Remember travel agents, where we’d speak to an expert, explore options and book a trip? Not so long ago every community had several. They were part of the travelling experience, and the best ones made the complex and mysterious world of flights, transfers, places to stay and things to do, easy and exciting.

Yet travel retail was one of the main high street propositions ripe for digital disruption. We became our own agents overnight, and today’s remaining physical versions are surely an endangered species. With AI now able to deliver hyper-personalised trips in seconds, source flights and dinner spots, all for free, it seems unimaginable that anyone would need let alone want to visit a travel agent. Right?

Well, perhaps not. Now that we’ve lived the reality of being or own agents, for many the online admin can be a time-consuming, dispiriting and stressful chore; and any excitement and inspiration can be easily snuffed out by whether we’ve pre-booked our extra bag, included breakfast at the hotel or pre-paid the collision damage waiver.

We see a chance for hospitality, airline and leisure brands to reinvent the role of physical retail - bringing together the convenience, pace and depth of AI with the judgement and life experience of a human agent, and state of the art media technology. This could create exciting pre-travel experiences like never before: Personal and digital, multi-sensory experiences that are inspiring, seamlessly efficient and highly shareable.

It's a moment of opportunity that no travel industry brand has fully grasped yet. Here’s how they do it.

People trust people

Travel is about more than transactions. A trip, whether it’s a last minute minibreak or a round the world cruise, is a significant investment of money and time. Unless it’s the low-cost end of the market, travel experience matters to people, and so they want to buy from a brand they trust.

Technology alone cannot deliver that trust. A recent McKinsey report has revealed that whilst more than 90% of customers have some level of confidence in using AI to brainstorm their plans, very few people – only 2% - are willing to let an AI tool fully ‘take the wheel’, making bookings without any human oversight. Even Google’s CEO, Sundar Pinchai, in a November interview with the BBC urged users to never fully trust AIs. It’s imperative we crosscheck it with our own research, he warned.

While visual identity and brand comms can build trust, ultimately many customers for a slightly ambitious or complex itinerary, still want to sit with an expert, be inspired, and feel reassured that their money and memories are safe. Again, you can train customer service agents to do this, but a far quicker and deeper way to build trust is to create spaces where agents can physically be with a customer. This means exciting, advice-led spaces that people enjoy visiting and spending time in.

People Inspired Spaces

This is not a plea for a return to the 1980s model of drab, functional spaces filled with bored travel agents handing out brochures. We can do far better than that.

Our QSR and hotel clients like KFC, Center Hotels and SIDES ask us to design experiences that engage, inspire and stimulate. We gain an in-depth understanding of their customers, their expectations and frustrations, and then we devise structured and sequenced customer journeys as frameworks for ideas that are relevant, easy, distinctive and fun. This drives visitor numbers, increases sales volumes, and delivers real brand benefits.

What if we did the same for hospitality brands at the booking stage of the customer journey?

Just consider what hospitality brands could do with their retail spaces. Look at how Apple attracts communities of customers not just with its Genius Bar and the experts who populate it, but also with its regular seminars and event programmes. Imagine a TripAdvisor space in Bluewater or Trivago at Glastonbury.

A new role for technology

But that’s just the beginning. To date travel brands have used technology to – in promise at least - make the buying process simpler, more convenient, and cheaper. As anyone who has tried to change a flight bought online can testify, not only has it gone the other way; it’s also in many ways made it soulless and infuriating.

What if we used technology to deliver a premium travel booking experience? What if you visited a space that felt like a members’ club and talked to an agent who had all the information at their AI-powered fingertips, but who also understood the nuances of what you needed and got as excited by your trip as you did?

Then what if it went even further? What if the space used AR and VR technology to enhance your conversation with an inspiring expert to help you see exactly what you were considering booking. The view from your hotel room window, the layout of your cruise cabin, a glimpse into how much better the upgrade would be?

Delivered in the right way, it is entirely possible that people would pay more for that sort of premium experience. Furthermore, think of the brand and buzz building potential: the right experience would be shared on social media, reaching vast new audiences. What could that do to transform the audience demographic of a legacy travel brand?

A new vision for the high street

Hospitality and travel is not the only sector where this thinking applies. Across the world, the focus of city centre retail is shifting from weekly necessities to high stakes purchases requiring in-depth consultation with informed experts. It’s opening up opportunities for lawyers, estate agents, health providers, and a host of other professionals.

The travel and hospitality sector – of all people, might understand that life is not about the destination, but the journey; the customer journey. Let’s make it special again.

About I-AM Associates

I-AM create People Inspired Experiences. More than simply "understanding the target audience" all our creative work is driven by real customer insight. We have an in-house insights/trends capability that is central to the way we work. It ensures that we never lose sight of the customer's wants and needs, right through the process, not just at the start of a project. We're fascinated by people – how they think, act, react and buy - we believe that our "People Inspired" approach can help us design brand experiences that resonate with consumers on an more emotive level.