Overview
In 2025, 57.1 million people in Germany took at least one longer holiday trip. This was accompanied by 91.2 million short breaks. The appetite for travel is clearly strong. For tour operators, travel agents and other tourism providers, however, this also means more bookings, more questions and more customer service interactions.
At the same time, travellers today expect fast, personalised support. A last-minute flight change, questions about baggage, rebooking shortly before departure or information about entry requirements cannot wait until the service queue has been cleared.
This is precisely where AI Agents become relevant. They can handle recurring service processes automatically, bring together information from different systems and respond around the clock. The aim is not to replace personal advice. Instead, AI can help ensure that it is available exactly where it is genuinely needed.
Why tourism needs new answers to customer service challenges
Global travel volumes have long since returned to significant levels. UN Tourism recorded more than 1.52 billion international tourist arrivals in 2025. Europe alone accounted for 794 million.
As this volume grows, so does the number of customer service interactions. Expectations have also changed. Travellers want flexible booking conditions, the ability to make last-minute changes and fast support. At the same time, they are using an increasing number of channels to get in touch: email, chat, messaging services, telephone, social media and contact forms.
For service teams, this creates a difficult combination. They need to handle more enquiries across more channels while accessing information that is often stored in different systems. The challenge becomes particularly apparent during exceptional events. A strike, severe weather or last-minute flight cancellations can generate thousands of additional enquiries within a very short space of time.
Maintaining enough staff to cover these peaks is neither realistic nor economical for many companies. Automation is therefore becoming an important part of scalable customer service. This is where AI Agents come in.
The next stage: AI Agents
While traditional chatbots have often handled clearly defined questions using predefined dialogues, AI Agents go a significant step further.
They can understand requests, take context into account, retrieve the necessary information from connected systems and perform defined actions. Rather than simply telling travellers where to find their booking information, for example, a suitably connected AI Agent can retrieve the relevant data itself and process the request within its defined workflows.
They can understand requests
They can take context into account, retrieve the necessary information from connected systems and perform defined actions
Rather than simply telling travellers where to find their booking information, for example, a suitably connected AI Agent can retrieve the relevant data itself and process the request within its defined workflows
This brings together different AI capabilities. Generative AI can summarise messages, place information from a knowledge base into the relevant context or formulate appropriate responses. Based on this information, AI Agents can carry out further steps within defined processes.
This combination is particularly relevant in tourism. A good response often depends not only on general knowledge, but also on specific booking, travel and status data.
From baggage allowance to rebooking: where AI Agents can provide support
Many enquiries in tourism follow recurring patterns.
- How much baggage is included in the booking?
- When does check-in open?
- Where is the voucher?
- What options are available if a flight changes?
Requests like these take up a significant amount of customer service time, even though they usually follow clearly defined processes. AI Agents can receive and categorise them automatically and, with the appropriate system integrations, process them as well.
To do this, they need access to the information relevant to each particular request. Interfaces can be used to connect CRM and ERP systems, for example, as well as Global Distribution Systems such as Amadeus and Sabre. This enables the AI Agent to incorporate booking and status information into the process.
The result is not simply a faster response. Ideally, the entire request can be resolved without the need for a customer service employee to intervene.
Without omnichannel, AI remains fragmented
A powerful AI Agent alone, however, does not solve fundamental customer service challenges. What matters is how effectively it is integrated into the existing systems and communications landscape.
After all, travellers do not think in terms of channels. An enquiry might start in a chat, continue later by email and ultimately end in a telephone call. Having to explain the issue again every time does not make for a good service experience.
An omnichannel platform such as novomind iAGENT therefore brings customer interactions and relevant customer information together centrally. Email, chat, messaging, social media, contact forms and telephone can all be managed within a shared service environment.
Combined with the novomind AI Platform, this provides the foundation for automated yet context-aware processes. AI Agents can handle routine enquiries, while more complex or emotionally sensitive cases can be passed on to the appropriate service teams, together with all the context already available.
AI Agents free up time for better service
Perhaps the most important impact of AI in tourism cannot be measured solely by the number of tickets automated.
When service teams spend less time dealing with status enquiries, ticket numbers, standard information and other recurring tasks, they have more time for cases where their expertise is genuinely needed. This can improve the quality of advice while also reducing the workload for employees.
For travellers, meanwhile, automation ideally means that straightforward requests are resolved immediately and that the right person is available more quickly when more complex questions arise.
This is where the potential of AI Agents lies: not in avoiding as much human interaction as possible, but in distributing service tasks effectively between people and technology.
Conclusion: the best AI Agent is part of a good service process
AI Agents can do far more in tourism than provide automated answers to frequently asked questions. When properly integrated, they can retrieve data, process recurring requests, absorb peaks in customer enquiries and support service teams with more complex cases.
This requires more than a language model, however. A central omnichannel infrastructure, reliable knowledge sources, connected business systems, clearly defined processes and controlled access rights are all essential.
The combination of novomind iAGENT and the novomind AI Platform brings these components together. The result is customer service that remains scalable even as travel volumes grow and provides travellers with fast support exactly when they need it.
Ultimately, travellers are not concerned with which technology is working behind the scenes. What matters is that their request is resolved quickly, reliably and with as little effort as possible.