The Travel Agent Guide
The Travel Agent Guide is a podcast created for travel advisors at every stage of their journey.
Each episode shares practical tips, real-world experiences, and honest conversations about building a successful travel advisor business—from client boundaries and workflows to marketing, growth, and sustainability.
Whether you’re new to the industry or looking to refine how you work, this podcast is here to help you work smarter, feel more confident, and grow with intention.
The Travel Agent Guide
The Basics of AI: Saving You Time on Itinerary Creation
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The Basics of AI Saving You Time on Itinerary Creation
How are travel agents really using AI today—and how can it help you work faster without losing your personal touch?
In this episode, we talk about how AI can support your business—from research, ideation, and narrowing down options, to using tools like AI Assist in Tern.
We also dive into whether you should be using AI before client consultations to come across more confident and prepared.We break down how much you can trust AI when doing research (and where you need to be careful), plus share key prompts you can use to design more unique and memorable trips—from experiences and dining to what clients should know before they travel.
We also explore how AI can help with special client requests (like finding a specific perfume in Greece), polishing your itineraries with details like routes, transport costs, and free activities, and even handling challenging clients.
We answer the big question—Is AI going to take your job?—and introduce simple AI agents like a financial planner or “chaos organizer” to help structure your workflow.
Plus, how you can elevate your client experience by designing cover photos and creating playbooks for trips, including cruise details, itineraries, and onboard experiences.
If you’re a travel agent looking to save time, stay organized, and create better trips—this episode is for you.
#TheTravelAgentGuide #TravelAgentLife #AIForTravel #TravelBusiness #ItineraryPlanning
Any of your tools you're using in the industry, they really need to be integrating AI in some way. A great example is Turn has this beautiful thing called AI assist. And while it's brand new, they're working on it. One of the great things it can do is if you have a confirmation email, it connects directly to your email, pulls out that confirmation information, and puts it directly into the itinerary for you. So you're not doing the standard copy-paste method that we're normally doing. This is a really big deal, and it's one of the main reasons that Sava Travel chose to give all of our agents turn for free. We really think this is kind of the cornerstone to making sure that your business runs efficiently and runs with AI.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Travel Agent Guide, the podcast pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to be a travel agent. We're talking real life, the challenges, the wins, the money, the mistakes, and the growth. Whether you've been in the travel industry for years or are new to it, we're in this together and you're exactly where you need to be.
SPEAKER_00All right, guys, we're excited today about today's topic. Honestly, because of the fact that it's one of the most talked-about topics in the world. And I don't know about you, but I'm honestly tired of hearing about AI, but we have a big promise for you today. We're gonna help you by the end of this podcast understand how to use AI for not just search. Too many people are out there using this as a Google search tool, and they're not using it to really optimize their business and make sure that they are not wasting time throughout the day. So that's gonna be our focus. It's not gonna be here's how you search an itinerary, here's how you get some basic information. We wanna take that next step and that deeper dive today. Um, Haley, thanks for joining me. Tell us a little bit about your experiences with AI so far.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. I mean, I use AI to my advantage in my business. So I am constantly using it to help with rewriting of some emails and just maintaining that professional stance with clients. Um, I use it for interns. So we're gonna dive into that a little bit and talk about AI assist and how that's helpful to your business. Um, and I actually just came across a new platform where it's super helpful to putting together a somewhat of a presentation where we'll talk about how you always need to recheck everything to make sure the information it's pulling is 100% accurate. Um, but doing side-by-side slides so I can compare maybe two um all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean, right? And kind of just pinpoint some of the restaurants and spa and location and things like that. So yeah, it's it's been a game changer over the past couple years. And I think the mindset most people have, or the question I hear a lot, is is AI gonna take over? Are they gonna take our jobs from us? I I don't believe that. I really truly think that human touch is always gonna matter to certain clients for sure.
SPEAKER_00You know, one of my favorite uh sayings that I hear in this industry is that it's a belly-to-belly business. And what that means is you are really looking your client in the eye and giving them the confirmation of I'm there for you and I am the expert and I know what I'm talking about. And there's a lot of B2C industries that are like that. And while technology has moved into the space, of course, I don't think the travel agent is going away. I mean, you could have had the same argument with the dawn of the internet in the late 90s when all of a sudden all the all the flight prices and hotels and everything were now available to the public. And yet, yes, some commission structures did change. And I don't want to belittle that because that was very painful for a lot of travel agents, but we still exist and we still exist in pretty decent, respectable numbers, and that's where I think AI is going to be. Um, Steve Jobs always used a term for the computer that it was a bicycle for the mind. And I love that saying because that's very much what I think AI is gonna be. Instead of you walking or running, you're gonna be able to get on this bike and just move so much faster in your day-to-day space. I love it. All right, so let's dive in on basics first, just to make sure we're covering everything. And like I said, guys, I promise this is a deep dive. So we'll spend very little time. But what are some of the basic things you're using AI for on a day-to-day basis? And do you have a preferred platform?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, my platform I use, I mean, ChatGPT, I think is pretty straightforward, as well as Gemini, which are the basics of AI. Um, I use this to do just a lot of, you know, reformatting any type of email I put together. Um, you know, a lot of text that I'm sending out, I I use that a lot, to be honest. Um, as well as that, I use the basics of AI for some research, right? So I hear a lot from advisors that how can I take on a lead if I don't know anything about South America or going to Bachu Picchu or whatever that looks like. Use AI. Take AI and have them put something together for you in three seconds, and then all of a sudden you have all this information that you need to look like an expert to your client when you're getting ready to hop in that call. Um, so I think that's important. That is your typical basic search, right? Of just kind of going in where, you know, you can really deep dive into it as well. So get down to the nitty-gritty, ask it to do something five or six times so you get exactly what you want from it. Um, but I absolutely love that. I just had another advisor who, you know, they had a hard time putting together their bio. I'm like, are you using AI to help you write out your amazing bio for your webpage? No, go use it, type in all the things you want it to say, then give it a couple chances to make something amazing for you and it's done, right? And it just saved you hours of your time. Like, I think 10 years ago, if you told me to go write a bio, I probably would have spent days on it to perfect it. Now we can have it done in 10 minutes, right? Of just kind of resubmitting it until you get it to have the exact words that you want.
SPEAKER_00So simple search, simple uh email responses. I'm a big fan of if I have an email that I want to write that's real nasty, I write it the way I want to in AI and I say, make this sound professional. And there it acts as twofold for me. It's a therapist because I get to say, here's what I think about you. And it also um it also gets the job done at the end of the day. And I'm always kind of amazed because I'm like, wow, you still told them where to shove it, but you made them feel very excited about shoving it there. Thank you for doing that. Um, so I love the the email creation and thinking through it. It's a great space to go if you want to turn down a client, but you don't exactly know how to do it. Um, it will reword all of those things for you. So some of the prompts that I typically use, if it's the simple search, is what I'm thinking of. So let's say you have a client with a destination you've never ever touched before. I recently had a group trip to Madagascar I was working on, and man, did I feel out of my element. Done a ton of Africa, but Madagascar was not on my list. And essentially what ended up happening was we kind of dove in and I went to AI and I said, okay, give me a basic itinerary, tell me what the highlights are, tell me about the low lights. Where should I make sure my clients don't go to? Um, and then I like to take that just we're gonna talk steps deeper, right? So I like to take that search because you want a basic before you go there, right? What time should I go there? What's the best time of year? That sort of thing. But that one step deeper makes you seem like the expert on the call. So I always do something like what are unique dining experiences in this city, right? Um, what are the standard tourist destinations and what are the more off-the-beaten path ones? What are the uh what should I know before going? That's one of my favorites. Like, what should I be worried about? What what kind of dangers uh may face a tourist when they're actually there? Because then you can be like, you know, this city has a couple of things that I do want you to know, and you start setting those expectations really, really early on. And again, it just makes you seem like the expert, even if you're not, because you could take time after the consult, after they paid your research and design fee, and dive a lot deeper. Um, so we have some of those like basic itinerary creation things. Um, other than basic itinerary creation, email, text response for awkward conversations, is there any other world where it it plays with you, Haley, that you're using it a ton?
SPEAKER_01I think with presentations, you can definitely use it for presentations. But what I would say there is have kind of your backup and your documents and everything you want to say already set in place. So then you can have it go ahead and put something together for you. Um, a platform I just came across was Notebook LM. Um, so I had somebody actually introduce that to me where again, you can go in and ask it to put together a slideshow for you. In five minutes, you have a full slideshow of, you know, cruise comparisons or AI resort um comparisons. So super helpful. The only thing I will always ever say is double check your work, right? Make sure that things haven't changed on the back end, or if there's something your client's really looking forward to, just take that extra minute to double check that that restaurant still exists on that cruise ship or that spa is still open at that resort, things like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so Notebook LM was what you called it, and I'll give you another one to throw out there, but one that you're probably much more familiar with, listeners, is Canva. They have built in a phenomenal AI, and I love going into that thing and saying, hey, this is the look and the feel I'm going for. You already know my brand, colors, fonts, all the things. Put this together, bring in pictures from this place, do this. And man, it just shocks me because I'm, I've got to tell you guys, I'm the worst graphic designer on the planet. So to get to see that has been really, really interesting. Um, so that's also a good one for visuals that you may need for your client. Haley, I know you were telling me about an advisor on our team that is using them for um not workbooks. What's the like a pre-departure?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like a pre-departure document for clients that is sent out about a week in advance. Basically, I was super amazed when I saw this, right? I I looked at it as wow, this is impressive. But the reality is, it takes the advisor 15, 20 minutes to put together and that extra touch that it's adding to the client who thinks they have spent hours on this just showcases that advisor and in what they're bringing to the table. So I think it's, you know, definitely use it to your leverage, whatever that looks like for your business.
SPEAKER_00Do you remember which platform he was using to create these playbooks? I do not actually.
SPEAKER_01I I need to check in and see which platform. I think it was maybe Claude. I think I want to say it was um Claude.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so we could drop it in the in the show notes below. But one of the things I want to make sure that you guys understood, this was a an agent of ours that focuses on one particular cruise line. And prior to the client's departure, he gives them this really breathed out PDF with all of this information. So what he does is he says, Hey Claude, this is the ship they're going on. Extract all the information that's unique to this ship. It'll bring in all the different restaurants, all the different know-hows, it'll give them different tips, that sort of thing. And then he'll say, and here's our specific cabin. Give me anything they need to know about the cabin. And then he'll go in and say, like, okay, this is also uh this is their their level with um this particular cruise ship, right? They have all those uh ridiculous levels that your clients can get to. Tell them what benefits they get from that level so you can remind them of what benefits they may have. So it took him, you know, again, no time at all to filter this information into Claude, and then Claude can pull it out. One thing for everybody out there that's like, oh, but I I'm not gonna know if it's right, and I have to check it, and then it's gonna take me so much longer. One of the things that I think is interesting about this method of a playbook when it's one particular cruise line is you can send you you could paste the exact links and say, I need you, or say, I need you to get the information from Virginvoyages.com or whatever it is. And that way you are more assured that the information's up to date, that that's what it's looking like. Also, if you check one and you have a paid subscription to any one of these uh GPTs, you could basically go in and say, Hey, pull the playbook that we made for so-and-so a couple of weeks ago, bring that one in, but change the cabin and change the benefit level. And you don't have to go back and recheck every time if that's the case. But again, if you're telling it specifically only pull information from this website, it will do that. And you can rely on the fact that that is the accurate information that's up to date. Um, Haley, do you do anything else to kind of make sure that the information coming in is correct?
SPEAKER_01I mean, for that example, like you said, Bird, once you get using a certain AI platform, they become your best friend. It's like they know you and your business, what you're looking for. So everything's gonna save in there, right? So for that instance, like you said, all of that information is already saved. So now you're just editing out the details from the actual itinerary or the confirmation email. Um, so yeah, I think that's definitely makes this way easier for all of us. The fact that it's already saved, AI knows exactly what we're looking for. You just need to take the time to get it to where you want it. Then from there it's good to go.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Okay, so these are the basics: the itinerary creation, some beautiful documents, uh, some email responses to awkward or terrible clients you don't want to work with anymore. Um, but I want to dive a little bit deeper to some tools that are very easy to understand and make your life way simpler. One of them that we've been using a lot over at Sava Travel is um is Turn as a CRM. That's who we're using, although I call it a workflow system. I've got a whole argument of why it's not a good CRM. Um, but that's our main platform that we use. And actually, everybody at Sava gets Turn for free because we believe in this platform this much. So one of the things they implemented about six months ago was uh it was called AI Assist. And essentially the idea behind it is your email is connected through Turn. So all your emails are filtered in. And when you get an email that has a confirmation in it. So let's say Expedia sends you an email, you connect that email to a trip and you basically just say add trip. This one goes to the Smith trip, and then it's gonna say add an activity, and you can say yes, this is the activity this goes with. And what's gonna happen then is all that confirmation information in the email is then going to be transferred to the trip. You no longer have to copy the confirmation and paste the confirmation. Um, right now we we were in the past using Tess as our workflow system, and we were using Axis as our itinerary builder. And you would have to copy and paste that each time. You would have to download the vouchers and upload the vouchers, you would have all these different manual steps that actually take a really long time if you do FIT work. Um even if you do DMC work and you create your own itinerary, it's exhausting. So I think it's really interesting that Turn is focusing and moving into this space so much. I think the tool leaves a lot to be desired. It's not perfect right now, but I mean, this is such a new space. So I I love seeing them focus on it. Haley, what's your experiences with using AI in that way?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've loved the feature for AI Assist, but Turn, again, with pivoting from our previous workflow system, it's been a huge upgrade and change for me. Um, so basically, what I do is if I go and I'm working with the DMC, I just had one with Tiern in Travel. Um, you're able to take that link, create a PDF file, create the PDF file, then upload it to AI Assist. That way it's preparing everything that my client needs to get that authorization to pay the money. And the amount of time that you save from manually entering a two-week trip to Europe is insane. I don't, it saved me so much time, right? So that alone is my favorite feature with Turn, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna laugh. I was gonna say my my favorite slash not favorite feature is uh when it comes to AI, is really that stupid little chat bot. And I'm saying that because some of these systems have such intricate chatbots, and I think Turn has done a really good job with it. If you go to Turn and Learn and you have to learn all the new things and you start using the CRM for the first time, I think it's something like 15 hours worth of video. And I don't know about you guys, but I ain't got time for that. So the reality was, as most systems that I use, I kind of just bump my head against the wall until I figure out how to use it, basically. I am not gonna watch 15 hours of video. It's just simply not gonna happen. Well, what they've done with their little chat bot is they've uploaded all those videos and all the how-to sheets and all the things. So when I do get to a place where I'm feeling stuck, I can ask it. And I will say 9.9 times out of 10, it's given me really clear, precise answers. And my favorite part is I am a workaround person. If you can't do what I want, my next question is gonna say, how can I do it? Right. Like I need the workarounds, how I want to do this. And it has given me several workarounds. Like, oh, okay, well, yes, it's not technically a feature we have, but this is what you could do to kind of get the same results. Um, and that's AI, right? That that's an AI system of sorts, and I really appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, shout out to Finn, the Turnbot. Um, because I use it every day, to be honest with you. As I've learned the system on the back end reporting, you're gonna have tons of questions of tracking your money. And sometimes, like you said, you're digging through hours of modules. It's a lot. Go to the chat bot, use it right away. I within a minute have the answer to what I need, and it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00This episode is not sponsored by Turn, but maybe it should be.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00It is an awesome platform, though, and I have been really happy with their focus on AI. I think the platform still needs a lot of things. I'm not out here saying it's perfect. Um, my wish list is as long as anybody else's that uses it, but I will say I enjoy the focus. I enjoy the fact that AI is on their radar and they are trying to build out this kind of next generation of tool for travel agents, which is amazing. Um, all right, so we've talked AI, we've talked basic, or we've talked turn, we've talked basics. Um, one of the things that I would like to kind of chat through is are you using it any other way? Like I met an agent the other day that I thought was really interesting, and she started talking about building out AI agents. So I've been thinking a lot about what that would look like. And one of the ones that she built out was a financial planner. So if you have paid subscriptions to any of these, we'll use Chat GPT as the example because it is the most well known. I think it's like 20 bucks a month, like it's not gonna break your bank. But you could create uh AI agents in Chat GPT, and essentially what they are is it's it's um you can save the prompts. So what she had done was she went into um the AI agent and she said, Look, I need you to act as my financial planner. Here are my goals for my travel agency at the end of the year. Work it out to what percentage I need to do and how many of this and how many of that, right? So she started kind of diving deep into the conversation. What's happening is the AI agent is saving all of this stuff. Okay, I know that Haley wants all of her trips to be$10,000 at a minimum. I know she wants to get 18% commission at a minimum, and I know that that needs to be this. But then what she does is as she starts a trip for a client, she says, okay, I'm starting a new trip. Their budget is this. Tell me what I need to think about commission-wise before I start breaking out the pieces of the trip so I can make sure that I'm planning the right trip for them, but also making sure I get the right commission on the back end. And then she just continues to ask it different questions about her financials. Um, and I just like that taking it a step further to have an AI agent just focused on that one piece of your business. Have you ever heard about anything like this or used it like this in any way, Haley?
SPEAKER_01I have not, and I love it because I think using it to your advantage like that puts things in perspective, right? Sometimes a lot of advisors are independent and they really don't have anyone to lean on. Use the AI tool. It's gonna sit here and tell you exactly what you need to book, how to book it. We use a, you know, goal sheet that we use often, right? Which you can absolutely take that and use AI to help you fill it in to understand what it is. But if you don't have somebody constantly keeping you accountable, have your AI do it, right? Have them say to you, yes, you need to make X amount of money to get to your goal at the end of the year. I love that.
SPEAKER_00So she had a couple others built out that I was just really enjoying it. So I want to dive into a few others. She had one built out that was her chaos expert. And for this one, she used the prompt of, I want you to act as a therapist. I have lots of fires within my business that happen every single day. I want to present the fires to you and I want you to tell me how to work through the chaos, but I want you to help me form responses in a calm manner and not allow me to get emotional about the responses. And I loved it for a few reasons. I loved it because she she basically responded. With like the feelings she wanted to have in the responses. But she also said, like, the idea is that you are a therapist in this situation. And I don't know about you, but I go day to day to day with a new fire every day. And I'm like, what when does this end? When is everything just a smooth, well-oiled machine? And it's just not the way that our business works at the end of the day. So I love the idea of having something to lean on where you're like, hey, this is a situation I'm dealing with. What would you do? And have it kind of come across uh with this more like expert therapist type advice. And then you could say, okay, help me craft a message to respond back to this client. A great example she used was that um she had presented a price to the client. This is so common. I'm sure we've all been there. You presented a price to the client, the client says, thumbs up, let's do it. You go to book, the price is now increased by$300, whatever it is. That sucks. That is the worst way to say it or the worst thing to happen, and there's no good way to say it. I loved the response it came back with because it was basically like explaining to the client, I am also frustrated in this situation. I wish this weren't the case, but this is what I'm faced with. Um, and again, I'm sure you've all come up with responses for that scenario because it is so common. But um, I just like the idea of having a chaos expert in my corner.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that exactly. Those are the reasons you use AI, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Okay, there was one more AI agent that was on her team that I thought was fun. It was a pre-departure expert. And the prompt for that one was basically, I want you to tell the client all the bad things that could happen on this trip and make sure they feel prepared. Um, and she went a little bit deeper into like, we're not just talking about safety um or like food safety, or we're not just talking about that, we're also talking about um pickles that that travelers have seen themselves in in the past, right? And it gave all these great examples, but basically after she set it up and and put the prompts in there initially, she would just go in there and type in Madagascar or type in France. And it would come back with, okay, here's the safety concerns that a traveler might experience in France. Here is monetary concerns they might experience. Um, here's any, you know, if this country has laws against letting certain people in for some reason, uh, coughing looking at you, Canada and your Pareto and your uh DUI situation. Um, but it's just here are all these things that could go wrong. And you don't want to just completely freak your client out, but you do want to prepare them. And it was a really quick, easy way to put it all together. And I just I thought that was a really good uh player in your corner as well. Awesome. Um, all right, so we've talked about AI agents, we've talked about turn, um, we've talked about AI taking our job. What about client special request? Have you ever used it for anything along these lines?
SPEAKER_01To an extent, um, for sure, but I definitely think touching down on clients and how they perceive AI. I don't know if you guys have ever had a client come to you who has done immense AI research and thinks they know it all. I think we've all been there and have faced it. Um, so I don't know. I I'll tell you right now, I've had some instances where I've been able to recheck my client and the fact that, hey, there's a reason you're using me and you're not using AI because it's not always accurate information. Um, so yeah, I think clients will always ask the question. I've had plenty of people on a consult say, How do you guys use AI? Right? I think it's normal. Um, but I don't shy away from it, right? I definitely just dive into it with, yeah, I'll use it if I need to for whatever reason on research. I mean, putting together trips for the most part, I'm gonna be honest, I don't really use AI. Do you use it, bird, when you're putting together a trip?
SPEAKER_00Only if it's a place I'm not familiar with. I mean, at this point, I know what I'm going after and I know what I'm looking for. But I would say if you're brand new to the industry, I wouldn't shy away from at least saying, give me a standard trip for these destinations in this time frame. Just so you can have a good understanding of what the basics are and then put it together yourself. I don't think there's any reason to rely on it for that sort of thing. That doesn't belittle your service to the client at the end of the day. You're still gonna have to work out all the logistics and which train are they taking and what times to transfer and actually putting in the credit card information and all the things. So your service is not always just I created this itinerary for you, right? That's only a piece of what you do.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Um, I definitely agree as far as that goes. Just use it like a perfect example is if you're researching hotels in Paris, right? Like it's hard when you're doing it on your own, you're coming up with two or three options, your clients five star, maybe you have no idea. Pop it into AI, have it say, okay, I'm comparing X, Y, and Z property. I need a side-by-side comparison, help me make a decision based off my clients and what they need, location. That is how I would definitely use it. But I agree, as you kind of, you know, you have your go-to's at some point, right? So yeah, it's definitely will help with that reassurance to make sure you're making the right decision for your clients.
SPEAKER_00I'll definitely go in and pick the hotels that fit the budget and the itinerary that I'm looking for. But one of my favorite things to do is you should always be presenting options to your client. Just psychologically, they're going to want to make some decisions. The point of using a travel agent is you don't make all of the decisions, but humans want to feel in control, even if they are literally giving up control. So you want to have some options for your clients, and a hotel is an easy one to have. When I have two options and I'm presenting to a client, nine times out of 10, I'll go to AI and say, give me a couple of talking points about this hotel, give me a couple of talking points about this hotel, um, bullet point them, make them short and sweet, and then I'll just easily be able when I'm doing my proposal to say, this is the highlight here and this is the highlight here. Um, I love making sure the differences are a bit stark so it's easier for the client to separate in their head. If you're like, this one has a rooftop pool and this one has a rooftop pool, you're not helping them differentiate in any way. So you could also say, these are the two hotels, tell me the differences so I can present them in a bullet point manner, something along those lines.
SPEAKER_01Agreed. And I feel like if you're not giving options, then they're gonna find a reason that's a reason for them to go down and start doing research on their own to figure out what other hotel would be a good option for them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a thousand percent. I have a client request that I loved that AI came through on me the other day. So I'm doing a pre-departure call and the clients were headed to Greece, and uh just randomly in the pre-departure call, she mentioned she was like, Yeah, my mom asked me to bring back some perfume from Greece. Is Greece known for their perfume? And I was like, not really. You know, it's not like the place to go to perfume or to get perfume. You're probably going to France for that. But um, I was like, yeah, that's a funny request. Normally it's olive oil or, you know, something along those lines. And she's like, Yeah, you know, who knows? And we continue the conversation. It was a very quick, um, off-the-wall comment. She probably never thought about it again. I went into AI after we got off the call and said, if I was gonna buy perfume in Athens, where would I, what are the best markets to go through? Then I said, if I were gonna buy perfume from Greece as a gift for my mother when I return home, what are the um signature scents that I might find in Greece? And I just kind of dug into a couple of questions. I threw it together in a quick email. I sent it over to her. The whole thing took three minutes, tops. And she came back with this like rave review. You didn't have to do that. It must have taken so much time. Oh, wait. I delayed sending the email by an hour. So it made it seem like I worked for a whole hour.
SPEAKER_01Great job.
SPEAKER_00And she just came back, yeah, with this very long paragraph about how grateful she was that she had come across me and how I'm really always going above and beyond for her. Hopefully she doesn't listen to this podcast. Um, but it was just a really nice uh icing on the cake moment that was so unnecessary, but AI made it so easy to go above and beyond. Why would I not? That was kind of what came in my head.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that. Or what about when clients are using AI and you're not? Um I mean, I've had, I just this was a very recent situation for me in my client. The text that I got was Haley, thank you so much. Chat GBT let me down in my research. Um, and it was pretty straightforward. She had a request, she wanted to do an inside tour, Balmore Castle in Scotland this summer. Um, she has kids under the age of 16, and she she was dead set in this tour because Chat GPT told her it would be an amazing tour. Once we got in to start fine-tuning the details, I had to break it to where that Balmore Castle won't let kids under 16 into on the inside tour, right? Um, Royal Family, all that, whatever. And yeah, it she had no idea. So somebody, you know, building out a trip on their own and booking on their own, these are the problems that they're gonna run into where they count on you as a travel advisor to really come through and you know, set expectations real. And this is this is what's going on. So I don't know. It's Chachapiti's great, but again, unless you know how to ask those in-depth questions and include the fact that I have a kid's underage, then it's not gonna give you the correct information as well.
SPEAKER_00It's all about what you put into it. That's a great point to make. I will say one of my last thoughts on utilizing it and leveraging it in the right way. Yes, put in the ages, especially if there's kids involved, because it does make such a difference. But I love the idea, and I think where where you and I really shine in itinerary creation is that polishing. So my clients are never gonna drive from one area to the next without me giving them suggested stops along the way. They're going to understand the cost of gas to expect any um any surprises on driving from here to there. What should I know when I drive for the first time in X, Y, and Z? I love using AI for that. Um, I will basically say clients driving from here to here, name three suggested or just name a couple of suggested stops that they may want to do, include they're very interested in shopping and they want to explore a couple of local pubs. Great. It's gonna shoot out everything from me there. Um, the one thing I will say is if you have restaurants, pubs, something that honestly changes often. Um, I would take the time to make sure quickly Googling those restaurants, especially, they open and close night and day all the time. They change management.
SPEAKER_01So if I'm gonna vacations, that's a big thing in Europe, right? In August. Yeah, the whole restaurant shut down for the whole month. Not like I'm talking about experience or anything, but exactly.
SPEAKER_00Um, my husband and I actually planned our entire honeymoon around this Michelin star restaurant we wanted to experience. We bought plane tickets and we did not realize the restaurant was shut down for the entire month of August, and I was heartbroken. Um it was still a great time. Um, but yeah, I I would use AI and lean on it for the polishing aspect of it. So even if it's just like general free times or they say they're really into shopping, what are the biggest shopping districts in whatever? And you're just giving them the extra about them. Hey, this person's really into reading. Is there any kind of literary attractions that I should suggest to this person? So what I don't do is put it in the proposal. I wait until after they've booked with me, they've seen all the things, and then I just fluff it up. I fluff the hell out of that thing. And the idea is just you want them to be like, wow, she heard me. She heard me in a really meaningful way. And now I've got all this other stuff to read on the plane or do whatever.
SPEAKER_01I think an important note on that too is as you're building these out and you're focusing on one city like Paris, all the shopping districts, save it to the library of whatever workflow system that you use so you can just pull it out for the next cut and add it into the next trip and you already have it breath out. Um, obviously that takes time with so many cities, but you want to start somewhere.
SPEAKER_00I love it. Um, cost for cabs. So it was the last fluff that I'll use that I'll throw in there. If the client has refused the private transfer because they don't want to pay for it, I will still always put in there a note about this is what the cab should cost. Make sure you confirm the cost prior to getting into it, right? Because we know the second we step into a cab with that beautiful American accent, they the price doubles every time. So I think making sure my clients just feel armed. I want them to feel armed and protected and ready for the things. And I don't think enough of us are using AI to do that. Um, because I wouldn't say that I take any time any significant time to really do these things. It is a matter of minutes to fluff things up for me at this point.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. All right. So if you guys aren't taking it that step and beyond using AI assist in your workflow programs and pulling out that confirmation stuff immediately, if you're not using it for quick proposal creation, that sort of thing. Um, I hope you're diving deeper. And I think we'll continue to do deeper and deeper conversations on this as the systems evolve, which will be really fun to watch over the next couple years. Um, Haley, did we miss anything?
SPEAKER_01No, I think that's a great start. I'm sure as time evolves, we'll be talking more about AI and how we can utilize it to streamline our business.
SPEAKER_00I love it. All right, guys, we hope you all have a great week and we can't wait to talk to y'all next week.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.