Luxury travel boss warns AI misuse would be ‘outrage to luxury’

Masri’s stance on chatbots remains firm, but she is by no means against the use of AI, adding she has long embraced technology as a tool to improve Little Emperors’ 60 advisors’ relationships with clients by alleviating their workload.

“Our AI has taken away a lot of the heavy lifting that our MyLERs do,” she explained. “They no longer have to grapple with the admin of archaic systems, the fragmented pieces of technology, the GDS [global distribution system].” 

Masri added that AI has been especially beneficial for quoting trips, a task which could previously have taken its MyLERs hours to complete. 

“People are not stupid. They’re going to know they’re speaking to a bot”

“We now can give quotes in three seconds, and it will have everything from accurate, room-specific images to floor plans,” she said. “The quote will also include the advisor’s own logo if they have one.”

Another AI tool used by Little Emperors is a “rate scraper”, which can scrape the web to provide the best hotel rate for the client as well as the highest commission for the agent. 

Having seen the power of this digital extractor, the company is now in the process of building “prompt automators” that scan hotel websites for updates and automatically upload them to its own website.

Marsi says these automators will eliminate “human error” that can often occur during the research stage, giving advisors more time and energy to focus instead on learning about new products and their clients. 

“This technology empowers them,” she said. “The only concern I have right now around AI is whether another company is doing it better than us!”