Many managers complain:
“Everything is lost. Soon, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will completely replace us. Tourists will only need to voice their vacation preferences, and within a few minutes, they will receive everything – from vouchers to tickets…”
But is this really the case?
What threatens the existence of a travel agent in general, and in Ukraine in particular?
I will try to share my thoughts on this in two parts.
Part 1. Artificial Intelligence
First, I want to say that, in my deep conviction, artificial intelligence will not pose any danger to our qualified travel agents in the foreseeable future. Humans are still humans. I will try to prove why.
Human communication
A manager, unlike a program or algorithm, can demonstrate empathy. Planning a vacation involves not only calculations but also, first and foremost, emotions. AI simply processes text; it cannot feel the tourist or perceive emotional feedback during the selection process.
Understanding psychological profiles
A good manager knows that a tourist going to Majorca is unlikely to enjoy going to Goa. Thailand is far from Zanzibar. The manager considers the lifestyle, age, past travel experiences to select the right tour. The manager recognizes the tourist’s personality type and subconsciously takes it into account when making recommendations. All this cannot be done by an algorithm.
Trust
We often sell not just a vacation, but the tourist’s confidence that this is the right trip where they will feel good. This confidence is based on the tourist’s previous travel experiences. If everything went well in the past, it will be good again this time. Tourists often return repeatedly to a specific manager. A trusting relationship develops between them, which AI cannot access. If a doctor instills confidence based on experience, you are unlikely to change your doctor. You probably won’t trust your health to AI. And a good vacation is also part of a tourist’s health.
Personal experience and inspiration
Only a manager can emotionally convey their personal experience to a tourist, describing each hotel not with robotic language but with feelings based on their visit during informational tours. Trust in their own notes or photos from their phone is much higher than thousands of reviews on travel sites that AI uses. These reviews are written by tourists with different initial criteria for their trip, and they are quite different from your tourist, whereas you have your notebook and phone nearby.
Support during the vacation
A tourist can’t call AI to complain about tour conditions, nor can AI change those conditions based on the tourist’s wishes. In the companies that organize trips, people still work – not algorithms. Flight changes, room issues, hotel placement, missed flights, delays – these are force majeure situations that can only be resolved manually by a manager. Theoretically, if AI is used for the initial selection and the first force majeure occurs, the tourist will likely return to a human manager next time, regret their decision, complain, and regret.
Tourist conservatism
Even if AI adopted all the qualities of a manager – such as catching intonation, empathizing, and handling non-standard situations – tourists would still not trust it for a long time. Few would want their vacation, one of the most important moments of their life, to be handled by AI. People are simply conservative. To change their mindset requires great effort.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence does not threaten the travel agent profession. On the contrary, it helps—by automating routine tasks, giving managers more time for direct communication with tourists.
Yes, there will be 5-10% of tourists-adventurers – but this number is not a critical mass for the survival of travel agencies. Moreover, within a year, 30% of these tourists will be disappointed and return to their original managers.
And what then is the real threat?
To be continued…