Sustainable Tourism. Remember in April at the height of lockdowns, we saw signs of nature repairing itself especially in the most touristy places. While COVID reminded us of our own mortality, we realized just how fragile our planet is and the role we play in destroying it. As travel rebounds, there will be increasing awareness around the tourism industry’s footprint, and businesses that are taking sustainability seriously will be rewarded.
As part of my series about “developments in the travel industry over the next five years”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Henna Wang.
Henna Wang is a co-founder of Gesso, an audio AR platform for exploring the world. Their purpose is to inspire empathy and to celebrate human creativity by exploring physical spaces and tangible objects that embody our collective heritage, history and wisdom.
Prior to launching Gesso, Henna has worked across the arts and social impact sectors at organizations such as Sotheby’s, Phillips, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Smithsonian’s Freer | Sackler. Henna is especially passionate about women’s economic empowerment and has worked closely with artisan groups through her roles at ByHand Consulting, the Alliance for Artisan Enterprise, and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. Henna holds a BA in Art History and Economics from Bucknell University, and an MSc in Culture and Society from the London School of Economics. Currently based in Brooklyn, she has also lived in Pittsburgh, Taipei, Washington DC, London, Paris and Ouagadougou.
Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
My mother came of age during the Cultural Revolution in China. Because of her radical lack of access to education and culture at a critical age, she made up for the lost time as a young adult and especially when it came to raising me. I was fortunate to grow up frequenting museums, libraries and traveling to new places. Our family moved from Pittsburgh to Taipei, then back to the States again. Growing up between two cultures was at times confusing, but mostly thrilling. Each move challenged me to adapt quickly to new cultures. Travel has always been essential to our family, instead of giving each other gifts at Christmas, we’d take a trip and the gift of these memories keeps on giving. I remember my father writing a letter to my 4th grade teacher in Taiwan asking for permission to take me out of class for a few weeks so we could join a segment of a Semester at Sea voyage. In his appeal, he quoted 16th Century Chinese scholar Dong Qichang’s words 讀萬卷書，不如行萬里路 which means the knowledge one gains from walking 10,000 miles eclipses what one can gain from reading 10,000 books. When it came time to decide on what to major in college, it’s no surprise that I landed on Art History and International Relations (later switched to Economics — I do have Asian parents after all!)
Perhaps many of my fellow millennials could relate, I changed jobs a lot in my 20s, from an auction house, to multiple museums, to a jewelry brand, to a think tank, to a nonprofit fighting for gender equality. All those jobs have undoubtedly shaped my most important role yet — as co-CEO of Gesso.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
The first time I understood and really appreciated contemporary art was during a visit to the New Museum. When they became our pilot for launching our museum guide product, I was thrilled. Their motto “new art, new ideas” couldn’t be more true and also is evident in their approach to incubating future-defining ideas by bringing artists and technologists together and experimenting. Now that Gesso is the platform that further enables the public to draw connections to the works on view and reflect on the radical concepts the art within their walls challenge us with is extremely rewarding. I love this sense of coming full circle, and how even a museum visit from 20 years ago could be life changing.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”? Can you share a story about that?
Frankly this is something I’m still working on, not burning out. As an entrepreneur, my fingerprints are on every aspect of our business. Especially when my co-CEO is also my husband, the boundary between work and life is even more amorphous. Our response to the perils of 2020 was to go into hyperdrive, to push ourselves to the limits. What’s been a helpful respite for me, is to make things! Even though my work is deeply creative, I found it’s been essential to make room for other forms of creative expression. It could be as easy as picking up your favorite pen and just filling a blank page with scribbles with no premeditation, or as intentional as setting up for a weekend of painting. I made this vanitas (a still life rife with symbolism celebrating the ephemeral beauty of life) over the holidays which reveal a key insight I’m excited to carry with me into years to come: that real art is not just mimicking the real world, but interpreting it. As an art historian, I knew this on paper, but never truly felt it until I made room for my own creativity. Through the act of making this painting, I learned to trust my intuition more, which is something I’m trying on this year.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
There are so many! Akin to blurting out an acceptance speech and having that feeling that you might have left someone out.
Thank you for that. Let’s jump to the core of our discussion. Can you share with our readers about the innovations that you are bringing to the travel and hospitality industries?
Today’s traveler is spontaneous and digitally native, they expect to lean on mobile apps for booking, wayfinding and experiences. They are intellectually curious but don’t want to out themselves as tourists by joining a tour bus, flipping through a guidebook, or following the flag of a tour guide. What Gesso does is layer audio stories upon physical location, so you can walk around as if a friend were letting you in on a secret about where you are. Because it’s self-guided, you can walk at your own pace and on your schedule. The majority of guide apps port existing content and cram it into a mobile app. We started with a blank canvas, really thinking about what is most important to travelers- being able to focus on their surroundings without constantly referring to their phone screens. The power of audio AR is that the technology can disappear into the background and allow listeners to turn their attention back at the delightful details that are in front of them hidden in plain sight. Imagine walking past that building you’ve always wondered about, Gesso chimes in with a cool 1-minute story that’s packed with insight. Whether it’s following your curiosity and looking for the last eccentrics of Greenwich Village or taking a meditative guided walk through the pastoral paradise that is Prospect Park, we leverage the evocative power of audio storytelling and cutting edge technology to deliver a seamless user experience.
Which “pain point” are you trying to address by introducing this innovation?
Typical options for exploring a city are hit or miss, I’ve taken a fair share of walking tours where you get rushed along and end up not being able to spend more time in places that truly pique your interest. They also require pre-planning and are only offered at certain times. We are avid podcast listeners, but the podcasts you’re listening to have no idea where you are, what if it could? Gesso offers a way for our listeners to explore where they are and where they want to be. Listeners have described our audio walks as “a well produced podcast meets scavenger hunt.” While exploring with Gesso, you can expect to be inspired and to have some fun.
How do you envision that this might disrupt the status quo?
Gesso sees itself making both educational content and entertaining content. On the educational side, we see ourselves working with subject experts and tour guides to provide great walking documentaries. On the entertainment side, we are starting to work with trailblazing creators that want to use the city as a canvas for cinematic experiences that aren’t rooted in nonfiction. These can be thought of as walking movies where the city is a changeable dynamic backward backdrop for a really engaging thriller story.
When we decide what to watch tonight on Netflix, we know documentaries are good for us, but we might not opt for it each night. We might gravitate towards something escapist, thrilling or silly. Audio AR extends far beyond the tourism use case, our audio walks don’t always have to be purely educational. We have an opportunity to create really cinematic experiences, a movie for your ears, where you unlock the next scene with your own movement, whether by walking; biking or driving. Gesso is defining a new category of media and entertainment.
As you know, COVID19 changed the world as we know it. Can you share 5 examples of how travel and hospitality companies will be adjusting over the next five years to the new ways that consumers will prefer to travel?
- Experiences over things rings even more true in a post-COVID world.
- Sustainable Tourism. Remember in April at the height of lockdowns, we saw signs of nature repairing itself especially in the most touristy places. While COVID reminded us of our own mortality, we realized just how fragile our planet is and the role we play in destroying it. As travel rebounds, there will be increasing awareness around the tourism industry’s footprint, and businesses that are taking sustainability seriously will be rewarded.
- Mobile Guides. Prior to the pandemic, one third of travelers were already using mobile apps that act as tour guides in-destination (Skift 2018). As we emerge from the pandemic in phases, this move toward digital will accelerate.
- AR and VR will continue to play a big role in pre-trip planning but will never replace the in person experience, it’ll only make people want to experience the real thing more.
- Travelers will expect contactless processes at various touchpoints
You are a “travel insider”. How would you describe your “perfect vacation experience”?
I think back so fondly on the last transatlantic trip I took, which happened to be while the world was going into lockdown. In March 2020, my co-founder Michael and I got married at City Hall in New York. We went on a short “businessmoon” to Paris where we were testing an early version of our app. The monuments and boulevards were empty, it was the perfect backdrop for slow looking. We walked and biked all over the city, each wearing discrete earbuds so we can hear stories from our app chime in based on what we were looking at…it was magical. What I loved so much about those days was more than seeing an early version of our app in action, but the surprise and delight we got from the exploration of the in-between. I grow when I travel, I get my best ideas when I travel, and I wanted to replicate the feeling of travel for fellow New Yorkers when we got home.
Can you share with our readers how have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
That’s so kind, thank you. I wouldn’t say I’m successful yet but I’m certainly not waiting to be successful before bringing goodness to the world. Because of my mother’s upbringing, I realize there are so many stories in parts of the world that cannot be told. We happen to be operating in a country that promotes ‘free speech’, yet the history we learn in schools is very white-washed and one dimensional. We created Gesso to be the scaffolding that elevates people to express their point of view from their vantage point. Gesso is that primer layer that makes a blank canvas, we empower the next generation of storytellers to tell the world about the places and people who’ve defined them. We started this work when we built our platform for museums, realizing that inequality was rampant in the museum world. One way we could help level the playing field was to make a digital guide platform accessible to museums of all sizes. So that museums that don’t have massive budgets and dedicated digital staff can leverage the most up-to-date technology designed for their visitors in mind.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Empathy is at the heart of all movements. We’re in the business of creating empathy, inspiring people to see the world through a new lens, to create their own emotional maps of the world by discovering the layers of history defined by trailblazers from a different era.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Follow me @hmyw and Gesso @gesso.app on instagram where we share a visual diary of art and exploration, with a heavy sprinkling of hidden gems.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Henna Wang of Gesso On The Future Of Travel In The Post COVID World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.