Travel agents are busier than ever and consumers are putting their trust in the retail industry more than before the pandemic, as per Travel News’ story on consumers are spending more on travel agents.
It’s an ideal opportunity then for the trade to trial the abilities of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) in order to improve efficiencies in the business and save agents valuable time.
“The real potential value of AI is to leverage it as an additional work tool to make agents more efficient and help them manage their workload and workflow in the short term. In the medium to long term, AI can have a much wider impact on provision of the right products, with a better offering and improved services, to clients,” says Otto de Vries, CEO of Asata and Executive Director of WTAAA.
Hurdles
The greatest challenge for agents in integrating AI technology is finding time between fast-paced work schedules and increasing demand, to understand how it adds value to their daily tasks and business, explains de Vries.
“I would encourage agents to put aside an hour or two every day to see how AI can assist them because it could potentially pull back 20% to 30% of their time spent in servicing their customers,” says de Vries.
He points out that while we have made significant inroads in AI, it is still early days for machine-learning technologies and that it will take time to develop AI in a way that makes travel agents’ daily tasks even more efficient.
Follow the prompts
De Vries emphasises the importance of detailed and accurate prompts in the use of AI. He provides the example of writing standard documents and reports. Instead of repeatedly typing the same details, De Vries recommends providing explicit prompts for what agents want to see in the report or document. He warns that while this will not completely eradicate the occurrence of errors, it will reduce time spent on redundant tasks.
Amadeus rolls out Copilot GDS plug-in
Earlier this month, Amadeus introduced the generative AI Microsoft Copilot across its workforce’s Microsoft products such as Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams and Word. Additionally, Copilot will be able to act as a search engine on the web and across Amadeus’ information assets.
Amadeus’ new generative AI capabilities mark a significant step in integrating AI into the travel industry’s back, middle and front office operations.
“It shows confidence in the offering when you have a travel industry tech service provider which understands the business needs and the workflows of a travel agent and which is looking to make investments to drive further value to its users,” says de Vries.
Whether it’s chatbots or using AI to curate personalised itineraries, de Vries says there are many examples within the industry of AI integrations that have improved outcomes for travel agents – both internally for their business operations and externally for client offerings.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that more use cases like Amadeus are underpinning how AI-assisted tasks can work for travel agents in an environment they’re already really familiar with,” says de Vries.
