LAS VEGAS — Virtuoso Travel Week, an event that takes place in Las Vegas every August and boasts 4,700 attendees, is all about human connection. From one-on-one meetings between advisors and suppliers to a hotel showcase showcasing this year's hottest hotels, the week is full of networking possibilities.
While the face-to-face interaction between attendees is a highlight of Virtuoso Travel Week, the role that technology plays in the travel agency sector is also important and continues to evolve.
As Virtuoso Chairman and CEO Matthew Upchurch often puts it, the role of technology is to help advisors “automate the predictable and humanize the exceptional.”
During a media briefing, Upchurch explained Virtuoso's strategy for providing technology to its member agencies: “It's a combination of in-house technology development and reliance on external vendors.”
“Our technology vision is that it's totally unrealistic for Virtuoso to create a single workflow, especially because of the way it's built,” Upchurch said. “That's never going to happen.”
So Consortium is focused on meeting members where they are. As an example, Upchurch pointed to Virtuoso's digital experience for members. The Consortium recently redesigned its member-facing homepage. According to Helen McCabe-Young, senior vice president of marketing, the site is optimized for mobile and has improved search capabilities in response to member requests.
It's a solid digital home for members, but many agencies are building their own platforms, Upchurch said. For those agencies, Virtuoso is focused on integrating their systems and providing the data and content they need.
For some technology needs, Virtuoso is partnering with third-party providers, which Upchurch says “are actually hoping to create competition.”
For example, when digital itinerary apps for advisors emerged about a decade ago, some agent networks opted to choose one provider. But Virtuoso “picked three tools and gave our members the choice,” Upchurch says.
“I have a very clear philosophy that if you give someone a choice, their only focus is on why they can't do it, why they can't do it,” he said. “When you give people a choice, they take the time to cognitively consider the difference, and they're more likely to think positively about it and use it differently.”
These travel management programs — Axus (owned by Travel Weekly's parent company Northstar Travel Group), Travefy and Umapped — were part of Virtuoso's incubator program, which paired startups with Virtuoso members for testing. The incubator was the precursor to today's Travel Tech Summit, which took place on Aug. 10 during Virtuoso Travel Week.
There were high-level discussions on technology, an agency owner panel on data and AI, and a startup showcase featuring 15 startups operating in the travel tech space.
One of the topics covered was a seemingly ubiquitous technology called generative AI.
Upchurch encouraged travel advisors to start using generative AI tools now: One potential use case he suggested is using the tool to summarize itineraries or any kind of document that's rich in detail.
Upchurch says many of the platforms Virtuoso uses already have AI built into them, but he also sees AI's potential for the future.
“I have no shortage of projects,” he says. “One of the things I want to do is basically use AI to build the collective intelligence of a global network.”
