Experts urge agents to embrace AI but warn against losing human touch

Industry experts urged delegates at Aspire’s Leaders of Luxury conference to harness the power of artificial intelligence but cautioned that human connection must remain central. 

Rebecca Masri, founder of private members’ club and hotel booking app Little Emperors, said AI should be used to handle “efficiency, logistics and instant personalisation” while humans should focus on “connection, emotion and experiences”.

Masri shared how Little Emperors is enhancing its independent travel consultant platform, MyLER, with AI-driven tools to boost advisor productivity. Features include automated quote generation – which Masri claimed delivers results in just three seconds – and access to curated content galleries. 

She said: “The way we engage travellers has shifted as content starts to play [an increasingly] critical role in converting interest into bookings. It bridges the gap between inspiration and action. Guests want immersive storytelling, engaging imagery and clear differentiators – and how do we get it? AI, of course.”

MyLER uses AI to personalise content towards clients by analysing their behaviour, preferences and past bookings to deliver an “ultra-tailored” booking experience. 

Alex Cheatle, founder of concierge company Ten Lifestyle Group, echoed this, outlining how his company uses AI-powered predictive pattern matching to connect clients with vetted hotels from its database. 

He said: “This technology massively improves the level of personalisation we can offer digitally and to our agents.” 

Masri also revealed that Little Emperors is developing AI scraping tools to summarise content from hotel websites. 

She said: “It’s a work in progress, but we’ve seen a great success rate of retrieving content from hotel websites without involving humans. It’s significantly reduced errors and manual work.”

Masri added that the company has also implemented AI in operational areas such as reservation confirmations, payment processing, commission reconciliation and even legal document handling. 

She said: “I know it sounds risky, but there are some incredible tools out there that really enable us to be more efficient and save a lot of money.” 

Looking ahead, Little Emperors plans to introduce Al-powered voice and image search, customised trip-matching, real-time price comparisons and itinerary builders. 

Despite the rapid expansion of AI capabilities, both Masri and Cheatle stressed the importance of ensuring human interaction remained at the heart of luxury travel services. 

Masri said: “AI has allowed us to scale without losing human touch. It’s a balance we strive for daily. In fact, it strengthens the human connection by freeing up advisors to focus on building relationships.”

Cheatle agreed, warning that “companies that only use AI will disappoint, certainly over the next five years”. He said the “sweet spot” was that “magic interaction of expert humans who are passionate and can really connect with technology”.