As readers of this blog will know, I have a deep fascination with both disruption and AI, particularly regarding how they will impact our daily lives.

The power of AI to access the knowledge of the internet has already been made available to customers through ChatGPT and other “Large Language Models (LLMs),” and its use is now integral to every student’s life, increasingly becoming mainstream in business.

Nevertheless, it is the way we access and utilise this knowledge that will bring about the most significant paradigm shift in our daily lives, with hands-free voice likely to dominate.

A good comparator is how we used the internet when it first arrived. Do you remember those “noisy” modems to which we connected our bulky computers to access the web? Now, 70% of what you use is facilitated by your mobile phone. The phrase “Mobile first” is no longer a business’s term, as it has become an absolute default mode.

Interestingly, Open AI openly states that today’s “Hardware” does not support their vision of how customers should access AI and has made the sector’s first significant move by purchasing a start-up called “io” for $6.4 billion, even though it was only founded in 2024 by Jony Ive. Yes, I did say “Billions”!!!

Jony Ive is the legendary designer behind iconic products such as the Apple iPhone and iPod, collaborating with several former senior Apple engineers and designers, including Scott Cannon, Tang Tan, and Evans Hankey.

The primary motivation for this acquisition was to gain access to io’s elite development team, many of whom were instrumental in creating the original iPhone and other groundbreaking Apple devices. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, and Jony Ive had already collaborated for two years prior to the deal, sharing an ambition to create a “new family of AI-powered devices” that could redefine how people interact with computers and artificial intelligence.

OpenAI is refusing to even hint at what new piece of equipment they have in mind, considering the significant impact that the launch of China’s “Deep Seek” and their copycat LLM technology had on OpenAI’s share price. They will be copied, but just as Apple gained an early advantage and established a first-mover edge, it has managed to maintain that to this day.

I have long predicted that within two years, we will all have “Digital Twins” that know all our buying habits and research all our purchases by liaising not with humans but with businesses’ AI sales agents, to present us with a shortlist of choices to buy. Until today, I had merely assumed that this data would be kept securely by our phones, which would remain our primary tools.

However, I then unpacked my new Ray-Ban Meta Sunglasses today! Just WOW.

Much like the launch of the first Apple phone, looking stylish is essential when using new technology. This is why Meta’s collaboration with the iconic Ray-Ban sunglasses is significant, even though it would have been far more practical to produce reading glasses that would allow me to read the instruction manual when setting them up!

I had never previously considered how glasses naturally position speakers close to your ears, allowing Ray-Bans to eliminate the need for wearing headphones to listen to music or take phone calls. The sound quality is incredible, and unless you’re in a library, nobody around you is likely to hear the track you’re listening to, let alone your incoming conversation. Similarly, they are equipped with microphones positioned just above your mouth, which provide excellent voice capture.

However, listening to music and handling calls is hardly a new phenomenon. The key new applications are:

Photo and video AI analysis.

With one click of a button, I can start recording video or photographing my surroundings, with Meta’s AI analysing the output to describe what I am looking at.

Potential applications.

· Shopping. I can now walk around shops, look at an item and buy it online at a cheaper price to be delivered via Amazon Prime to my home, to avoid carrying it around.

· Look at Tell. The glasses are already AI-enabled and can analyse anything you’re observing, providing verbal feedback. For example, I asked them to summarise what I’m writing in this blog, and they instantly told me I was writing about the features of the new Meta glasses and that I like them. Just think about how powerful this is in the real world, for instance, reading a menu and telling me the best-reviewed items that match my typical tastes.

· Facial recognition. Our police and border forces will soon be equipped with these tools, as Harvard students seeking to identify girls’ details while walking around campus have demonstrated this is possible.

· Meeting Recording. We are already used to AI bots joining all our video calls and transcribing them to save time and increase accuracy. Our glasses will enable us to bring this technology into the real world.

Language Translation.

Turn on the translate function, and the glasses suddenly turn into the “Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” fictional “Babel Fish”. They pick up what is being said to you in Spanish (only three languages currently) and translate it with a 0.5-second delay into English, directly into your ears. Now, admittedly, it would be helpful if, like Google Translate on your phone, they could translate your response back, but understanding your surroundings is probably 80% of the job when navigating cities or travelling in general.

Potential applications

· Travel. These glasses make travelling the world infinitely easier.

· Business. How many times in meetings have you thought, I wish I knew what this lot were saying to each other!

Other similar products are set to launch in the next few months, and if the manufacturers manage to keep them looking cool, you can expect the next wave of smart glasses to take off truly. However, they will still require linking to our phones to keep the heavyweight computing away from our faces.

Glasses may not be the next big wearable tech, as Open AI invest billions into the next big thing, but assuming the trend of Star Trek tools coming to life, you would not bet against them.

I must admit that, mentally, I had written TUI off as a spent force in the UK. It had not expanded its ATOL bonding beyond 5.9 million passengers in the last four years. It had been overtaken by Jet2 Holidays at 7 million passengers, while being chased by the rapidly expanding Love and EasyJet Holidays.

However, listening to Tui’s newly appointed CMO, Bart Quinton Smith, the first speaker from Tui at the ITT conference in 10 years, reminded me of the mega brand they maintain and the expansion opportunities that Tui “Smile” offers.

As most readers will know, the dominant UK Thomson brand was phased out in 2017 and replaced by the group-wide TUI Smile branding. Although this transition was executed smoothly, it ironically left many customers under the impression that Tui had previously been Thomas Cook, following the latter’s collapse and subsequent disappearance in September 2019, just before the travel industry’s shutdown due to COVID-19 in March 2020.

The collapse of Thomas Cook left Tui as the only remaining vertically integrated tour operator, well-positioned to acquire its market share. However, when COVID arrived, the larger you were, the harder you were hit.

Thomson and then Tui succeeded where Thomas Cook failed by creating “Exclusive Product,” where they either owned the best-located beach hotels or had them tied up on long-term guarantees. This was combined with their own airline seats to provide a high-quality and controllable tour operation, featuring popular products such as Sensatori, Tui Blue, and the third-party-owned Rui brand.

However, this heavily leveraged position became a noose around their necks during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a staggering £5.6 billion loss for the business between 2020 and 2022. Without intervention from the German government, which extended a loan of £4.6 billion to the company, it would have collapsed during the pandemic. Although it ultimately survived, it left the business burdened with a mountain of debt and greatly restricted access to cash.

This meant that Tui could no longer guarantee much of its third-party stock, thereby granting access to the rapidly expanding travel sector based on low-cost airlines. This situation undermined its “product shield” and exposed it to the impact of operating “commodity products” that others also sold, albeit at a lower cost base.

The net impact was that Tui picked up virtually none of the Thomas Cook market share, which was quickly gobbled up by Jet2 Holidays and Love Holidays, both of whom have added 3.5 million passengers post-COVID.

Thus, I had a somewhat dismissive attitude towards the second-largest UK tour operator. However, I must admit that I was mistaken to discount them, as they are now making some intriguing moves.

Tui continues to reap the rewards of its early purchase of the Dreamliner fleet, which allows it to dominate the long-haul beach market, where it faces no competition from low-cost airline rivals. This, combined with the profitable hotel and cruise divisions that its competitors lack, is the primary driver behind their strong rebound to a £2.12 billion EBITDA in 2024. However, the net profit of only £505 million highlights how much mounting interest on their debt still holds them back.

More interestingly, Tui has signed a strategic deal with Ryanair to significantly expand its regional access to its remaining exclusive hotel stock and increase its sales of city breaks. If Love Holidays can add 1 million passengers to its ATOL this year after gaining permission-based access, with no API fees to Ryanair, why shouldn’t a major brand like Tui do the same?

Some commentators, of course, will focus on the negatives of Ryanair’s attitude towards customer service, which is diametrically opposed to TUI’s and could potentially damage the brand. Indeed, there is a risk, but I know it is one that TUI will monitor closely through its customer service scores and will incorporate provisions into its pricing. This will enable them, as ATOL holders, to replace Ryanair’s draconian amendment fees and cancellation policies with more acceptable alternatives that better suit their customer base.

The relationship is in its early stages, but a strategic alliance with the mega-leisure brand TUI offers significant benefits for Ryanair. As previously discussed, Ryanair’s brand heritage suggests it’s unlikely customers would trust them with their holidays; however, these same customers clearly accept them as a convenient bus service when packaged within a Tui holiday. Let’s be honest, there is little true brand differentiation provided by the Tui airline short-haul fleet, as seat pitches align with low-cost carriers, and their on-time performance, if anything, lags that of Ryanair.

Consequently, Tui UK, with its extensive retail shop network and online presence as a package holiday brand, offers a completely new and complementary distribution channel for Rynair flights that could enhance its initial load factors and overall profits. Equally important, Tui Group provides this opportunity to Ryanair not only in the UK but also in the crucial German market, where Ryanair, with 20 million passengers, ranks a distant third behind flag carrier Lufthansa’s 71.4 million outbound passengers. Remember, third is not a position Ryanair enjoys!

It also makes perfect sense for Tui to switch its long-haul customers to short-haul beach or city breaks between their long-haul excursions. I’m also sure that their events and attractions arm, Tui Musement, is rubbing its hands together at the prospect of creating a rich events and excursions-based city break holiday within a greatly expanded city break offering from their sister tour operator.

More products under the same branding are always a winner, as long as they do not dilute Tui’s quality positioning. However, Tui is adept at maintaining quality and customer satisfaction, so I don’t foresee this as a concern.

So, with a receding debt mountain and some interesting strategic moves, the leisure giant that is Tui in the UK may finally be awaking, and it was great to be reminded by the eloquent Bart about their brand’s opportunities.

Until Tui reduces its substantial debt, it will remain a relatively unappealing option for potential suitors. However, one could easily envision a future bidding war among profitable and well-financed low-cost carriers lured by their pan-European distribution.

Maybe one to watch, guys!

In my last AI Steve Speaks blog, I shared predictions from leading AI experts that unemployment would increase to 20% due to the rollout of new AI Technology and that 50% of entry-level white-collar worker roles would disappear.

Unsurprisingly, when these predictions were brought to the attention of two young graduates looking to enter the UK Travel sector, whilst they were on stage discussing their prospects at last week’s ITT conference in Sardinia.

Both emphasised that although they understood the importance of AI tools and had been actively taught how to use them in their Leisure and Tourism courses, they wished to enter the industry to utilise their interpersonal skills and the human touch.

I quickly dispelled these concerns by pointing out that the inevitable result of workers using AI tools would be efficiency gains, leading to a shortened 4-day working week, with most humans having both increased wealth and leisure time to enjoy holidays.

Rather than posing a threat to the travel industry, the AI revolution is likely to offer it its biggest ever boom, as more people can explore the world without language barriers.

My own Neural Voice AI business supports conversations in 25 different languages with AI characters that have the knowledge of the internet at their fingertips, making planning journeys, selecting restaurants, booking taxis, as well as travelling between hotels and local attractions, child’s play.

The new Meta Ray-Bans I have just ordered are equipped with listening devices that will instantly translate foreign languages and display the English translation on the inside of my glasses. Extending this to allow for the immediate translation of my spoken English into any other language is only months away, so the language barriers that once restricted our travels are rapidly diminishing.

There will, therefore, be an ever-increasing number of flights and trips booked if we could discover ways to counter the polluting impact of air travel, either through new SAFE fuels or, in my opinion, the more likely route of carbon extraction and offsetting through other actions in our lives. You may complain about the move to electric cars, but this reduces your personal emissions by 29%. If you also install solar panels and improve insulation in your home, the resulting overall reduction will more than outweigh your increased travel emissions.

Contrary to some commentators, I really don’t see the need for restricting air travel if we can achieve net zero by focusing on transitioning to clean nuclear-powered electricity and replacing carbon-burning sources with electric power. It is unlikely that flying will ever be an emissions-free activity because the cost of biofuels and the scale of production required do not seem economically viable to me. However, as long as we balance flying with other emissions reductions, I don’t see the issue here.

I believe that most wars would be avoided if the world understood each other’s cultures and customs better, and travel is a key driver of this. Sorry, but having visited the USA, Russia and China, I know their people are human beings like us, and it’s often only power-hungry leaders that drive conflict. Just remember, as evidenced by the collapse of communist Russia, people can overthrow repressive rulers at any time, and even the worst of Trump’s excesses will soon fade in memory once the US population see the consequences of his isolationist policies.

However, travel will not be spared from AI’s massive impact.

Customers buying holiday packages online will swiftly cut down the 303 minutes that Google estimates they currently spend on researching holidays. In the next three years, we will all possess digital twins securely stored on our phones that recognise our buying habits and preferences. Do you genuinely believe our AI twins will opt to purchase from humans? They will merely reach out to the AI agents of travel companies to receive 3-4 recommendations for their owners, along with customer reviews, videos, and photographs, to inform their final choices.

Nonetheless, just as high street shops have survived and home workers have thrived despite the rise of the internet, AI tools will be utilised by human agents to arrange more intricate or costly holidays, where customers prefer to depend on the expertise of a trusted human travel agent to employ these tools on their behalf.

Never forget that travel represents the most significant purchase a customer makes annually, centred not on a physical product but rather on a promise of delivery. This implicitly necessitates trust, and it is human interaction that builds this trust. Therefore, while you may use AI to book flights and accommodation for quick beach getaways, you are unlikely to place your trust in AI for the increasingly complex and long-distance travel arrangements to foreign lands that will rapidly become accessible in a world without language barriers.

The main impact of AI tools in travel will not be to replace humans as such, but to make the top-selling agents with the best empathy and sales skills considerably more efficient. As Simon Powel, owner of Systems X, demonstrated at the ITT conference, all calls will be automatically transcribed, summarised, and utilised as booking drivers through AI integrations. If AI co-pilots can reduce administrative tasks, agents will have more time for their essential human interactions with customers. However, by implication, this will mean fewer agents, as the most successful will handle many more clients concurrently.

AI tools like Neural Rivers, “AI Reps in Your Pocket”, will also enable agents’ branding to accompany customers on holiday, providing AI voice interaction that allows customers to utilise the internet’s knowledge to choose between restaurants and bars based on their convenience and reviews. Each conversation is instantly captured, summarised, and used to drive WhatsApp itineraries and booking links.

More importantly, that information is also fed back into the agent’s CRM, providing them with a much deeper understanding of their customers’ preferences, which facilitates a continuously evolving level of personal service and interaction.

AI tools also ensure you’ll never miss a call again or be unavailable to clarify arrangements, even if customers are heading to the airport at 3 am for an early morning low-cost departure. Your AI Copilot will handle every mundane call immediately and triage all others for your attention.

The quote of the ITT conference was that “If you’re not moving forward with AI, you’re moving backwards against your competition and may soon be out of a job”.

Explore some of the products developed by Neural Voice as simple MVPs to appreciate the art of the possible and commence your journey.

https://www.neural-voice.ai/travel-demos

Until Love Holidays and On the Beach reached a groundbreaking deal to secure free access to Ryanair flights, the value of their business was heavily discounted as investors worried about access to the flight seats that fuel their “Dynamic Packaging” holiday machines.

The resurgence in their value can be seen from the 88.7% year-on-year increase in the On the Beach publicly quoted share price. However, Love Holidays which is privately owned by venture capital firms and therefore does not have a public-facing value, has seen its worth has increase even faster as its passenger volumes grow 92% from 2.6m to 5m over the last three years, compared to a moderate 11% for On the Beach to a much smaller 2m passengers.

However, Love’s growth rate since the Ryanair deal is the most striking aspect, with a 25% or 1 million passengers increase in the year leading to March 2025, bringing the total bonded holidays to a record high of 34.2 million.

An obvious question is, when does supply exceed the demand for holidays and requiring heavy discounting, eroding profits as it always did in the age of the Virtually Integrated tour operators?

Interestingly, I believe the answer is “Never” as the entire Package Holiday model has been reinvented.

The Vertically Integrated tour operators had internal airlines that primarily carried their passengers and only sold “Seat Only” to dump 10-15% of unwanted flight seats to customers who owned time shares or wanted to visit friends and family. They also guaranteed, on average, 65% of their hotel stock, meaning that empty seats often created a double jeopardy of empty hotel beds.

Their yield model was also suboptimal, with packages being discounted aggressively at the last minute in a much less controlled manner than today’s low-cost airlines, which offer the cheapest seats first and increase prices closer to departure.

The net result was that 35% of holidays were always sold withing the holiday season, often at heavily discounted prices, meaning that an excess of supply of holiday really hurt prices and tour operators’ profits.

However, Easyjet Holidays uses less than 5% of its parent airline’s seats, with the remaining 95% occupied by flight-only passengers.  Of course, an excess of flight seats over demand leads to lower yields per seat and more empty seats, but it has zero impact on the holiday division, as they can take whatever capacity they can sell. Hence, they never have to sell holidays at a loss, making Easyjet Holidays far more profitable than a traditional tour operator.

This profit is further boosted because 80% plus of its traffic is “Free” cross-referral traffic from its much larger airline brand and website. Therefore, the rapid expansion of the holiday division is inevitable, as it offers a much higher profit per seat than selling flights only to customers.

Interestingly, this risk-free tour operating model also applies to Love Holidays. The only difference is that they are growing rapidly on the back of Ryanair’s massive route and seat capacity. Their “Just in time” dynamic packaging model means they only buy seats at the exact moment a customer buys one of their holidays, again meaning they never sell holidays at a loss.

The only expansion restriction Love Holiday faces is how cost-effectively it can attract customers. Still, as long as these costs remain below or equal to its profit per booking, it will continue to expand rapidly.

A potential threat Love Holidays faces is not being price competitive with the rapidly expanding Easyjet Holidays, because its parent airline charges them a massive £12 per passenger per flight API fee to book Easyjet Flights.

On the Beach has introduced a “Book and Save” scheme to avoid these fees. It offers the customer a discount equal to the fee if they agree to receive an OTB Virtual Credit card and make the flight booking themselves via a deep link to the Easyjet site. This makes Easyjet-based holidays on OTB’s site price competitive, but it is a relatively clunky experience for the customer.

Love Holiday has maintained simplicity by only quoting “package” prices and allowing natural competition between Ryanair, which has no API fees, and Easyjet, whose higher flight costs include API fees, to determine their relative airline volumes.

There are no publicly quoted stats about Love’s mix of airlines, but insiders have told me that Ryanair’s share is double that of Easyjet, which it primarily uses when mixing carriers, as this means only one £12 API fee comes into play.

Although Easyjet may be losing capacity by charging API fees, the benefit of substantially higher yield per seat due to these fees outweighs this. With a rapidly expanding holiday division of its own, we are unlikely to see a change in strategy unless the much-threatened legal action by On the Beach against them for “Abuse of a dominant position” is taken seriously by the Monopolies and Merger Commission.

The one thing that is clear, however, is that the volume of ATOL-bonded holidays is set to reach 40 million passengers and beyond in the next five years, with Easyjet likely to surpass Love Holidays in the race to become the UK’s largest tour operator, simply because of their significantly lower advertising costs.

I have not forgotten TUI and Jet2 Holidays; by the way, it’s just that, as explained in other blogs, their capacity growth appears to have already hit its peak.

So, here’s to a continued expansion of an industry I love.

Although my travel career has been over for many years, I have been told that my expertise and market knowledge, as outlined in these blogs, remain helpful. Many travel companies now feel dominated by technologists and marketers driven solely by statistics rather than by a deep understanding of market structures or customer and supplier requirements.

Many blame this on the demise of vertically integrated tour operators and the shift to more trackable online channels. They are partially correct; however, I believe the death of the rep role is also a big issue.

Until recently, many senior roles in travel were occupied by individuals who started their careers as overseas representatives. The list is extensive, but look at the LinkedIn profiles of industry heavyweights like Steve Barrass, Richard Calvert, Brian Young, or Simon Powel, to name just a few.

The rep role served as an excellent training ground for travel management. It taught eager young reps independence, language skills, and, most importantly, how to manage holidaymakers and their needs. If you have dealt with angry customers facing long flight delays or shoddy holiday accommodation, you know how to resolve most conflicts.

Equally important, it also provided these individuals with firsthand experience of how holiday hotels operate or, more importantly, how they do not- whether due to the wrong location, excessive size, or simply poor management.

After advancing at a young age with swift promotions to head reps, resort controllers, and resort managers positions, many of these reps returned to the UK in their late 20s, hungry for further progress to assume UK-based roles in product management, contracting, or sales.

Their in-depth knowledge and ability to manage people, along with their rapport with colleagues, often led to rapid promotions, especially when they were supporting accountants of the world like me who needed to learn from their expertise.

This led to the senior management of traditional travel companies being packed with experience in how holidays worked and what customers really wanted. However, as this conveyor belt disappeared, so has this depth of knowledge at the top of travel companies.

The advent of the internet and inexpensive mobile data, combined with the complexities of employing staff in resorts after Brexit, has undermined the traditional role of the rep, although the lesser role of the transfer rep seems to be making a comeback.

This led to the senior management of traditional travel companies being packed with experience in how holidays worked and what customers want. However, as this conveyor belt disappeared, so has this depth of knowledge at the top of travel companies.

Unfortunately, the AI “Pocket Rep” that my Neural Voice business is developing may signify the final nail in the coffin, as it knows everything about every bar, restaurant, or attraction in any resort worldwide and can provide booking links 24/7.

Many other travel roles, such as customer service, will also rapidly erode. However, becoming an expert in AI represents a massive opportunity for agents selling travel.

Travel offers so many options that it’s almost impossible to choose between A and B. Expert guidance from agents equipped with the latest AI tools to find the best value deals, balancing reviews and prices, will ensure customers secure the right deal for them.

These same agents will be able to utilise AI tools such as www.whyflytoo.co.uk to discover what their customers are considering this year, then employ other tools to automatically send the latest deals, before closing the sale with a phone call or a chat over coffee.

Their AI Co-Pilots will also be available 24/7 to answer calls, address customer service issues, pursue overdue payments, communicate amendments to suppliers, and generate professional-looking quotes and documentation.

What once required large teams will now be managed by individual agents running their own businesses with the support of AI Co-pilots. Thus, even the role of homeworking networks with their central administration functions will need to evolve.

The only thing that will not change is that not all holidaymakers want to self-serve and book online in our complex travel world. Many still want to look a fellow human in the eyes and say, “What would you recommend and who is offering the best deal?”.

So, RIP to the Holiday Rep, but hello to the AI-powered Travel Agents.

Octave, a new voice large language model, launched this week. It brings voice AI agents one step closer to their Human equivalents by allowing them to add context, emotion, and nuance to their voices.

Voice AI has grown dramatically in the last six months, and many businesses plan to launch a first layer of AI customer service, before triaging more complex issues for escalation to Human Agents.

The key advantage of AI customer service is that every call is answered instantly at no extra cost. AI agents can be scaled from 1 to 10,000 in a second, allowing any peak in demand to be handled. Crucially, businesses don’t have to pay to have human agents twiddling their thumbs during downtimes because you only pay an AI agent when they are talking to customers.

This saving amounts to hundreds of thousands in cost reductions and arguably provides the customer with a superior experience compared to waiting in a queue to speak with the next available human agent.

My own Neural Voice business, however, acknowledges that not all customers will be content chatting with an AI agent. Therefore, we have introduced the keyword “Human,” which, when used by the customer, automatically escalates the call to a human agent. Importantly, we also provide the option to return to the AI agents if the queue is too long!

Remarkably, our experience thus far indicates that AI can manage virtually any local dialect, as the large language model comprehends the ‘Intent’ of a paragraph rather than the specific words chosen. Thus, even if an individual word is misinterpreted, the intent is typically understood correctly.

Historically, AI voice agents have typically struggled to sound fully human. The speech-to-text tools employed simply articulated the words in the response without incorporating intonation, such as sarcasm, in their meaning interpretation.

However, an AI company named Hume launched Octave this week, the first large language model (LLM) specifically designed for text-to-speech (TTS). Unlike traditional TTS systems that merely read text aloud, Octave is a speech-language model that comprehends context, emotion, and nuance, enabling it to produce lifelike voices with expressive intonation.

As a large language model for speech, Octave doesn’t merely read words—it interprets meaning, rhythm, tone, and structure to produce more natural-sounding voices. For instance, I can detect sarcasm in a response and adjust the tone of he voice accordingly to reflect this. So, if you want a sarcastic customer service agent, these can now be created. It is much more likely that the intonation of an AI agent can be changed to show urgency if a customer makes it clear they have an urgent enquiry or issue.

The broader application involves adjusting the tone of the agent’s voice to align with the tone of the customer engaging with the agent. If the customer is cheerful and playful, the AI voice agent can be adapted to reflect that tone. Conversely, if the customer is particularly serious, it is likely best to respond similarly.

When these tools are combined with the ability to clone individual staff members’ voices or select from thousands of voice options featuring different regional accents, it is easy to see why all businesses, particularly travel companies, should consider implementing AI voice customer service.

Most travel businesses have encouraged customers to utilise online booking channels to reduce costs and enhance conversion tracking. Research has shown, however, that online conversion rates increase by 10% when a prominent telephone number is displayed. Customers feel more assured knowing they can contact the travel business if anything changes or goes wrong.

Many businesses acknowledge this and recognise that phone bookings are often incremental, as these customers frequently cannot reserve adjoining rooms or obtain the assistance they need online. However, many refuse to prominently display a telephone number, knowing it will lead to a significant number of customer service calls, and they do not have enough human agents to manage them.

Hence, the primary advantage of implementing AI customer service could indeed be the capacity to increase bookings by handling additional telephone reservations with the human staff you liberate from these customer service roles.

Whether you’re looking for cost savings or more bookings, you really should understand what Voice AI can do for your business, so if you want some free consultancy, talk to Neural Voice CEO Jeremy Smith by emailing

jeremy@neural-voice.ai