Agents continue to adapt to disruption.

Travel agents have been put to death before — and while some aren’t known to be the most tech-savvy, they’ve come to terms with massive disruption.

They survived the internet and the pandemic. But now comes AI, and these are particularly unpredictable times.

“For the last 20 to 25 years, we’ve been destined to go down in the history books. However, we are a strong industry,” said Otto de Vries, CEO of the Southern African Association of Travel Agents, about OpenAi’s impact on chatGPT and its potential to disrupt travel planning. “We’ve always found ways to reinvent ourselves, drive value and carve out an important role that speaks to our customers.”

According to Erica Richter, vice president of communications for the American Association of Travel Advisors, personalization is a key issue in the transition from travel agent to travel advisor.

“We’ve moved from the transactional nature of what an agent does to the holistic nature of what advisors do,” Richter said. “Travel agents look at the trip, but they also look at the whole person and ask, ‘What does this trip mean to you?’ They ask important questions.

For Jacques Engelbrecht, a South African travel agent with 18 years of experience in the travel industry, trip lengths and types of experiences booked have seen significant changes.

During the pandemic, short stays of two to three days and last-minute bookings made life difficult for agents. Last year, 12-day itineraries became more common, making it easier to manage the best prices for accommodation and experiences, he says, who runs his own boutique agency, Iona Travel and Safaris.

Engelbrecht’s cooperation with travel agents in the United States has led to a 20 percent increase in business in 2023 compared to 2019.

“We all want to add that little bit more,” Engelbrecht said. It’s an easy fix for a gift. It has become about personal and personal experiences on the ground.

For example, American agent Engelbrecht works to change the type of delivery vehicle used by the company from H1 vans or minibuses to high-end sedans. “Price wise, this is not much more than using H1. But just picking people up in an E-Class or S-Class Mercedes-Benz has made a difference,” Engelbrecht said.

Alternative accommodation options are also being influenced by extended stays and a push towards personalization. Premium experiences.

Engelbrecht listed a reservation in one of Cape Town’s most affluent suburbs for 16 families who arrived in August and chose to stay in a Campus Bay villa instead of a five-star hotel. This is the fifth time the company has seen a request for alternate accommodation in a month.

“These are full-service villas and include the extras of a five-star hotel. If you do it with a large family, including their own chef, it can be cheaper,” Engelbrecht said.

A recent Travel Corporation survey of more than 7,000 travelers across its six brands determined that 43 percent of travelers are willing to pay more for personalized experiences, while 32 percent said they would pay more for a premium experience. 70 percent of participants want to immerse themselves in new cultures, and an additional 67 percent want to explore new countries.

Kimberly Sturdivant Wasson, spokeswoman for Thurradar, an online marketplace and booking platform for travel agents, believes personalization will only continue. The first part of 2023

“Customers traveling with their inner circle of friends or family are choosing to customize their adventure and tailor it to their needs,” said Stirdivant Wason.

These are the types of thresholds that are not readily available through a chatbot. At least not yet, according to de Vries, “AI is a great opportunity for the travel industry to use and improve what they offer to their customers.

De Vries explains how he and a colleague tried out a survey of the best LGBTQ+ hotels in Rome.

A Google search “returns thousands of results, or whatever the crazy number is,” de Vries said. “Then we put it into the chatbot and the response was short, clear, considered and gave you the reasons why these hotels are in the top 10.”

“In the short and medium term, I think it can be a very powerful tool to support travel agents,” De Vries said. But you know what the future looks like, the next two years are very difficult to predict.

In many ways, he believed it was a case of going back to the old travel agency, pre-internet days. But instead of delaying technology adoption, as has sometimes been the case, travel agents should seize the opportunity.

“It’s when things don’t work out that you realize how important it is to have someone else on the other end of the line. This is something that many people value and are prepared to pay for,” de Vries said.

“People looking to book a point-to-point flight can self-serve from any of the many online travel agencies out there. Our strength really comes out when you start looking at the complexities of travel. The more complex the itinerary, the more interesting and valuable, that’s when people travel.” They begin to see an agent not just for booking, but as a way to take control of their entire travel experience.

Photo Credit: Travelers are looking to visit new destinations with rich cultural elements. Source: Travel Corporation