Artificial intelligence(AI),Virtual Travel Agents & Travel Industry Professionals

Change in buying patterns, chatbots, VPS, Virtual travel agents last few weeks was totally confusing with accidental coincidence of a few launches.press meets in different industry there was ripples in thought process of thinking of the future of the travel industry professional.Though was asked to comment on my viewpoint on the same by various new aspirants to the industry, colleagues and also from outside the industry; I reserved my comments to a few weeks to analyze the changes in detail. After being only able to touch the tip of the iceberg through various articles,talk shows by experts about artificial intelligence was feeling so positive about the advancement of science and technology and at the same time happy for the next generation who would be able to lead a better life than what we had which was off course was better than what our previous generations had.(so this cycle has to continue)

So Now what does this new advancement in AI mean for travel industry?

Else to put it straight for those who feel that the Artificial Intelligence would replace the Humans for the entire process.I just have a few questions which I would leave for the readers to Answer.

a) As far as I understand this industry is built on the strength of human relations and their trust which goes a long way much beyond the brands that they represent. Would the AI replace this credibility ??

b)In travel industry a person’s words are at times equal to security cheques, bank guarantees, cash and at times even better than that; could the chat bots replace that credibility element with the clients and suppliers ?

c) And now the most important thing the travel & Leisure products are sold after the persuasion and the passion shown by the Destination experts SO how Would the feedback of I will get back to you after going through the proposal be handled?

d) How could Chat Bots emotionally empathize with a driver missing for airport arrival or an issue while client check in at the hotel during midnight?

e) How would the crisis management and last minute changes be accommodated and negotiated with the service provider??

f) We have suppliers across the Globe who have created a network of travel professionals at all major latitude and longitude who could at times of need selflessly act as our own branches would the same warmth and care be available when the clients have spoken to the chatbots for the whole booking process where the traveler is just an booking number rather than Mr.XXXX or Mrs.YYY for the Human travel consultants.

Subsequently as one of the travel professionals who have passionately chosen this industry for the sake of the beauty of the value of human relations in the whole process of work style,the prospect of pro-active nature being directly proportional to career growth, operation module and role of a staff in enhancing the experience index of the customer I became more confident that the growth of travel professionals would be elevated with the optimum use of technology and these artificial intelligence tools whereby if at all the travelers feel comfortable in booking a Holiday Package with the Virtual Travel Agents( A lot to know more about the handling of price negotiation,proposal follow ups and final booking formalities by the Virtual agents) we would be more than happy to feed in the products required focusing much much more on enhancing the experience ,service delivery ,innovating and raising the satisfaction index for the travelerrs

One thing is for sure even for success of this whole process it would depend on the quality of human brains ,their skill ,knowledge ,destination information, negotiation skills ,product designing ,service delivery, crisis management, Quality controls who feed in the data for these virtual agents to deliver at request of the travellers .

So for still those who feel might be these words are illogical I would not argue since the way Science and Technology is advancing many new possibilities might be explored which might render the above words trivial(like in our school days if someone told us that the audio cassettes which have a few songs would be replaced with a small chip which could hold hundreds of songs and soon audio cassettes would be out of fashion we might not have accepted that till the MP3s and USBS and micro memory cards came in). Anyhow Like many travel professionals I would have tough time to convince myself that all inquiries that comes in for the Travel agency converts into a booking the moment the prospective traveler gets a proposal what he was expecting and the rates match his preference.

As we always stress we Travel Professional sell TRAVEL DREAMS the most intangible ,invisible product but yet so priceless for the travelers ;we would happily sacrifice our time we have for our family ,holidays ,sleep or even our own vacations to make sure that our clients have a great Holiday or vacation and feel worthy for each penny paid.So the moment we are confident that the industry has found a solution for this without human intervention we would be more than happy to Hand Over to Robots/Virtual Travel agents all these and focus on alternative options where we could use our skills,experience,knowledge which could give us the same sort of job satisfaction,career growth and a sense of accomplishment.

Till then let us enjoy designing the Travel Dreams else be an integral part of the operations of AI!!!

Since for us we have been the part of the industry by sheer passion and choice.