Building Digital Twins of Various Black U.S. Traveler Segments

March 12, 2025, at 12:00 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. U.K.Orange rectangular button with “Register Now” written in all caps and white text.

The Group Black logo above the Panoplai logo above Tripadvisor’s logo. Group Black’s logo has the company name written in all capped, white bold text in a black shape. The Panoplai logo has a red star shape to the left with the company name written to the left in black, lower-case font. The Tripadvisor logo has a green circle with a black owl face in the center with the word Tripadvisor written in black to the left.Tripadvisor needs to know more about travel trends than any organization on Earth. And that means understanding Black U.S. travelers – a historically underrepresented group with more than $100B in spending power. 

Group Black, a media company committed to connecting brands with diverse audiences, worked with Panoplai, a next-generation research platform, to overcome the challenge.

Tripadvisor and Group Black started by using the Panoplai platform to ask thousands of travelers questions about their traveling experiences, hopes, disappointments and fears. Unlike a typical survey, Panoplai focused on natural language and real emotion.  

The result: a landmark Tripadvisor report and earned coverage in Travel + Leisure. 

This talk is about how Tripadvisor, Group Black and Panoplai are using this foundational data – and more – to build digital twins of various extraordinarily diverse Black U.S. traveler segments. We’re putting the data into motion, enabling Tripadvisor and Group Black to gather nuanced, reliable and actionable opinions from virtual extensions of these travelers.

Key takeaways:  

  1. We cover hard-won lessons about AI-powered market research, digital twins and synthetic data, focusing on how any organization can bring its own consumers to life.  
  2. We discuss when – and when not! – to employ these cutting-edge approaches to research.  
  3. We share our own digital twin report card to help you understand which digital twins are here to help and which will lead you astray.   

Presenter: 

Adam Bai’s headshot.

Adam Bai, chief strategy officer and chief client officer at Panoplai 

Adam is chief strategy officer and chief client officer at Panoplai, a pathbreaking audience discovery platform. By training, an anthropologist of innovation and technology who helped lead transformation initiatives for a range of global organizations, including IBM and PepsiCo. Early executive (first editor-in-chief and first chief strategy officer) at Nomadic Learning, a cohort-based digital learning company. (Nomadic had a successful exit and was acquired by Guild, a leading corporate learning firm.) Published in Harvard Business Review, Ad Age, Adweek, Barron's, Newsweek, Nasdaq, US News & World Report, Chief Learning Officer Magazine and more. Taught classes and/or lectured at MIT/Tsinghua, Columbia, Harvard and others.

Sarah Chaten’s headshot.

Sarah Chaten, vice president of insights and analytics at Group Black 

Sarah Chaten is a curious, data-driven insights leader with over 15 years of experience consulting with Fortune 100 consumer, pharmaceutical and technology brands. Currently serving as vice president of insights and analytics at Group Black, she leads the strategy and execution of measurement, analytics and research at the company. Sarah comes to Group Black from Holler, a conversational media company focused on animated marketing strategies where she led measurement strategy. Starting her career at Nielsen, IRI (Circana), and MaxPoint (Vericast), she acquired a depth of knowledge in quantitative measurement, qualitative research and consumer insights. Her passion for data as a means to understand human motivations drives her work. Sarah resides in Durham, N.C., with her husband, twin daughters and dog Clark. 

Ryan Gillis’ headshot.

Ryan Gillis, associate director, research and insights, Tripadvisor 

Ryan Gillis leads the research and insights team for Tripadvisor in the Americas. Over the past three years, he has leveraged a diverse array of research methodologies to assess traveler sentiment and emerging trends, providing valuable insights for the destinations and brands Tripadvisor serves. He has nearly 10 years of experience in media research and insights. Prior to working at Tripadvisor, Ryan spent three years in research at Tastemade, a social-first lifestyle publisher. He holds a bachelor's degree in marketing from George Washington University and resides in Northern Virginia.