Gergana Nikolova

For more than 20 years, Gergana has worked across hospitality, tourism and destination development, from frontline hotel operations and guest experience to international partnerships, destination strategy and regional industry leadership.

Across those environments, one question kept recurring: organizations increasingly know what is happening, but understanding why people make the decisions they do, and what could change those decisions, is much harder.

That challenge ultimately led to BehaviorSMART.

Today, Gergana leads the commercialization and application of Behavioral Decision Intelligence across hospitality, travel, destinations, airports and events, bringing together behavioral expertise, industry context and partnerships to turn insight into measurable action.

Before co-founding BehaviorSMART, Gergana spent a decade with the Adventure Travel Trade Association, ultimately serving as Regional Director for Europe & Central Asia. Her work spanned regional strategy, business development, destination partnerships and international industry events across more than 20 countries.

She was a co-creator of AdventureNEXT, an event format developed to connect destinations with the international adventure travel community, and later co-led the preparation and delivery of the 2022 Adventure Travel World Summit in Lugano, Switzerland, which brought together more than 700 delegates from around the world.