Artificial intelligence and its impact on the travel industry was never far from the minds of those attending the Flight Centre annual meeting in Brisbane this week.
Flight Centre’s management warned AI will impact both travel consumers and investors, although the company’s chief executive Graham Turner emphasised the benefits of the technology.
“AI has the potential to transform our industry, and we are embracing it,” he told the annual meeting. “We’re embedding AI into customer service and operations, delivering measurable benefits for our customers and success teams.”
Flight Centre said it has saved 64,000 hours in employee time by using AI to intelligently handle customers’ travel queries at the same time as improving the booking experience.
One analyst told the meeting that Flight Centre would gain more than it would lose from AI.
He said the major disruption to travel with the internet had already occurred, and people still saw value in human travel agents “otherwise they’d only use the internet now”.
Despite a 9.8% profit slide in the last financial year, Turner said, “Our fundamentals remain strong – arguably stronger than ever – and we expect to return to profit growth this year.”