Sabre Corporation has launched a new interface for travel advisors called Sabre Red Launchpad, which features new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools that the software and technology company says will help increase advisors’ efficiency and profitability.
“We were really targeting agent productivity,” said Sundar Narasimham, Sabre’s senior vice president of labs, technology and platform. “How can they use their time more effectively in order to engage their customers in conversations, and help them quickly determine, essentially, which type of travel they need to take?”
AI Forecasts Flight Delays
Narasimham noted that the Sabre Red Launchpad interface — which was officially launched Nov. 13 — includes an AI-powered tool the company calls Schedule Change Predictor, providing advisors with the probability that a flight will be delayed or cancelled.
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Making use of more than 20 years of flight data, Narasimham said Schedule Change Predictor can now tell advisors with “nearly 90% accuracy” whether a particular flight will take off on time.
“When this project began, I was actually skeptical whether this AI would do a good job,” Narasimham recalled. “I said, ‘Wait, you’re going to predict exactly which flight is going to get cancelled? I don’t think that’s going to work.’”
Narasimham added that the Schedule Change Predictor can also make use of client information — such as which airlines they prefer, or if they travel routinely for business — to rank different flights based on what the AI-powered tool sees as the “probability of conversion,” or which flight options the traveler will likely find most appealing.
“That information is very key, because not only does the traveler benefit, but we can also highlight that if you sell this flight, it will be the one that you make the most money on because of commissions, because of overrides, because of — essentially — the commercial relationship that your agency … might have with the supplier or with the GDS,” Narasimham explained. “By highlighting, reordering and suggesting alternative presentations of the result set, we can actually influence what gets sold and in a way that benefits the advisor.”
I think of AI as sort of the next generation of such tool sets that will end up making the really smart agents become super productive.
AI-Powered Email Solutions
The new Sabre Red Launchpad interface also features an AI-powered tool designed to help advisors more efficiently book hotels for clients, and he said the company is working on an AI product that will help them to more productively navigate their email inbox.
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“We noticed that some of our larger travel agencies and customers were getting literally millions of emails per year, and they were hiring people predominantly to read through the email and then figure out what the email was asking for,” Narasimham said. “By using AI to analyze the email and then essentially interact with Sabre systems behind the scenes on your behalf, the travel advisor doesn’t even see the email, [and] the AI agent reads through the email and figures out what to say.”
The new AI email technology can query the Sabre system to find flight and hotel options as needed to respond to queries within various emails and then provide a number of options in a reply it composes.
“Then, the agent can review the [AI-composed] email and forward it along,” Narasimham said. “Or it can be automated so that even without the advisor being engaged, [the AI] can engage in that dialogue, thereby freeing up the travel advisor’s time to really concentrate on their true value-adds.”
Credit: 2024 Sabre
AI Is an Enhancement, Not a Replacement
Narasimham was, meanwhile, quick to acknowledge some of the concerns he’s heard from the advisor community about artificial intelligence being a potential threat to their livelihoods. He offered an analogy to help clarify his thoughts about the enduring value of a human touch, mentioning how computers are used today to do work advisors once did with paper, pens and landline telephones.
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“I think of AI as sort of the next generation of such tool sets that will end up making the really smart agents become super productive,” he explained, saying AI technology can help advisors to quickly understand vast quantities of relevant data.
“Travel advisors who are really valued today are the ones who’ve actually been there, right? ‘I’ve been to all the Disney hotels. I know that if I book you here, you will have a fabulous experience,’” Nrasimham continued. “But imagine if AI can understand you and enhance your capability to be so much more omnipotent and omni-powerful. I think that advisor will be viewed in a much different way by their existing customers. I tend to think of [AI] more as an enhancer to the people who exist, so they can essentially do far more with less.”
