Scaling Smarter: How Road Scholar Transformed Content Operations with Opal AI

Road Scholar partnered with Nansen to streamline content creation, experimentation, and personalization using Optimizely’s Opal AI. By first aligning on strategy, standardizing workflows, and introducing AI in phases, the team cut production time from hours to minutes, improved asset governance, and fostered a culture of innovation recognized with an Opticon 2025 Award.

Optimizely

Artificial Intelligence

Digital Transformation

The Impact

Reduction in Content Creation Time

hours

Operational Time Savings per Task

Opal Adoption Rate

The Challenge

Road Scholar’s marketing team wanted to scale content creation, experimentation, and personalization without overwhelming already stretched resources.

They aspired to test more, learn faster, and deliver personalized experiences across channels. But with limited resources, every campaign demanded manual effort. Content had to be built from scratch, workflows were inconsistent, and personalization was complex to execute at scale. The pressure to do more with less left the team caught in a cycle of missed opportunities and burnout.

The Process

When Road Scholar turned to Nansen, we knew that success with Optimizely’s Opal AI would depend on more than plugging in new technology. To ensure the AI acted as a true accelerator, we built the proper operational and cultural foundation first:

Define success: We aligned with leadership on outcomes and KPIs, including experimentation velocity, content throughput, adoption, satisfaction, and campaign performance.
Create shared structure: We introduced a taxonomy for campaigns, assets, and tasks, then cleaned and reapplied metadata across the content library to make assets easier to find, reuse, and govern.
Standardize workflows: Playbooks, templates, and prompt libraries gave teams consistency. Creative briefs, for example, now auto-pull meeting recaps for quick context, saving time for writers and designers.
Adopt in phases: Weekly retrospectives, peer demos, and lightweight exercises helped teams test ideas without overwhelming them. Small wins built momentum and confidence.
Prove value in real work: We piloted Opal on live campaigns, measured time savings and quality improvements, and refined workflows based on direct team feedback.

This strategic, phased approach ensured that the introduction of Opal didn’t feel disruptive; it felt like a natural, empowering next step.

The Solution

With these strong foundations in place, Nansen deployed Optimizely’s Opal AI as a co-pilot for content creation and coordination across Road Scholar’s marketing organization.

Marketing managers now utilize Opal for meeting recaps, agenda drafting, presentation image support, auto-generated tasks, and structured competitor analyses. Writers rely on it to condense itineraries, extract program highlights, generate SEO-friendly headlines, and check URLs for conflicts. Crucially, Opal empowered the experimentation teams to accelerate hypothesis creation and testing, a key strategic goal identified at the outset.

Throughout the rollout, Nansen supported change management through workshops, peer coaching, and feedback loops. Adoption grew steadily, with what began as healthy skepticism quickly evolving into confident daily practice.

In the client's own words

“The amount of time we’re saving on repeatable content tasks has fundamentally changed how our team works. We aren’t just faster; we’re now focused on strategy and delivering richer, more relevant experiences for our travelers. That’s the true ROI.”

Mark Fagiano, Senior E-commerce Director at Road Scholar

The Result

The implementation resulted in significant time savings and a cultural shift toward innovation:

Content Throughput: Writers reduced catalog table-of-contents creation from six hours to just 30 minutes, freeing up a full day of work per catalog cycle.
Operational Savings: Routine tasks, such as summarizations, structured recaps, and content comparisons, now save two to four hours each, tracked weekly across teams.
Strategic Focus: By eliminating manual friction, teams have more time for strategy and creative work, directly supporting Road Scholar’s core mission. ‍
Adoption & Governance: Standardized workflows and cleaner metadata improved asset reuse and governance. To date, about 60% of identified Opal opportunities are already in play.

Road Scholar’s success was also recognized with an Opticon 2025 Award for their thoughtful, phased approach to AI adoption, underscoring the momentum behind their cultural shift.

What’s Next

Looking forward, Road Scholar plans to further enhance its strategy by:

Connecting Opal with ODP for audience-led testing and recommendations, with Slack-based reporting for immediate visibility.
Using AI agents to automate routine tasks like bulk email uploads and experiment status updates, freeing even more time for high-value creative work.
Refining instruction tuning to strengthen brand voice and improve draft quality, ensuring brand consistency at scale.

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Scaling Smarter: How Road Scholar Transformed Content Operations with Opal AI

The Impact

The Challenge

The Process

The Solution

In the client's own words

The Result

What’s Next

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