See how 865 travel professionals are using ai in their work right now

NEW Education: GenAI Academy for Travel Pro’s sessions launch

There are just 3 ways we go about doing anything at all in our lives:

DIY: Do-it-yourself - some people just jump in head first and start figuring stuff out. If that is you - start here: https://chat.openai.com/ - have some fun!

DFY: Done for You - this will involve getting in a probably very expensive consultant to spend weeks looking over your organisation and then making recommendations on where and how AI can be used. As they don’t really have a clue about your business, this will probably be less effective than DIY. I’m available from January if you require this service.

DWY: Done with You - our final option is to have someone guide you through the basics of what is possible, how to make those basics happen and then let you explore that to your specific business needs. Honestly, this will almost certainly yield the best results. Bottlenecks begone!

That is what this course is about.

The Advanced ChatGPT Class, led by tech industry veteran and travel innovator Sam Keller, is designed to empower travel professionals to leverage the advanced features of ChatGPT to elevate their business operations.

Here are the essentials:

When: Wednesday, Nov 15 at 12pm Pacific.

Format: 1-hour Zoom session

Instructor: Sam Keller, CEO of Working Without Borders

For this second cohort we’ve convinced Sam to again give us a deal on his normal $99 price tag down to just $49USD per person (plus $5 transaction fee) , so reserve your spot now as places are strictly limited. There are just 25 spots available at this price.

To register simply go to: https://www.genaiacademy.ai/events and be sure to choose the Zoom based option.

Private Group Lesson: If you prefer to not learn in a public class then gather up your whole leadership team, all hold hands and jump together into the wonderful world of what is possible. A closed group can be held at a time of mutual convenience and Sam is offering this for $499 (normally $999) for up to 25 people from your team in a session. This price is available for any bookings made in the next two weeks. Simply reply to this newsletter or message me on Linked In and I’ll pass you through, so Sam knows you are eligible for the discounted rate.

This investment will pay itself back in productivity gains before the day you do the training is out.

I use handbookFM.com to create a brief audio summary of this edition. If you prefer to listen than read you can get the top stories here in a 90 second listen.

50% of respondants to Booking.com survey say they want ai

This article in Mindfood caught my attention. The number of people who said they want ai to plan their trip for them was quite frankly surprising. The exact quote in the article was “Around half of the 28,000 people surveyed by Booking.com said they would turn to AI to do their travel planning for them.” That is pretty explicit.

This however wasn’t really the big headline grabber. It turns out that 37% people just make up fake realities about themselves when chatting to their new friends they’ve made on holidays.

And “…68% feel they are the best version of themselves on vacation, able to shed inhibitions and embrace new aspects of their personalities,” which is obviously a lot easier once you’ve shed all the real things about yourself and the newest aspect of your personality, is a new personality.

It is possible that Booking interviewed a lot of young people for this survey because PwC told the ABTA conference “ (24%) said they would be more likely to book if there were personalised recommendations for add-ons supported by AI.” & “almost a third of 25 to 34-year-olds embracing the idea of live chat bots to help them with tailored itineraries and booking holidays.”

Hurry up & wait

A couple of articles this week that gave polar opposite points of view on how quickly or otherwise a company should be jumping into the adoption of ai.

The first from Matt Keezer who is CEO at Momentum Ventures out of Montreal says “AI-first companies (will be) revolutionizing the sector and surpassing traditional models as the digital age progresses.” He believes that “travel platforms will be intrinsically built upon AI, not merely integrating it as an added feature. This paradigm change represents a strategic redirection in the travel landscape, prioritizing efficiency, precision, and user-centricity.”

Keezer thinks AI powered: OTA’s, real-time price optimization; enhanced customer serivce and better trend forcasting are the areas where big change is coming fast.

Meanwhile over at the ABTA conference in (sunny) Bodrum, Simon Powell was telling everyone to just cool their jets. “There are lots of people in the room who will think they have to implement AI immediately because there’s been a whole afternoon of sessions on it [at the conference].

“But don’t rush and take on something simply because you think you have to; I would urge people to take their time with it.”

He added: “I recall when the old Thomas Cook bought an ecommerce platform called ATG on the back of a demonstration all about cheese, and our industry is much more complex than selling cheese.

“Just because you can sell cheese, it doesn’t mean you can sell travel.”

And that is something I’m sure even Matt Keezer would agree with. 🧀 

But what is ACTUALLY happening with ai inside businesses

“865 business travel professionals responded” to the ABTA survey to give us one of the clearest yet peeks inside what is actually going on inside businesses. when it comes to ai.

It was fascinating reading.

42% had not yet touched an ai tool. Another 33% had done so rarely (which I interpet as once or maybe twice). That;s 75% total. (I can recommend a good course for those who don’t know where to start.)

Only 4% are using it daily. That sounds like a lot of upside in a lot of businesses to come! Across the regions it was Asia Pacific showing themselves as the early adopters with only 22% not tried ai and the same percentage using it weekly or daily. North America was the region dragging the chain.

When it comes to incorporating ai into work tools in a “corporate business travel program”, 55% of those in Latin America see it as the top priority whereas 43% in North America don’t see it a priority at all (or low priority)! We might we see a divergence and some disruption based on geographic lines.

The slides on ai start on page 87.

Saudia the latest to get a chatbot but is the right thing to be building?

Saudia (Airline), in partnership with Microsoft, are the latest to jump in and nab themselves a chatbot. “The AI virtual assistant announced a few weeks ago will provide a personalized, chat-based service for customers researching, planning and booking travel. Customers will be able to ask the app for travel ideas — such as a family trip on a defined budget in Europe with mountains and a 20 degrees-Celsius climate — and the app will return suggestions and flights in a seamless experience.”

However the biggest and most surprising chatbot news I saw this week was in a random Linked In post meant to motivate aspiring founders who are struggling to find their product-market fit. The post was about a guy named Henry Shi and went something like this:

👉 In 2015, Shi quit his job-
👉Wanted to test & iterate fast: Google was too big for that
👉Met Hussein, started work on content moderation 
👉In 2016, chatbots were all the craze-
👉So they built a chatbot concierge tool

To be honest, in the beginning, there was no chatbot: 
Henry would text people directly, 0 automations-
but he got his 1st customer doing it.

Now it gets really interesting: 
👉They realized people didn’t care about their chatbot
👉Realized that people were only using their chatbot to save $

So who is Henry Shi? He is founder of Super.com now doing $2B in transactions, the bulk in hotel sales. Yeah, that;s a B.

ai for Marketing

Marketing is probably one of the easiest areas to get your feet wet with ai if you haven’t yet dipped a toe.

According to Canva “marketing and creative teams are elevating creativity, simplifying workflows, and uplifting productivity with the help of generative AI.”

97% are comfortable with the rise of AI

75% consider generative AI an essential part of their toolkit

70% say AI enhances their team’s productivity

69% believe generative AI enhances creativity

Honesty your creatives are probably already tucking in. You should go and ask them. Chances they are your daily 4%.

ai gets in with your customer service teams

Another practical example of ai out in the wild comes to us from Ambassador Cruise Line and how they’ve engaged Cruisewatch to help them improve the human part of their customer service centre.

This example isn’t about robo voices intercepting calls and answering FAQ’s but rather around “sentiment analysis and solution rate” within the centre itself

“Cruisewatch’s AI [technology] can detect the tone of voice used by the agent and how the call is handled, which gives us the sense of how an individual has dealt with the call,” explained Ambassador’s CCO Phi Gardner.

Love seeing all these practical snippets that I hope others can pick up on.

Does generative AI have a meaningful role in travel or is it short-lived hype?

In this rundown of Globaldata’s recent online conference on “The ever-increasing role of technology and innovation in travel” they naturally delved into the new world of ai.

The panel felt “.. AI has received a lot of media attention, making it difficult to break through the noise at times.” Oh. 👋 

Associate analyst Martina Raveni talked to “how AI can alleviate employment issues”

“AI has the ability to alleviate one of the most pressing issues across the travel sector, chronic staff shortages, by automating repetitive work and freeing up people for more vital duties.” We hear a bit about ai replacing people in their jobs so this is a much different and frankly realistic lens to that argument.

Nicholas Wyatt, a travel and tourism analyst talked to “The importance of generative AI in delivering “high value” outcomes rather than “generic answers”…..with responses being tailored to the individual seeking them.”

Autonomous cart in airports

This one is just for Alex Bainbridge really. I don’t know how many other people get this far in the newsletter. 😅 

According to GlobalData, there are 10+ companies, spanning technology vendors, established travel & tourism companies, and up-and-coming start-ups engaged in the development and application of autonomous carts.

“The lack of involvement from travel companies, such as hotel chains and airports, does not mean that autonomous carts are not a disruptive technology in the travel space.” acording to the article (& Alex).

Most clicked last week was very strange. It was this link to the pony.ai story. Weird.

Thanks also to the 45 people who went to check out HandbookFM.com and was great to chat with some people this week about how to use ai to scale their training options.