Are Aussie agents ready to catch the AI wave or do they risk getting left behind

As the use of AI and tech surges elsewhere, the travel trade, and travel advisors in particular, have instead used a cautious approach, unwilling to risk well-deserved reputations to any potential damage. But as once-siloed travel systems increasingly start talking to each other, making end-to-end bookings at the touch of a keypad, is it time to reconsider? Travel Weekly Editor Grant Jones caught up with former managing director of Tourism Australia, now NEXUS board advisor Andrew McEvoy to discuss.

The word seamless is thrown around a lot in the travel trade, and AI hasn’t escaped a catch-all phrase that doesn’t necessarily ring true for the end user. While the use of technology is surging in many other industry sectors, those in the travel trade have been resistant to utilising tech at its best fearing any mishap – data leak, server crash, stranded client, etc.

Nexus DMC, is one such global travel technology company, founded by Vinay Gupta, that hopes to change that by streamlining the travel industry booking systems, leveraging technology to enhance agent efficiency, and saving them literally hours for any single booking.

Andrew McEvoy — a well-seasoned travel trade executive who has held roles at Melbourne Convention Bureau, Tourism Victoria, the South Australian Tourism Commission — says that while others have tried it before, the dawn is finally breaking on a truly seamless travel booking system.

“(Gupta) sort of figured that if the travel industry is two things, one, it’s probably still fragmented or broken, but two, it’s still rather analogue,” says McEvoy. “Agents and customers still have these great conversations that are slow and a lot of times, it’ll take an agent 24-48 hours, or even a week to get an itinerary back to a customer.”

While it is not alone in the market, the Nexus DMC system supports real-time updates, offers 24/7 global support, offers flexible currency options, enhancing agent productivity and customer experience. The platform now has over 140,000 agents globally, including significant adoption in Australia. It also offers best available rates when it calculates an itin.

“He really rates agents, trusted advisors, who are helping a customer take the risk,” McEvoy says of Gupta. “So he said, ‘We don’t want to get them out of the picture’, that is important, because they’ve got local knowledge and all that. But he said, ‘Let’s give them a better platform… that allows them to produce itineraries in minutes, not days’.”

One major convert, so far, is Kirk Demeter from Travel Answers Group, one of the biggest wholesale sellers of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific to US travellers, who has partnered up with Nexus DMC to deliver a lot of high end American pax to our shores.

“There’s a whole lot of difficulty in making a system actually integrate with live inventory, last room, availability, multiple different products and all that,” says Demeter who was in the country for the Australian Travel Exchange (ATE25) at Brisbane Convention Centre last week. “(Travel agents) they want to make sure that they can get faith and trust in what’s going on.

“This gives it to you in real time, and we’re not … telling the travel agents to get on our system and use our system.

“We have the system that we use that is really user friendly to us and makes it easy for us to convert and show them, you know, great look at quotations, great look at documents. But they can go in and do it themselves if they want.”

Now it’s Australia’s turn

The expansion into the Pacific region comes following a US$50 million investment into parent company, ORN Ventures, and will see the creation of new jobs in the Australian market.

Nexus has created a Melbourne-based DMC for outbound travellers in a format that can be white-labelled to suit an individual agent or a franchise. Nexus doesn’t charge the agent anything to use it, but charges the supplier a small fee. On the customer side, they are supported by an app with the ability to change transfers, accommodation and flights, among other things.

Both the advisor and customer are supported by 36 offices across five continents, by people and a platform that allows agents to build itineraries in minutes, supported by machine learning and AI.

“We want them to use the platform,” says McEvoy. “The way it works is that we take a small commission on sales, basically but the agent can brand it their own name.”

While the demonstration we received from Sahil Nijhawan, CEO/Director AU & NZ at Nexus DMC, was impressive, we are not at the coalface. But Demeter has pushed the brand to its limits and even this veteran of 30 years is surprised.

“We’re not gonna be able to say every single product in the world, you’re gonna be able to do immediately, but you can do extremely complicated itineraries,” he says.

“I told him I was gonna mess it up. You watch this. It’s not gonna handle this booking,” he bragged when given a demo. “Not gonna work. It worked!”

Demeter says agents will be able to do no less than 30 per cent more bookings for the same amount of time, and such the system will remove aspects of the workflow that reservation agents and travel advisors hate.

“(Travel agents) do it because they love booking travel. They love travelling, learning more, selling, but ask how much they like doing insurance, processing, QuickBooks to reconcile their accounts … they hate it.”

While local advisors might take a bit more convincing, US sellers connected with Travel Answers Group have taken to it like a cruise passenger at happy hour.

“I think we have enough goodwill and trust built up that they know what we’re doing, and I think all we’re going to do is make their lives with us better,” says Demeter.

“We’ve made we’ve given them better tools and made things quicker.”