Opportunity
New Orleans & Company has long invested in content that helps travelers discover the city’s culture, history and experiences. An extensive content library, established SEO strategy, and coordinated editorial and social media efforts gave the team a strong foundation for reaching potential visitors.
As more travelers turned to AI to research and plan their trips, those conversations opened up a new opportunity: understanding what people were asking about New Orleans and how well the organization’s existing content answered their questions.
Key priorities included:
The goal was to use anonymized first-party traveler conversations to uncover questions traditional search data might miss, identify content gaps and guide what the team created next.
Key priorities included:
• Understanding what travelers are asking about New Orleans in their own words
• Identifying gaps between traveler questions and existing website content
• Prioritizing content updates and new articles based on demonstrated traveler interest
• Strengthening content performance across traditional search and AI-powered discovery
Strategy
In June 2025, New Orleans & Company launched Mindtrip's AI-powered trip planner on NewOrleans.com, giving visitors a more personalized way to discover the city, while opening up a valuable new source of first-party traveler intelligence.
The content team began reviewing these conversations manually, recognizing that travelers were asking questions that traditional search data didn't always capture.
Seeing the value of these insights, New Orleans & Company decided to take the next step by incorporating Mindtrip's Answer Intelligence solution into its content planning process.
Answer Intelligence analyzes first-party traveler conversations and compares them against the destination's existing website content. By grouping questions into topics and evaluating how thoroughly the website addresses each one, it helps the team identify opportunities to strengthen existing pages or create new content.
"
Knowing what travelers are asking is valuable, but understanding how well our content answers those questions is the real differentiator. Now we can see where our coverage is strong, where it's thin and where we have an opportunity to do better.
Brian Walker
VP, Information Technology New Orleans & Company
The insights revealed an important distinction: covering a topic extensively doesn’t always mean answering the specific questions travelers have. New Orleans & Company had substantial content about the National WWII Museum, for example, but travelers wanted to know whether it was a good fit for kids.
Answer Intelligence helps the team spot those gaps, so it can build on existing coverage with the practical details travelers need to make decisions.
Impact
New Orleans & Company is already seeing the value of aligning content development with actual traveler demand. New pages informed by Answer Intelligence are generating thousands of monthly sessions, with engagement rates exceeding 74%.
One example is a history lover’s guide to the most historic sites in the French Quarter, created in response to traveler interests identified through Answer Intelligence. After the page performed well on the website, the team featured it in its newsletter, bringing the same traveler-informed content to another channel.
The value extends beyond individual articles. Answer Intelligence helps New Orleans & Company use traveler questions to decide which pages need attention, which new stories to pursue and where to focus the team’s time.
"
As content creators, we have ideas and instincts about what travelers want to know. Answer Intelligence gives us actual data to validate those decisions and uncover opportunities we might have missed. It helps us be more strategic about what we create, what we update and where we focus our time.
Hartley Wasser
Director of Editorial and Content, New Orleans & Company
Looking Ahead
New Orleans & Company’s approach shows how traveler intelligence can shape a destination’s marketing, starting with the questions people are already asking.
By incorporating first-party traveler intelligence into its ongoing planning process, New Orleans & Company can use what travelers are asking to guide website content, social media, email marketing and paid campaigns, making its marketing more relevant to travelers’ interests and needs.
For other destination organizations, this offers a model for a broader role for the website: a place to inspire and inform visitors, and a source of traveler intelligence that guides what the team creates next.
Turn Traveler Questions Into Actionable Insights
Discover how Mindtrip's Answer Intelligence can help your destination identify content gaps, uncover new opportunities and make smarter content decisions.
