Insights from WaveRez and Marica Brewster of Von Mack Agency
AI is everywhere right now, and for many watersports operators, that creates two very different reactions.
The first is curiosity. The second is skepticism.
There is no shortage of tools, promises, and opinions about what AI can do. But for boat rental companies, tour operators, and watersports businesses, the real question is much simpler:
What is actually worth your time?
That was the focus of our recent WaveRez webinar with Marica Brewster of Von Mack Agency, where we talked through how AI is already changing the watersports industry, where operators are seeing practical value, and where to focus first.
The biggest takeaway was this:
AI is not just a content tool anymore. It is quickly becoming a tool for visibility, conversion, and guest experience.
If you approach it through those three areas, it becomes much easier to decide what to do next.
AI is Changing How Travelers Discover and Book Experiences
For years, operators have focused on traditional channels like Google Search, social media, and OTAs. Those still matter. But AI is becoming a bigger part of the travel planning journey.
Travelers are now using ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and AI-powered search experiences to research destinations, compare experiences, ask specific questions, and build itineraries. In many cases, they are spending more time in that research phase than they would in a traditional Google search.
That matters because users coming from AI often arrive more informed and closer to booking.
During the webinar, we shared that we are already seeing traffic from AI sources increasing in operator analytics. The traffic volume is still much smaller than Google, but the conversion quality is often stronger. In other words, these are not casual clicks. These are users who have already done a lot of homework and are much warmer by the time they land on your site.
That shift means operators need to start thinking differently about how their businesses are presented online.
The 3 Places AI Can Create the Most Value
Marica broke AI usage into three practical buckets that make a lot of sense for watersports businesses:
The three buckets:
- Visibility: How your business gets surfaced in AI search, AI overviews, and large language models.
- Conversion: How quickly and effectively you turn warm leads into bookings.
- Experience: How AI can improve operations, communication, forecasting, and the guest journey after the sale.
If you are trying to figure out where to begin, start there.
1. Visibility: How to Help Your Business Show Up in AI Search
One of the biggest questions operators ask is, “How do I get my company to show up in ChatGPT or other AI tools?”
There is no perfect formula yet, and anyone claiming they have one is overselling it. But there are some patterns that appear to matter.
What seems to help:
- Clear differentiation: AI needs to understand what makes your business meaningfully different. If your brand positioning is vague, generic, or interchangeable, you are less likely to stand out in AI-driven results.
- Robust FAQs and detailed website content: Your site should answer the real questions customers ask, including the obscure ones. Can guests bring pets? Are captains available? What happens if it rains? Can guests bring drinks? What is included? What is not? These details matter because AI tools often pull from businesses that answer specific questions clearly.
- Recent reviews: Not just good reviews. Recent reviews. Consistent, fresh customer feedback helps reinforce relevance and trust.
- Mentions across the web: Being talked about in forums, community spaces, social channels, YouTube, and other places can strengthen your digital footprint.
- Structured content: Things like schema markup, well-organized pages, strong headings, and clear page structure help search engines and AI systems better understand your site.
The Big Mindset Shift
This is less about gaming the system and more about being the clearest answer to a specific question.
If you are the best dolphin cruise for families in Destin, or the easiest pontoon rental for first-time boaters, or the top-rated party boat with a captain included, that message needs to be obvious everywhere.
Your website, listings, Google Business Profile, social content, YouTube descriptions, and review responses should all reinforce that same point of difference.
2. Conversion: AI Can Help You Book More Warm Leads
AI does not just change discovery. It also compresses the buying journey.
A guest who reaches out after spending time researching with AI is often much closer to booking than a casual website visitor. That means your follow-up systems matter more than ever.
If you are slow to respond, unclear in your messaging, or make people work too hard to get answers, you can lose a very qualified lead.
Where AI can help operators improve conversion:
Faster responses
Use AI to build better canned responses, email templates, SMS replies, and lead response workflows.
Prompt libraries for your team
Create saved prompts for common situations like weather questions, accessibility concerns, captain requests, rescheduling, refund policies, or first-time renter questions.
Chatbots and AI voice tools
Modern tools can now answer FAQs, check availability, explain policies, and route customers correctly even when your office is closed. Some can integrate directly with reservation systems. Check out Yonder or ConversionAssist for AI-assisted tools built for the tour industry.
Objection handling
AI can help you analyze customer questions, review feedback, and email history to identify the top anxieties that prevent booking. If customers repeatedly hesitate around weather, pricing, parking, safety, age limits, or boating experience requirements, those issues need to be addressed more clearly across your website and communication flows.
The goal is simple:
- When someone is ready to book, do not make them wait.
- Do not make them dig.
- Do not make them guess.
- Remove friction, answer their questions clearly, and give them a fast path to the booking link.
3. Experience: AI Can Help Operators Run Smarter
This may be the most underused opportunity of all.
Many operators still think of AI as a marketing tool, but some of the most valuable use cases are operational.
Watersports businesses generate a lot of data through reservations, seasonal demand, weather patterns, staffing needs, and customer behavior. AI can help operators organize that data and find practical insights faster.
High-impact operational uses for AI:
- Demand forecasting: Use booking history to better understand when demand rises by trip type, day of week, or season.
- Staffing decisions: Forecast when you need more captains, dockhands, or customer service coverage.
- Rate planning: Analyze previous seasons to identify where pricing could have been higher during peak windows or where promotions might help during soft periods.
- Weather impact analysis: Compare weather patterns against booking behavior and cancellations to improve scheduling, messaging, and promotional timing.
- Competitor monitoring: Track competitor rates, promos, and positioning to better understand how your business stacks up in the market.
This is one of the areas I am most excited about because even modest improvements in pricing and forecasting can produce meaningful gains in profit.
For operators with strong historical booking data, AI can help uncover patterns that are easy to miss manually.
One Important Caution: Protect Guest Data
This came up in the webinar for good reason.
AI tools are powerful, but operators need to be careful about privacy. Before uploading spreadsheets, granting software access, or connecting inboxes and systems, make sure you understand what data is being shared.
As a best practice, avoid uploading personally identifiable customer information unless you are working inside a trusted and compliant environment. If you want AI to analyze reservations or performance data, strip out names, emails, phone numbers, payment details, and anything sensitive first.
The opportunities are real, but so are the risks.
7 Practical Action Items for Watersports Operators
If you want to move from theory to action, here are seven smart places to start:
7 action items to get started:
- Audit your FAQs: Make a list of the top 25 questions customers ask before booking. Then make sure your website answers every one of them clearly.
- Define your point of difference: Ask yourself why someone should book with you instead of the competitor down the road. Tighten that message and repeat it consistently across your digital presence.
- Use AI to analyze your reviews: Export your reviews and ask AI to identify common themes, strengths, weaknesses, and phrases customers use most often.
- Build a response library: Create AI-assisted templates for common emails, texts, and sales questions so your team can respond faster and more consistently.
- Review your conversion bottlenecks: Look at pages where people spend time but do not convert. Use AI to help identify likely points of confusion or hesitation.
- Analyze your booking data: Upload clean, non-sensitive data from last season and ask AI to help identify pricing opportunities, demand peaks, and seasonal patterns.
- Explore after-hours coverage: Look into chatbots or AI voice tools that can answer basic questions and capture leads when your staff is unavailable.
Where Operators Should Start First
If you are just getting started with AI, do not try to do everything at once.
Start with one project in each of these areas:
- One visibility improvement (example: expand your FAQ page)
- One conversion improvement (example: create five better lead-response templates)
- One operational improvement (example: analyze last year’s booking data for pricing opportunities)
That is enough to create momentum without overwhelming your team.
Final Thoughts
The operators who win with AI will not necessarily be the ones using the most tools.
They will be the ones using it with the most clarity.
AI is not a magic button, and it is not a substitute for good operations, strong branding, or a great guest experience. But it can absolutely help operators sharpen their positioning, respond faster, make smarter decisions, and stay more competitive in a fast-changing market.
The good news is that this space is still early.
Most operators are not using AI strategically yet. That means there is still time to get ahead.
And in an industry where margins, efficiency, and guest experience matter so much, even a few smart improvements can go a long way.
🌊 Want Help Putting AI to Work in Your Watersports Business?
WaveRez works with operators across the watersports industry to help them streamline bookings, improve communication, and build stronger systems for growth.
If you want to learn more about how technology, automation, and AI can support your operation, schedule a free demo with the WaveRez team or explore our webinar library for more practical strategies. You can also visit our Help Center for guides on getting the most out of your WaveRez account.
About the Author
Greg Fisher
