The Good Travel Agent to launch AI head office support tool in January

The Good Travel Agent plans to launch an AI tool in the New Year to help members grow their business and head office to “offer more personalised support”.

Chief executive Jake Cullum-Hollins told Travel Weekly the chatbot is designed to be “quick and responsive” to popular questions such as the best suppliers for specific destinations, with the aim to develop it throughout the year to make it “more advanced as it learns”.

He said the tool is based on “expert advice rather than Google searches” with one member of the team in charge of collating information about suppliers to create “a suitable knowledge base”.

“Each supplier has pages of detail that we have created based on the destinations and products they sell, the commission levels they provide for us and the contact details for each of the people in that company which feeds into the AI, so responses are based on that,” he said.

Feedback from customer surveys on recommendations from their holidays and responses from agents in WhatsApp groups with head office will also be used to form responses.

The aim of the tool is to “free up humans to be more strategic with support”, which means it is “not just an AI plug-in”.

“If the AI does not have the answer to a question, it is not going to use default responses,” Cullum-Hollins said. “It will add a head office member of staff to the chat to be able to answer with an effective responsive, rather than what is called ‘hallucinations in AI’ which pulls information from Google.”

He said the agency’s priority looking ahead was to enhance member support, with “further plans” in the New Year to recruit more head office roles after taking on an agent support manager and an admin assistant to support the business development manager this year.

Cullum-Hollins revealed the agency business had tripled in November compared to the previous year and was 37% up month on month compared to October.

He attributed the high sales during the month to the majority of families booking for 2026 to “lock in prices” before the Budget came in on November 27, alongside an increase in ski sales for the early season, and touring and adventure bookings.