Experimental to Essential: How AI Is Changing the Travel Advisor’s Job

Artificial intelligence has moved quickly from novelty to practical business tool for travel advisors. Now, the arrival of agentic AI promises to accelerate that transformation considerably.

That was the message from a panel of three agency owners who are already using AI for everything from identifying sales leads and following up with clients to analyzing supplier performance, monitoring emails and improving their visibility in AI search results.

The panel took place at Travel Market 2026, the annual conference bringing together the TRAVELSAVERS, TRAVELSAVERS Canada and NEST networks, alongwith their preferred supplier partners.

Moderated by Betsy Goldberg, Senior Corporate Communications Director for TRAVELSAVERS, the panel featured Sarah Bonsall, Founder and Travel Advisor at Kentucky-based boutique agency Latitude 21 Travel; Michelle Gammond CTC, owner of Carstairs, Alberta, Canada-based Travel Potions”; and Nikki Hendrix, President & CEO of Virginia-based Favorite Grampy Travels.

Goldberg set the stage by describing the extraordinary speed of AI adoption. When she began surveying advisors three years ago, about a quarter said they didn’t use AI and would never use it. That figure has now fallen to about 7%.

“It has gone from being experimental — I am on the avant-garde — to, it’s kind of standard now,” Goldberg said.

The next transformation is already underway. While generative AI responds to prompts by creating things such as text and images, agentic AI can work more like an assistant or colleague — setting goals, planning actions and carrying out tasks.

According to statistics presented by Goldberg, 61% of travel executives are experimenting with or scaling agentic AI, although just 2% say its use is currently widespread. Eighty percent expect to introduce it during the next three to five years.

Creating a Virtual AI Workforce

Bonsall has taken the concept further than most. As an agency owner who can’t necessarily justify hiring employees to perform every task, she has created what amounts to a virtual AI workforce.

“I have a blog writer, I have a bookkeeper,” she said. AI also helps with customized client follow-up and creates a daily list of emails, suppliers and other tasks requiring her attention.

She even created an AI “board of directors” consisting of five virtual executives she uses as sounding boards for business ideas.

Gammond’s introduction to AI was very different.

She began using it while developing Travel Potions, drawing on her dual experience in the travel business and as a pub owner to create an agency brand incorporating elements of both worlds.

AI helped develop the agency’s brand, logo and tagline, but it wasn’t an instant process.

“It was a lot of back and forth,” Gammond said. But the process also taught her an important lesson: AI “is smart, and it’s not smart.”

Rather than fearing it as a replacement for the advisor, she began viewing it as another business tool.

The Bottom Line: Turning AI Into Sales

Hendrix has gone considerably further, particularly in using AI to generate and identify leads.

Favorite Grampy Travels specializes in family travel and operates large Facebook groups focused on destinations the agency sells. Hendrix said an AI agent can analyze posts within those groups, determine the likelihood that a post represents a potential lead and prioritize opportunities for advisors.

The agency has also used AI to optimize its website for “answer engines” — increasingly important as consumers ask questions directly through AI platforms rather than traditional search.

Hendrix said the results have been dramatic. Website impressions have risen more than tenfold, from about 170,000 to nearly two million per month since the agency began focusing on the strategy in March.

“That was probably the single best thing we’ve done,” she said.

Bonsall is also seeing AI translate into bookings.

She uses it to identify leads that may be cooling after 30 days and to analyze previous communications to help determine the best approach for reconnecting. She said the system can even assess how different clients communicate so follow-up can be tailored accordingly.

“That’s closed a lot of sales for me,” she said.

AI can also reveal patterns an advisor might otherwise miss. Bonsall said an analysis of her quoting and communication process found that scheduling a phone call rather than sending an email after a second quote made her 60% more likely to close the booking.

Doing the Chores You Don’t Want To

For Alberta’s Gammond, one of AI’s biggest benefits is less glamorous but absolutely welcome: reducing repetitive administration.

She uses AI capabilities integrated into the agency’s CRM to scan incoming emails, connect information with clients and bookings, automate processes and monitor flights for changes or cancellations.

Her ultimate wish is for technology to eliminate the need for advisors to work across multiple systems to manage a single booking. “It would be so nice to open one door and have everything right there,” she said.

All three emphasized that advisors don’t need to be AI experts to begin benefiting from the technology.

“You don’t have to know all the specific prompts,” Bonsall said. “It will literally do it for you, and it will teach you how to do it.”

Hendrix’s advice is similarly straightforward: start experimenting now. “The best time to start was yesterday,” she said. “The next best time is today.”

AI Cannot Replace Relationships

Despite their enthusiasm, all three panelists drew a clear line between using AI behind the scenes and allowing it to replace the advisor-client relationship.

Hendrix said potential leads and clients at her agency still communicate with humans rather than AI.

Bonsall stressed that AI can produce inaccurate information — including travel itineraries that simply aren’t workable — and it therefore requires oversight.

The panel also discussed creating guardrails around AI access, particularly when systems are connected with email, CRM platforms or cloud storage containing sensitive client information. Human review remains an essential part of their processes.

Most importantly, the panelists said technology can’t replicate what lies at the heart of the advisor’s value.

AI hasn’t stayed at a hotel, sailed on a ship or eaten at a restaurant. It doesn’t have an advisor’s relationships with suppliers, nor can it provide the same advocacy when a client’s trip goes wrong.

“It doesn’t walk into the room. It doesn’t smell the air. It doesn’t taste the food,” Gammond said. “Knowledge is great, but it’s not experience.”

Hendrix summed up the distinction more simply.

“You can’t replace human touch. Ever.”