Smith, a member of the current TTG 300 Under 30 cohort, has spent the past eight months leading AI change and transformation across the business, which includes the development of TC Copilot – an internally-built AI assistant launched last year designed specifically for Travel Counsellors, including his mum, who happens to be a Gold TC.

Speaking to TTG, Smith says the technology was being developed around the needs of the company's agent network, with the aim of helping them get from the initial inspiration stage of a holiday enquiry through to a quote more quickly.

"AI is there to enhance you as a human," he says. "It's not there to replace you. It’s there to turn you into the best version of you."

Travel Counsellors hopes launch of AI tool will support international expansion plans

TC Copilot integrates directly into Travel Counsellors' Phenix platform and has access to information about clients, individual businesses, accommodation and flights.

The system is designed to bring that information together when an advisor is starting to explore options for a client, helping them narrow down choices and pull together relevant information.

The result, Smith says, should be a faster process without removing the "crucial" client-agent relationship from the equation. "We're not looking for agents to produce 10 times the number of bookings," he says. "We want what they're producing to be even higher quality bookings."

'I can't imagine any travel roles that won't use AI'

The project forms part of a wider AI programme Smith has been leading since joining Travel Counsellors in January, working with directors and the executive team to establish how AI should be used across the business. The result, so far, has been "enterprise-grade" AI tools with an emphasis on security and giving employees "room to experiment".

"We're trying to give people the ability to be naturally curious with the technology," Smith says. "They get their hands on it, play around with it, experience what works, experience what doesn’t work, fail fast, learn fast."

He believes the deployment and impact of AI in travel will grow "exponentially" in the immediate future. "I can’t imagine any roles at all in the next five years that won't use AI in some form," he says. "Many roles will likely hold the exact same title, but what actually goes on under the hood will end up being fundamentally different."

'My mum's a Gold Travel Counsellor'

Smith began working with AI in 2020 while employed in sales, experimenting with early language models and looking at how the technology could be applied to sales.

He subsequently founded a personalised email-generation startup before launching Neural River, an AI incubator that raised £250,000 to recruit graduates with masters degrees in AI and machine learning to develop startup ideas.

Neural Voice, an AI voice company, followed – a piece of technology designed to hold conversations over the telephone with low latency.

His move into travel came through connections made while running Neural Voice, although his mother, Katrina Smith, has been a Travel Counsellor for more than a decade and is now a Gold TC.

Jeremy Smith

That background meant the industry was familiar to him long before he entered his current role, with the move to Travel Counsellors – a larger, private equity-backed business – also giving him the chance to work alongside colleagues with impressive credentials.

"I've been remote for three or four years," Smith says. "So being able to sit in a room and bounce ideas off some very smart people, who are the best in the industry, has really helped me improve my skill set."

Smith has ambitions beyond AI, too. His aim is to become the chief of a travel business within five years, although ideally one – like Travel Counsellors – with a "big tech focus", he says. Before that, he sees P&L ownership and experience of managing a board as "important gaps" to address.

For now, though, his focus is on putting AI to work inside Travel Counsellors and making sure its agents get the most from the technology.