Luxury Travel Advisors Aim to Put the Person Back in Personalization

Travel advisors — formerly known as luxury travel agents — have a strong future ahead, despite the rise of artificial intelligence and other automation, according to the leaders of two leisure travel agencies that specialize in serving elite clients. 'The transactional elements are going to be phased out and done more efficiently by software," said Jack Ezon, founder and managing partner of Embark, speaking at Skift Global Forum on Thursday in New York City. "But travel advisors who can create value are thriving. Our mantra is to transcend the transaction." "[Agents] who were like human vending machines have gone away, and the ones that focused on providing value have thrived," said Matthew Upchurch, chairman and CEO of Virtuoso — and who has perhaps done more than anyone to popularize the adoption of the term "travel advisors." Upchurch bet long ago on the potential of the sector. "I never got the notion why the baby boomer generation that invented the personal chef, the personal trainer, and so on — it never made sense to me that they'd want do-it-yourself for luxury travel," he said. The first baby boomer didn't turn 60 until the early 2000s, and Virtuoso has emphasized attempting to "super-serve" the elite segment of this sector. "If you look at the online revolution in financial services, we've had the greatest growth in independent wealth management services but they're not well known because they're not mass market consumer brands," said Upchurch. "The same metaphor applies to luxury travel advisors." That's why Upchurch believes travel advisors are "the hottest new thing that never went away." He predicted that "artificial intelligence will be the greatest thing to happen to our profession." Travel advisors have to embrace technology, not ignore it. Being able to automate the routine parts of service is key, but being able to triage messaging in the way customers prefer — such as text messaging or WhatsApp — is equally important. Attracting the best talent is critical for agencies, said Ezon in an on-stage conversation with Rafat Ali, founder and CEO of Skift. That's why Ezon's firm is sunsetting the Ovation Vacations brand to launch a new concept in the luxury travel and lifestyle space called Embark. Instead of building an independent contractor model as is typical, Embark aims to build a partnership model where forward-thinking travel advisors can become partners in the firm. Ezon has a storied backgroun