About the Author and Disclosures

Author

Marc Wieland was the founder and CEO of Palisis. He serves today as Group Executive Chairman of the Experience Technology Group Holding, based in Switzerland. He writes on the structural dynamics of the tours, activities and experiences industry. The arguments in this book are derived from a first-principles reading of the market and reflect no specific organisation’s strategy.

Citation relationships

This book draws on Arival research at multiple points across Essays 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11. Arival is the category’s principal independent research and convening body, and its field reports underpin much of the empirical claim-making in those essays.

Palisis is listed among Arival’s fielding partners. Most recently, Palisis is one of the 44 fielding partners of the Global Operator Landscape 4th Edition (January 2026), cited principally in Essays 1 and 2. Palisis was previously among the partners who helped distribute Arival’s Technology & Connectivity report (January 2023, cited in Essays 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9) and the Guide to Channel Management: Strategy, Connectivity & Technology (November 2023, cited in Essay 6). The relationship is a distribution role, not an editorial one. Arival’s editorial positioning, research sponsorship and analytical findings are independent of the fielding-partner relationship. The disclosure is made in the interest of citation integrity.

In addition, Palisis has contributed to Arival’s Guide to AI in Experiences (2024), cited in Essays 7, 8, 10 and 11, in an advisory capacity. The contribution is to category-level framing, not to specific findings or recommendations.

Palisis operates TourCMS, a connectivity platform in the channel-manager category analysed structurally in Essay 6. The category is treated in structural terms throughout the book, without reference to any specific product, including TourCMS. TourCMS appears by name in two places in the cited research, and is referenced in Essays 3 and 4 only as a category-level instance: it is included in the 13-firm provider matrix of the Guide to Channel Management (Essay 3), and on the public Top Connectivity Partners list maintained by a major distributor (Essay 4). In both cases the reference is to the category, not to the product.