The amplified travel agent

Eric Kam, Travelport’s Commercial Director for APAC, explains why AI doesn’t replace travel agents. It enhances their speed, range, and confidence.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: AI does not, and should not, replace travel agents. On the front-line, AI is a productivity amplifier, and it’s already happening. The Greater China market shows strong adoption, with 82% of travel agents using AI, alongside rising consumer demand for more personalized, experience-led travel.

AI isn’t the future, it’s here and now. Most Chinese travel agents already use AI tools, while the ITB China Travel Trends Report 2025/26 shows more than half of travel buyers in China use AI for recommendations and customer service. This willingness to embrace AI combined with changing consumer behaviours shows what we can expect globally.

Getting the fundamentals right

As we’ve heard earlier in this blog series, the right platform will ultimately decide who wins in an AI-enabled travel industry. AI can’t work without infrastructure optimized for it, and the Travelport+ platform was rebuilt from the ground up to be AI-ready. Re-platforming legacy systems isn’t enough—you need modern, cloud-native architecture designed for AI-driven volumes. Our AWS partnership and use of Amazon Bedrock deliver enterprise-grade AI capability, so our customers don’t need to build it themselves.

Our approach towards building infrastructure has been responsible, and grounded in proven foundations—solving real-world challenges, not chasing headlines. We’re continuing to make significant investments in developing AI capabilities, which includes making our TripServices platform AI-ready. Fragmented add-ons are not the solution.

How AI amplifies agents

With the right foundations, we can embrace the AI opportunity: the amplified agent. Beyond automating low-risk operational processes, AI improves agents’ reach, speed, accuracy and productivity. So how is Travelport equipping agents to leverage AI to enhance workflows, decision-making, and confidence?

Agents need tools to manage the increasing complexity and volumes of the markets they support, and this is particularly true in China and Asia-Pacific. Travelport’s Content Curation Layer already helps agents to cut through overwhelming content, to filter and prioritize the right options faster. Proprietary machine learning algorithms accelerate searches and enable route optimization. Unlike some providers, Travelport’s solution is a proven, in-production capability.

CCL surfaces options agents might not discover manually, especially with the explosion in today’s travel content, presenting alternatives that save time and costs. Handling complex, multi-stop itineraries—common in this region—is another key advantage. TripServices is our intelligent API orchestration platform that enables travel agents and sellers to consume this proven technology and turn it into unique, connected travel experiences.

The AI advantage: speed, scale, differentiation

Speed is critical; travelers now expect Amazon-style retail experiences, and AI enables instant responses to client enquiries. Scale matters, too. Agents can handle more clients and more enquiries without sacrificing quality, as AI handles research and comparison. It’s also a market differentiator: agents who master AI tools can offer insights and options that competitors may miss. And the commercial opportunity is huge, with significant growth potential. In this region, for example, just 10% of China’s population holds a passport, around 140 million people out of 1.4 billion.

The human advantage: empathy, context, relationships

In an AI-enabled world, key human skills remain irreplaceable.

• Empathy: understanding a client’s unstated needs, reading emotional cues, and providing reassurance during disruption.
• Contextual judgment: knowing when a client says ‘budget-friendly’ they could mean ‘value-conscious but willing to splurge on experiences that matter’.
• Relationship building: the trust built when an agent remembers client preferences over time.
• And crisis management: human creativity, resourcefulness and judgement to solve problems when things go wrong.

In this region and elsewhere, cultural sensitivity and understanding local nuances are essential skills, areas where AI still falls short.

AI is the future of travel. So are people.

The next-generation agent will be AI-native, empowered, and fully customer-focused, supported by non-deterministic data APIs (we’re developing one now) to give them even richer information. This will be particularly valuable in China as travelers increasingly want unique, experience-driven journeys: nearly 30% now aim to avoid crowds and want an in-depth exploration of single destinations. AI via the Travelport+ platform will enable agents to adapt instantly and match evolving preferences with personalized options the traveler may not have previously considered.

The combination of AI-powered analytics and human expertise creates a service level that neither can achieve alone. AI is the tool; the agent is the expert who wields it. The businesses and agents who succeed will use AI to handle the routine while focusing on what people do best: relationships and complex problem-solving.

A necessary caveat: AI literacy will be essential. Agents must understand how to prompt effectively, interpret outputs, and validate results. Most importantly, agents will need to sharpen their consultative and advisory skills. As AI handles more transactional work, their role shifts towards higher-value advisory services: understanding client needs, providing strategic recommendations, managing tricky situations.

AI excels at processing vast amounts of data, handling routine tasks, and providing quick comparisons. But travel is deeply personal and often highly complex. When it matters most—a family planning a multi-generational trip or a business traveler stranded overnight—people still want human understanding, empathy, and judgment.

This is the fourth in a blog series exploring how AI is transforming travel. The fifth and final blog explains how future AI-native travel businesses will be built around intelligent tools, automation, and reliable infrastructure—but also entirely recognizable.