explore. In these emerging search environments, visibility depends on accurate business information, timely updates, strong visuals and clear local expertise. Google Business Profiles also remain especially important for local businesses because they surface the real-time details travelers rely on when making decisions.
This new video content pilot marks an important step in how Visit California is approaching the future of tourism marketing. Rather than viewing these changes as a challenge to traditional destination promotion, the organization is using them to create new opportunities for California’s diverse places and experiences to be discovered.
As the travel planning landscape continues to evolve, Visit California is helping ensure the state’s tourism industry is ready to evolve with it.
Sign up to learn more about the Visit California & Google content pilot and Visit California’s AI strategy.
