AI Lectures & AX Transformation | Tourism Activation Strategy by Lee Eun-young, CEO of 'Nanoventure'
Real World's regional and spatial innovation cases and full-speed AX transformation story shared at the Gongju Tourism Forum
Lee Eun-young, co-author of 'Nanoventure' and co-CEO of UniqueGoodCompany, shares tourism activation, idle space innovation, and changes in organizations working with AI
Making tourism destination introductions faster with AI and making people want to visit there are different tasks.
Distributing AI accounts to employees and enabling the organization to actually accomplish bigger tasks are also different.
What we discussed together at this Gongju Tourism Forum was precisely that gap between the two.
How can we connect the new tool of AI to 'experiences that bring people' and 'the power of executing organizations'?
On September 22nd, the 4th Gongju Tourism Forum was held at Baekje Education and Culture Center at Kongju National University. The theme of this forum, organized by Gongju Culture and Tourism Foundation, Kongju National University's Tourism Management Department, and the Korean Tourism Association, was 'AI Era Gongju Tourism Activation Strategy'.
UniqueGoodCompany co-CEO Lee Eun-young delivered a lecture on the theme 'Tourism in the AI Era: What We Must Prepare.' She shared the story of creating new experiences in regions and spaces through Real World, as well as the organizational innovation experience contained in 'Nanoventure' alongside the challenges of the tourism field.
Why did we address organizational AX transformation in a discussion about the future of tourism?
Because creating experiences that people will seek out and equipping an organization capable of continuously creating those experiences are inseparable.
Tourism Trends in the AI Era: 'Reasons to Experience Directly' Matter More Than More Information
When discussing AI and tourism, it's easy to think first of travel itinerary recommendations, promotional content creation, and customer service. The OECD also addresses both improving visit experiences and operational performance of tourism businesses as key opportunities for AI utilization in recent tourism and AI reports.
However, from the perspective of a tourism planner, there's one more question to ask.
"Once people know enough information, why would they want to come here next?"
Knowing the history and characteristics of a place doesn't complete a trip by itself. Only when you walk through it yourself, talk with someone, and encounter unexpected scenes does it truly become your own experience.
We believe that the more AI accomplishes online, the more tourism planning must focus on this point. Rather than repeating information available on screens at the actual site, it's about creating things that can only be done by going there.
Walking through the same alley while listening to an explanation is different from exploring and finding hidden clues. Appreciating the same exhibit by sight is different from examining it closely to solve a problem within a story.
This is the core of 'experiential tourism' discussed in this lecture. It goes one step beyond showing visitors more content—it's about creating roles for tourists to participate in directly.
Real World's Tourism Innovation Cases: The Place Remains the Same, but What Visitors Do Changes
Real World, UniqueGoodCompany's platform, is an experiential content platform that connects stories, missions, and digital technology to real physical spaces. It's designed so visitors don't simply remain observers but move as protagonists in the story.
What's important in this lecture, too, wasn't the name of the new technology but how visitor behavior changes through that technology.
Instead of just viewing artifacts at the museum, you encounter mysteries that require examining the artifacts to solve
'Dr. H's Secret Notebook' at the Korean-German Medicine Museum in Eumseong, Chungcheongbuk-do is content where visitors discover a mysterious notebook and, by exploring the museum, find the secrets of a famous medicine. The museum's space and story connect as stages for deduction and exploration.
It's an approach where instead of asking visitors to "look at this exhibit closely," the story progresses as visitors examine the exhibits and discover clues.
'Detective Gangnim Gangmuyoung' at the Gyeonggi Museum was also designed from the same perspective. Visitors move around the museum solving cases together with the detective. The characteristics of actual collection items are linked to missions, and rather than large installations, existing exhibition spaces and QR guides are utilized.
The hint these cases give to tourism planning is clear.
Before adding new attractions, we can first change how people encounter existing resources.
From taking photos with traditional houses as a backdrop to participating in the stories within traditional houses
In 'Crossing Dimensional Boundaries' at Odok Hanok Village in Gangneung, visitors explore the hanok village and solve missions utilizing AR and QR technology. Since visitors can also participate while wearing hanbok (traditional Korean clothing), the space, story, and visitor behavior connect as a single experience.
Academic research has also addressed what such experiences leave with tourists.
Researchers Jo Yu-jeong and Shin Hak-seung studied participants in Real World-based tourism games in Wonju and Gangneung, and their paper was first published online in the international academic journal Journal of Travel Research on April 29, 2025. The research confirmed that gamified AR tourism experiences positively connect to place attachment and tourism destination knowledge, and that this also relates to intention to revisit and re-participate.
What's noteworthy is that beyond simply the reaction "it was fun," they examined the process by which people come to better understand a place and want to visit it again.
Regional cultural content can either be a brief event to enjoy or an opportunity to remember a region and think about it again.
When discussing regional decline and idle space utilization, it's common to first try to determine the building's purpose. Decisions about whether to make it an exhibition hall, change it to an experience center, or add new facilities are considered first.
However, in content planning, there's something that must be asked before that.
"What will people who visit here do, who will they meet, and what memories will they take away?"
'Real Treasure Festival' held at the Old Gyeonggi Provincial Office is an example of using existing space as a treasure hunt stage. It was structured so visitors would explore the old office and surrounding spaces while completing missions. On November 12, 2023, the first event, 3,040 people participated in a treasure hunt organized jointly by Gyeonggi Province and UniqueGoodCompany, achieving the Guinness World Record for 'Largest scavenger hunt.'
What to consider in this case isn't just the scale of the record. It's that by planning new activities in an existing space, they created reasons for people to visit there.
Of course, regional decline isn't solved by a single event. Putting content in an empty building doesn't automatically sustain operations.
So idle space innovation must be thought through until after opening. It must extend to deciding who operates it, how to connect with nearby shops, what to change seasonally, and how to reflect visitor feedback in future planning.
The same applies from the perspective of narrowing the urban-rural gap. Rather than simply moving successful urban content, an approach that helps the people who know the region's stories best plan and improve directly is needed.
We must move from simply filling a space once to creating reasons for a region to draw people on its own.
Changes in Tourism Jobs: Learning How to Use AI Alone Isn't Enough
The forum also discussed changes in tourism jobs and talent development. Yoon Soo-young, Associate Research Fellow at the Korean Culture and Tourism Research Institute, addressed workforce issues and changing competencies in the tourism field under the theme 'Job Changes in the AI Era and Talent Development Methods.'
This discussion leaves important questions for education managers at tourism businesses and cultural tourism organizations.
"After delegating repetitive tasks to AI, what should people do better?"
Creating draft reservation guidance text is different from judging whether the site can accommodate visitors. Writing promotional copy is different from deciding what image a region should be remembered by.
As tasks AI can handle increase, the ability to review results, modify them to fit the on-site situation, and make responsible decisions becomes more important for people. Opportunities for new team members to learn such judgment must also be intentionally created.
Therefore, it's unfortunate when AI corporate training ends at introducing functions. Working with actual tasks, you must practice together what to delegate to AI, which results people must verify, and how to correct incorrect results.
Training can lead to organizational change when you consider not just leaving a manager's judgment as individual experience but how it's passed to colleagues and the next person in that role.
The Major AX Transformation Addressed in 'Nanoventure': From a Company Using AI to a Company Changing How It Works with AI
Changes in the tourism field ultimately lead to organizational issues.
While people agree that new content is needed, work stops between planning and execution. Good ideas take time in reporting and coordination. When a manager changes, the same explanations and preparations are repeated.
UniqueGoodCompany also went through a time when it needed to redesign its organization. 'Nanoventure' is a book where the two co-CEOs, Song In-hyuk and Lee Eun-young, together captured that experience of failure and recovery.
The book covers the process of changing how work is done, centered on AI, amid a management crisis. After significant workforce restructuring, the company increased operating profit and reduced monthly operating costs to one-tenth. What the book emphasizes is not workforce reduction itself but the change of redesigning the work and execution structure of the entire organization.
This is where the difference between AI utilization and AX transformation becomes clear.
If you quickly wrote a planning proposal using AI, that's an improvement in individual tasks. If that planning proposal
Leads to review and execution, and problems discovered during execution and reasons for modifications are used in the next planning, then the organization's working methods will have started to change.
'Nanoventure' describes the process where human judgment and AI agent execution, and the resulting experiences accumulate again, as a 'learning loop.' It's a story about creating a structure where the more an organization works, the better it can do the next task, beyond just distributing AI accounts.
It's a perspective applicable to tourism businesses and small organizations in regions.
It doesn't mean taking on more work with fewer people. It means reducing materials that are created repeatedly, tasks that are explained again each time, and processes that depend only on a manager's memory, and concentrating capability on work that people need to judge.
What we call 'full-speed AX transformation' doesn't rush people—it starts with changing how work is done so that good judgment leads to execution.
AXIT: Making conversation and execution experience remain in the organization
Our organizational AI solution AXIT also started from this problem consciousness. People and multiple AI agents work together, leaving work instructions, feedback, and results within the organization to be reused in the next task.
Let me think about how this applies in the tourism field.
When preparing a new experience program, AI can create drafts of guides and promotional materials based on existing operation records. The manager reviews whether they match actual operating conditions and revises parts where confusion occurred at the site. Afterward, they don't just save the revised sentences—they also leave notes about why they changed them and what situations caused problems.
The person preparing the next program can refer to those records to reduce the same trial-and-error.
This is a learning loop that can be thought about in tourism organizations. It's not about letting AI judge everything on its own—it's about making it possible to use the field judgments people have built for the next execution.
This is also why we need to develop both the capability to plan tourism content and the organization's AX capability. Because it's not enough to create a good experience once—we must be able to continuously improve and operate it.
What should we be able to start after AI lectures, corporate training, and speeches end?
If you're preparing an AI lecture for a company or public organization, I'd like you to first envision what comes after the lecture.
Depending on whether the goal is for members to learn about new technology, find tasks to apply in our work, or actually change how we work together, the necessary education varies.
UniqueGoodCompany operates AI·AX lectures, hands-on workshops that apply to actual work, and participatory organizational training. We connect them by starting with understanding technology trends, examining work flow, and then making team execution tasks concrete.
In the tourism and culture field, we can address planning that transforms local resources into visitor experiences. In leader education for businesses and organizations, we can examine changes in the roles of AI and people and decision-making and execution methods based on 'Nanoventure' cases.
What's important in planning education isn't just grand future predictions.
"What can our organization start doing differently from tomorrow?"
You must be able to answer that question specifically.
The future of tourism discussed at the Gongju Tourism Forum wasn't far away either. It starts with newly viewing resources already present in a region, creating experiences for people to participate in, and having an organization capable of continuously improving those experiences.
Creating reasons for tourists to visit here and leaving the organization the power to continue creating those reasons.
We want to share both of these through Real World's on-site experience and 'Nanoventure's' organizational innovation story.
About 'Nanoventure' Book
Written by Song In-hyuk and Lee Eun-young | HumanCube
It addresses how to change how work is done for small organizations to accomplish bigger tasks, beyond just using more AI tools. The story of the two founders' failure and recovery, and organizational redesign can be found in the book introduction and table of contents on YES24 and Kyobo Bookstore websites.
AI Lectures · AX Transformation Corporate Training · Public Organization Lecture Booking
UniqueGoodCompany conducts lectures and training for local governments, public institutions, and companies on tourism activation, experiential content planning, idle space utilization, and organizations' AI and AX transformation.
For the tourism and culture field, we share on-site cases; for organizational leaders, the perspective of transformation; and for practitioners, tasks to apply.
If you're considering a lecture, please send the organization name, education target, desired date, and the task you're currently considering.
https://www.nanoventure.org/