Curation, Customer Obsession & Competing Differently: Inside Civitatis with CEO Andres Spitzer

In this season premiere of The Best Part of Travel, Arival CEO and co-founder Douglas Quinby sits down with Andres Spitzer, the newly appointed CEO of Civitatis — the leading OTA for Spanish and Portuguese-speaking travelers. With a background spanning entrepreneurship and Amazon, Andres brings a fresh, tech-forward perspective to one of the experiences sector's most distinctive platforms. From radical curation to AI-powered personalization, this is a conversation packed with insights for any operator or industry professional thinking about where the market is headed in 2026 and beyond.🗺️ Topics we cover:What makes Civitatis different: Why Civitatis operates as a curated platform — not an open bazaar — and what that means in practice: 37 Colosseum listings versus thousands on other platforms, and why that's very much by design.Curation in action: Civitatis rejects 70–80% of the activities it receives. Andres breaks down what operators need to know about what gets in — and what gets turned away.What it takes to succeed on Civitatis: The two things operators who "crush it" on the platform have in common — operational excellence and deep cultural sensitivity for Spanish and Portuguese-speaking travelers.The OTA–operator tension (and the flywheel): How Andres reframes the perennial tension between platforms and operators, drawing on Amazon's flywheel concept and Civitatis' partner-first approach.Lessons from Amazon: What Andres actually brought from his time leading product and tech for Amazon Business — and it's not what you'd expect. Hint: it's less about logistics and more about customer obsession.AI as a superpower, not a replacement: How Civitatis is thinking about AI — not to cut headcount, but to give people superpowers, from voice-to-voice multilingual customer support to personalized feedback reports for operators.The future of discovery and hyper-personalization: Why conversational AI is fundamentally changing how travelers search for experiences, and what that means for operators and platforms alike.Growth, profitability and the long game: Why Civitatis is proud to have been profitable from day one, its aggressive growth in Latin America, and how it's thinking about scale without sacrificing quality.Learn more with these resources: 🔗 Civitatis 🔗 Global Operator Landscape Report — featuring new data on the growing role of OTAs in operator revenue 🔗 Upcoming Arival Events — Valencia, Brisbane & SpokaneThe Best Part of Travel podcast is brought to you by Arival. Season Three is sponsored by Protect Group.