Introduction

A quiet year, but with inflection points

For a year with no crises impacting travel worldwide — the pandemic has abated, inflation appears tamed, the dreaded recession never took hold and “normalization” became a buzzword — I think 2024 will be recalled for several industry-changing inflection points.

AI

Less than two years after ChatGPT’s debut, a third of travel advisors say they have used AI to assist marketing or website content creation. Given AI’s capabilities, this may not seem like a lot, but it’s a relatively healthy adoption rate; as a reference point, in 2004, only 10% of Vacation.com’s members had a booking engine on their sites, 11 years after the web had become publicly available.

What is most directly indicative of AI’s future utility as an advisor tool is that this year’s Travel Industry Survey indicates that 58% of advisors age 45 or younger have already used it in their businesses. It’s likely that if millennial and Gen Z travel professionals are using it, consumers in that age cohort (and a coming generation of AI natives) will embrace it. Generating custom itineraries is the second most-used function among advisors; one can assume that DIY consumers are also testing it for that purpose.

It’s good to remember that early nervousness about the web’s existential threat to advisors not only proved unfounded, but OTAs arguably ushered in the era of strong professional expertise among advisors, in part to differentiate themselves from online retailers. I suspect that the answers to requests by consumers for AI itinerary planning may include an AI recommendation to use a travel advisor to review and book complex trips. If so, advisors will want to burnish online credentials in anticipation of the next question: “ChatGPT, how can I find a travel advisor with the expertise to assist me with this trip?”

LUXURY

Almost three-quarters of advisors in the survey claim “high-end luxury” as an area of specialization, an increase of 8 percentage points over last year. 

While the expansion of luxury products has been a commission boon to advisors, I do have concerns in areas of travel where purchased privileges and mass-market travel visibly overlap, particularly in theme parks.

Across-the-board rising travel costs have already strained the ability of the middle class to enjoy an Orlando vacation. And it’s further disheartening to stand in line with impatient children under the Florida sun while those who can afford to are enabled by management to cut the line.

I remember a Disney executive once proudly telling me that its free FastPass, introduced 25 years ago, reflected the company’s egalitarian approach versus Universal’s pay-for-play Express Pass. Disney now has another level of for-pay line-cutting passes. It’s not good for the industry (nor humanity, in my opinion) to so clearly facilitate distinction between the have-nots, haves and have-mores.

NDC

NDC access has almost doubled since the previous year’s survey, and while 54% of advisors still have a negative view of it, there has been less uncertainty about its potential to do harm, thanks to American Airline’s disastrous, anti-advisor rollout earlier this year. Not only did the airline ultimately have to broadcast mea culpas far and wide, but the rest of commercial aviation took note of how not to deploy NDC. 

In my mind, there’s little question that, even in its most advisor-friendly forms, NDC tilts distribution in favor of direct bookings. Unless, that is, advisors take note of how they, too, can effectively increase sales through targeted, customized marketing. While an airline’s data sets and computing power are on its side, the essentials of what NDC does — tailor offers based on observed traveler preferences — can be used with a much more personal touch by advisors.

Arnie Weissmann
Executive Vice President and Editor in Chief, Travel Weekly