Virtuoso senior VP global operations Michael Londregan has watched multiple technologies come that were supposed to end the travel advisor. Now with AI, he has never been more convinced the advisor always wins.
Virtuoso senior VP of global markets Michael Londregan joined the travel industry in 1990, in time for the internet, then the online travel agency boom, then the review platforms, and now AI.
Each of them was supposed to end the travel advisor, but Londregan’s view has not changed once. The advisor is not merely surviving those shifts; it’s winning because of them. In this episode of Luxury Unpacked, he explains why.
Londregan also talks about the 20,000 advisors and almost 3,000 partners inside the network, what a real supplier relationship delivers that a booking engine cannot, and why he believes the advisor and the client sit on the same side of the desk.
Also in this episode, Fiona Dalton chats with Yvonne Verstandig, founder of Melbourne travel agency Y Travel and a Virtuoso member about what philosophy looks like in practice.
Verstandig trained as a pharmacist before spending two decades in travel, and launched Y Travel in December 2020 after asking the question, “Why do you choose to travel?” and it shapes everything her agency does – starting with a 90-minute discussion with every client.
Dalton and Verstandig also talk about what working with an experienced advisor actually buys you, and where the line now sits between what technology should handle and what only a person can.
In this episode:
- What Michael Londregan means by the “50 futures” of luxury travel, and why he no longer believes there is one best way to run an advisory business
- The aeroplane analogy to explain where AI actually belongs in the advisory relationship
- Yvonne Verstandig’s eight “why factors” which are the philosophy behind the business
- What an AI-generated Patagonia itinerary got wrong, and the eight hours it would have cost the client
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For more information, partnership opportunities, or to be a guest on the show, contact Karryon’s partnership manager, Carolyn Nightingale, at [email protected].
