The internet decimated high-street travel agencies, but it led to the emergence of the Travel Homeworker, who avoided high Google advertising costs by creating “books” of customers. They primarily focused on “word-of-mouth” recommendations and the “trust” built through personal relationships with clients.

Ironically, it is now Google that faces the most significant threat from AI Search, although many large OTA and tour operators are also racing to be the “Fastest Dinosaur” in the park by adopting AI into their customer flows.

I still believe Homeworkers will play a significant role in the future.

However, even here, they need to work more intelligently by utilising AI to free up time for critical sales tasks, where they significantly outperform AI agents, who cannot detect buying signals or close deals.

The main advantages of AI agents are that they cost only a fraction of human agents, offer round-the-clock availability, and can answer all calls instantly, regardless of call volume.

Homeworkers will initially use them to provide out-of-hours cover, but they are likely to realise that their AI Co-Pilot can quickly recognise inbound call numbers, linking them to previous or existing bookings. This allows prioritising calls that should be answered by human agents based on the value of the booking or customer, while leaving the rest for the AI Co-Pilot to handle the discovery process for new clients or amendment requests.

In a world of AI Travel, where generic recommendations can be quickly obtained from ChatGPT or Perplexity for the best hotels in a destination, a key advantage will be how well you understand your customer.

That’s why my Neural Voice business has created the UK’s first AI Holiday Rep, where each customer is WhatsApped a link to a booking-specific Rep. Have a play https://www.holidayrep.ai/

The aim is simple. Enhance your “Brand” interaction with the customer by supporting them throughout their holiday, with the cost of this service covered by additional commissions from ancillary sales and in-resort excursions.

More importantly, you’re deepening your CRM understanding of the customer, and the more you know about them, the better the personalisation of next year’s holiday suggestions will be, e.g., the kids like water parks.

A key aspect of the authenticity of these AI Holiday Reps is that they are personalised to each holiday booking and know your name, party, flight details, and hotel. For example, the AI agent for my Tenerife holiday can use Google Maps to calculate that I need to leave home at 6:50 am to reach Manchester Terminal 3 for my Ryanair flight, as it will take approximately 55 minutes in traffic at that time of day. Many customers will not yet have decided between airport parking and local taxis when the AI first chats with them, so why not offer to send WhatsApp links for both options, as well as other obvious upsells, such as foreign exchange?

To be clear, every AI conversation should prioritise the customer and focus on offering assistance rather than just selling, as customers will quickly reject AI sales tools; however, there are always opportunities to upsell if you’re strategic.

You’ll be surprised that simply entering the hotel name and address allows the AI Holiday Rep to know everything about the surrounding resort and to suggest local restaurants by cuisine, provide detailed directions, organise local taxis for the customer, as well as offering weather guides and excursion booking services.

Once the customer becomes accustomed to speaking with their AI Holiday Rep, they will be happy to leave detailed reviews after their holiday because it is simply a conversation with the AI Rep, who already knows most of the details of their trip.

This user-generated content, which often includes photos, is pure “AI Search” gold, as it can be formatted not just to populate your CRM but also to create review posts for TripAdvisor, Trustpilot, Reddit, or other third-party forums. The key is to seed the posts with your name or brand so that other customers reading these reviews understand how to book.

There is an ongoing debate about how AI Search Engines will decide what is a trusted source when compiling their results. Still, I guarantee that TripAdvisor and Reddit will remain firm favourites, so as well as working out how best to optimise content on your site, it’s also important to seed your content in as many other trusted sites as possible.

The best people to post this content are your clients, so make this as easy as possible for them and, where possible, reward them for doing so.

In summary, even homeworkers need to adopt and utilise AI in their workflows to make them smarter and more accessible. Just as they became experts in using travel websites, they will also need to stay one step ahead of their customers in utilising the new AI Travel tools that are arriving quickly.

However, homeworkers retain a key advantage. A cost-free advertising method known as “Word of Mouth” relies on excellent customer service and insights. The primary impact of AI on this community will be that top sellers can manage significantly more bookings by utilising AI for tasks beyond sales, potentially resulting in fewer homeworkers overall in the future.

So, make sure you’re one of the winners.

You know that you’re semi-retired from Travel retailing when you find yourself feeling sorry for Google.

However, Google is now caught between a tightening vice of consumers using AI Search from engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT to get answers more quickly, and European regulators imposing multi-billion-euro fines against Google for promoting its Flight and Hotel engines, which are designed to deliver this speed.

The core issue is that Google has been highly successful and holds a dominant position as the ‘Gatekeeper’ of search, with their 10 blue link technology that maximises profits by forcing travel customers to visit an average of 35 sites, review 141 pages of content, and often return to individual sites 2-3 times before booking.

This is an inefficient process, and Google rightly argues that their Flight and Hotel searches simplify the process for customers by comparing prices and summarising all options. However, so do Skyscanner and Booking.com, which Google openly prejudices by promoting its services more prominently and at a much lower cost.

The European Union has clearly had enough and introduced the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to empower its regulators to hold Google accountable. This has already issued preliminary findings that Google is unlawfully favouring its services over competitors through more prominent treatment, such as top placement, enhanced visuals, and filtering mechanisms, while competitors’ results are less visible or demoted.

Google is therefore facing the prospect of not promoting its services so prominently, or the prospect of Billions more in fines, and even the prospect of being forced to divest part of its services.

However, like many customers, the month view calendar Google Flights offers is a much quicker way to find the cheapest date and supplier for a route. So, we face an apparent dilemma. As we shift from a directory of links to more useful AI tools that help you reach an answer faster, who is authorised to provide these tools if Google isn’t, and how will the revenue be shared?

In my opinion, the answer is simple.

AI search engines will collaborate with the top independent comparison platforms, as direct relationships with asset owners, such as low-cost airlines like EasyJet, do not offer the price comparison feature that consumers expect. However, Trip.com’s Chinese ownership of Skyscanner may pose challenges for the UK’s most well-known flight comparison engine, potentially leaving an opening.

Similarly, Ice Travel Group, the UK’s leading package holiday comparison site operators, is finally facing increased competition with the launch of several new AI-based entrants, such as Hey Holiday and white-label technology specialists Travel Find Holidays.

However, the AI Engines will also negotiate with other “Trusted” sources, and how can the asset owner or airline not be the ultimate trusted source? This is why, when you search on Perplexity for flights from Manchester to New York, you are presented with links to both Skyscanner and the websites of the major airlines operating the route, allowing the customer to choose. However, it is ironically less clear than Google Flights’ price map, which shows prices for the month at a glance. This illustrates how regulators might hinder consumer benefits while claiming to promote consumer choice. It’s an interesting balance!

The other key element that will change is how search charges will be applied.

The very nature of AI Search and its requirement to deliver customers to the answer more quickly inevitably spells the end of “Cost per Click” and a shift to “Cost per Acquisition” or a revenue share, but how do the Engines negotiate if they must tell the truth about who has the best deal?

Just as Google Search is evolving, so are OTAS’ marketing expenditures.

On the Beach (OTB) led the way with their massive investment in “Above the line” TV advertising, aimed at increasing brand awareness and attracting customers directly to their brand terms on Google or ideally as a direct site hit, reducing their reliance on resort or hotel search terms.

This now seems a very wise move, given the current 30% decline in Google Advertising effectiveness that has hit the entire UK Travel sector this summer. The nature of paid search competition has led to an increase in the price of attracting clicks, despite a decline in conversions.

Therefore, companies that have not diversified their visits away from Google search face an urgent need to evolve their model.

Interestingly, the largest OTA, Love Holidays, has diversified by partnering with social media giants “Holiday Pirates”. There is no publicly available information about the volumes this white label is generating; however, as long as the pay-away revenue share remains lower than Google advertising costs, it will be a beneficial deal for both partners.≈≈

I believe we will see more deals of this nature as new AI-driven travel entrants emerge in the market, because they enable new businesses to concentrate on their strengths without becoming entangled in the operational, contracting, or bonding issues that these major OTAs manage effortlessly.

Predicting AI’s impact on travel is challenging, but I predict that we haven’t yet seen the AI Travel business of the future. Just as the internet revolution transformed everything, I think the AI Revolution—featuring ‘Digital Twins” that understand all a customer’s preferences and shop on their behalf—will fundamentally alter how customers engage with travel providers. Therefore, my investment funds will be directed into this sector, based on the assumption that new technology will soon partner with others to complete the work.

It was fascinating listening to Greg O’Hara, one of the world’s leading travel investors, discuss the opportunities he foresees in the next decade.

His key takeaway was that if you believe half the AI rhetoric, the average worker’s leisure time per week will increase from 2 to 4 days, thereby doubling the opportunity for travel or other leisure activities.

Therefore, in his opinion, investing in “Wellness”, which encompasses hotels with spas to golf course complexes, is a no-brainer. This is particularly true in the wellness sector, where demand already surpasses supply, such as digital detox retreats, immersive wellness experiences, or digital nomad workspaces designed to foster environments that are optimal for mental health in the workplace.

Most workers only have 25-30 days of holiday a year; however, that could easily double to 60 days in the next 10 years if AI advances at its predicted rate, so what travel products will UK travellers flock to moving forward?

The answer is probably a mix!

Logically, Airbnb will continue to expand rapidly if local tourist authorities do not hinder it, as more travellers seek the extra space and “Home from Home” experience provided by this service as they aim to extend their stays and possibly even work from their holiday destination.

Since Covid-19, I have been running my various businesses from a pod in my garden in Rochdale. With my virtual background always switched on, few people ever realise when I change location. Therefore, spending a month working in Spain or France, when necessary, becomes much easier for me and many other Brits. However, hotel rooms would not provide the space and comfort needed for such a long period; a rented Airbnb house meets many more of my needs at a significantly lower cost.

Increasing sporting activities such as running, cycling, and golf seem inevitable, fostering the opportunity to create niche travel businesses focused on these specialist sectors. Personally, this appears to be an attractive investment prospect for my retirement, especially if they can meet my own travel needs.

Many people will wish to travel further and longer than ever before. My Meta Ray-Ban sunglasses are more of a toy than a travel tool at present, but hearing Spanish conversation and having the translation whispered into my ear is already a fantastic experience.

Being slightly older, I remember the fictional character Arthur Dent dropping a “Babble” fish into his ear to understand various languages in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. However, AI is rapidly turning this into a reality, making global travel much easier for all of us.

Inevitably, this will in turn greatly expand the world’s range of holiday destinations, revealing unexplored yet more affordable regions such as Indonesia and South America.

The most significant increase in volume, however, is likely to occur with increased short breaks to Europe’s beaches and cities, propelled by the seemingly endless expansion of the UK’s low-cost airlines.

I already have friends who travel virtually every weekend after working Monday through Wednesday, in the less-than-sunny Rochdale. How many UK residents will this become a lifestyle choice?

Of course, some commentators may be having a fit at this stage, worried about the emissions and Global warming impact of so much travel.

However, if you listen to the leaders of the AI technology giants, the age of “Radical Abundance,” delivered by AI, will quickly provide us the economic wealth necessary to meet the investment required to address global warming.

Importantly, we already know the solution to Global Warming. Still, we are not making the necessary investment to greenify our electricity production, ban all combustion engines, and insulate our homes to eliminate the need for gas central heating.

I am quickly becoming a Green “Optimist” who, although deeply concerned about Global Warming, believes it’s a threat that humanity can easily address with the right focus and that it’s not a reason to halt our wanderlust and desire to explore new cultures in foreign lands.

Getting ahead of this investment trend seems a smart way to use my remaining years in the travel industry, so reach out if you have ideas and need to secure funding to develop them.

If you don’t already listen to podcasts and watch YouTube video interviews of the world’s AI leaders, it’s maybe time to start.

I have already documented in previous blogs that my biggest fear is that the implementation of AI technology will occur so rapidly that it causes a structural upheaval in our society, resulting in a 50% decline in new white-collar jobs and unemployment surpassing 20%. Inevitably, this will create a world where the rich become even richer and the poor are left devastated.

Listening to a Wired interview with Demis Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind, which is now a Google-backed business, gave me a much more positive outlook.

DeepMind has already dramatically boosted the productivity of medical scientists with the launch of AlphaFold. This is a groundbreaking AI system capable of accurately predicting 3D protein structures from amino acid sequences. This capability addresses one of biology’s grand challenges and has had a transformative impact on fields such as drug discovery, enzyme design, and disease research.

Already, this new AI technology is leading to cures for diseases and extending human life; however, this surely creates more humans competing for the limited resources of our Earth.

However, Demis believes that we are merely being short-sighted and that “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI) will be achieved within the next five years. This is where computers become as intelligent as humans and are capable of programming their own improvement. Demis believes that this will lead to a golden age of “Radical Abundance.”

He predicts, for instance, that AGI will solve the issue of power production through nuclear fusion, thus providing abundant clean energy that will enable countries to tackle water shortages by desalinating the plentiful seawater that surrounds us. This, in turn, will increase the available land for growing food, allowing the planet to sustain the growing world population, eliminating the need for mass migration and reducing the necessity to wage war over resources.

He notes that we already know the solutions to climate change, but a lack of geopolitical cooperation hinders their implementation, as no single country is willing to bear the cost. In his view, this “zero-sum game” mentality will shift in a time of radical abundance.

When asked about overpopulation, he predicts that AGI, along with radical abundance, will enable humans to invest the substantial sums necessary to make space travel viable. This, in turn, will allow humanity to reduce overcrowding on Earth and to populate our galaxy and beyond.

He, however, also acknowledges that it’s a time of significant risk for humans, as a lack of international cooperation and regulation means AGI could easily fall into the hands of bad actors, and the increasing digitalisation of our societies makes cyber warfare virtually inevitable.

I am therefore pleased to hear these more cheerful views of the future from Demis and also from Elon Musk, but it does make me wonder if this is not just the positive spin that AI leaders need, working on a product whose impact is so substantial and could either be the best or worst thing for human society.

What is truly shocking is Demis’s absolute conviction that AGI will be with us within 3-5 years. For me, AGI is a massive accelerator of the AI revolution that already amazes me every day.

If you’re not embracing AI in your business, you’re standing still in a rapidly evolving world, and we all know that standing still is a recipe for disaster.

I have been in the holiday business for 37 years, and I have never seen peak-season flight prices trashed in the way they have been this year to popular beach destinations like Majorca.

As usual, Ryanair leads the way with a £19 fare from Manchester to Majorca, but one glance at the Skyscanner screenshot below shows that return flights for under £100 can be secured for most supposed peak dates in August.

This highlights the genuine weakness of the low-cost yield systems that “price low” early and subsequently raise prices in response to demand. There must be demand!!

The UK’s warm early summer weather has fostered a “let’s wait and see” consumer attitude, as many holidaymakers are content to stay in the UK if the weather is pleasant enough for the children to play in the garden and for the BBQ to be fired up.

I have always believed that foreign beach holiday markets compete far more with “Staycations” than with expensive UK breaks. With the advent of the internet, on-demand TV, social media, and gaming, the urgent need for parents to take the family on holiday to alleviate school holiday boredom has diminished, allowing for late decisions to be made.

We must therefore consider whether we have reached a capacity tipping point, as low-cost carriers are compelled to reduce capacity to improve yields as their relentless UK expansion approaches its limits.

This is a relatively trivial rebalancing for Ryanair and Easyjet, who will shift capacity to other source markets. Still, it may highlight a weakness in Jet2’s exclusive supply to the UK travel sector.

As mentioned in previous blogs, Easyjet Holidays is the perfect “Opaque” dumping ground for heavily discounted excess seats, so watch out for some amazing orange deals. However, it’s companies like On the Beach and Love Holidays that are leading the way with £402 for 7-night self-catering holidays based on their new favourite ultra-low-cost carrier, Ryanair.

Love Holidays is a private company still seeking an IPO to enhance their share liquidity and access cash for expansion; therefore, it is difficult to determine how much the owners value the new deal with Ryanair and the access to low-cost seats it provides them.

However, given that On the Beach’s share price has doubled since last August to a closing price of 207p yesterday, it’s clear the financial markets have finally got the message. OTB operates as an “asset-light” travel business that feeds off the misery of  low-cost carriers, providing the optimal position when capacity exceeds demand.

The key profit driver for OTAs is not the selling price of their holidays, but the conversion of leads into bookings they achieve from their advertising sources. Low prices significantly boost conversion rates and, therefore, profitability, so watch out for some excellent results from Love and OTB this year.

However, it is the reaction of Majorca’s leading hotel chains to this new “Glut” of excess seats that I find most interesting.

After many years of needing to operate at nearly 100% capacity to turn a profit, the sector has learnt that it is a better strategy to maintain high prices, which enable it to generate a profit at 80% capacity. This allows them to relax and simply fill the extra rooms if airlines significantly discount their prices, creating an influx of late demand.

Therefore, while it’s easy to find ultra-cheap flights to Majorca and other Mediterranean destinations, holiday prices are not falling because it’s difficult to locate any inexpensive accommodation. So, although UK holidaymakers are benefiting from lower holiday costs, it’s not quite the “Golden Age of discounted holidays” just yet.

However, I know a few hoteliers well, so it’s time for me to stop writing and book another holiday!

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.