Beyond the bot

As agentic AI threatens to commoditise simple bookings, Gaurav Bhatnagar, Co-Founder and Joint Managing Director, TBO, reveals an actionable roadmap to future-proof the trade: arming advisors with real-time AI itinerary builders, native LLM integrations, and an expansive pivot into ultra-luxury.

In an era where generative AI and agentic ecommerce threaten to automate traditional transactional distribution, the existential question facing travel advisors is no longer whether AI will disrupt the market, but which segment of the trade will survive the shift. 

For Gaurav Bhatnagar, the dividing line between irrelevance and enduring profitability is unmistakable: simplicity versus complexity. 

Speaking exclusively to TTN at the recently concluded Arabian Travel Market, Bhatnagar addresses the elephant in the room with optimism and candour. While the threat of automated booking agents keeps industry leaders awake at night, he takes the long view. “For thirty years, people have predicted that travel agents would go extinct,” Bhatnagar reflects. “We have heard that narrative over and over, yet the trade only emerges stronger.” 

TBO’s strategic roadmap is built on a clear thesis: transactional point-to-point bookings will inevitably surrender to bots, but high-touch, complex and connected luxury travel will cement the advisor’s status as indispensable. 

To ensure trade partners stay ahead of that curve, TBO is rolling out a series of product innovations - ranging from a proprietary AI itinerary builder that slashes quotation times from days to minutes, to direct inventory connectivity within ChatGPT and Claude, backed by an assertive expansion into the ultra-luxury frontier. 

Moving beyond simple transaction

“The key message this year is that AI has transformed how every business operates,” Bhatnagar says. “It would be foolish for us to think travel will not get impacted. Millions of small businesses earn their livelihood selling travel. The billion-dollar question is: will travellers change their behaviour and, instead of consulting a travel advisor, book directly through ChatGPT or Claude? The reality is, they already use these tools to research itineraries.” 

Bhatnagar sees the writing on the wall for standard distribution. Once conversational platforms enable full agentic ecommerce - complete with stored payment profiles and loyalty credentials - stand-alone flight or hotel transactions will migrate seamlessly to bots. 

“A standard flight or hotel booking that happens today on Booking.com or Expedia? I can totally see that happening on ChatGPT,” he notes. “Where travel advisors step in - and where they become irreplaceable - is when trips become complex. If I am booking a flight, a hotel, an airport transfer, multiple experiences and multiple cities, that is where I lean on an advisor.” 

This distinction underpins TBO’s key proposition. For high-value journeys ranging from $30,000 to $50,000 and beyond, affluent clients are not looking to navigate twenty disparate browser tabs or risk disconnected reservations. 

“When trips connect, it’s not as if you can book your hotel on Marriott.com, your flight on Emirates, and your chauffeur on Blacklane, and assume it will just work,” Bhatnagar emphasises. “Because when your flight is delayed, who informs the chauffeur? If your schedule shifts by a day, who renegotiates your hotel? That entire proposition of the ‘connected trip’ is where our industry is heading. 

“As an advisor, your relevance is locked into trips that are connected, complex, and luxury.” 

AI itinerary engine

Recognising that travel advisors operate much like billable legal professionals - where earning capacity is directly constrained by available hours - TBO has developed an enterprise-grade AI itinerary builder designed to eliminate administrative friction. 

Historically, assembling a multi-destination bespoke itinerary has been an operational bottleneck. An advisor in the Gulf planning an intricate Japan itinerary on a Friday afternoon often waits until the following week for local destination management companies (DMCs) to confirm availability and rates across time zones. 

“A good travel advisor never has a dearth of bookings - they have a dearth of time,” says Bhatnagar. “Between research, quotations, revisions, reconfirmations, and handling mid-trip disruptions, they spend all their time managing friction rather than selling.” 

TBO’s new launches

TBO’s new itinerary platform changes that operational paradigm. Advisors can now input complex customer preferences conversationally to generate comprehensive, day-by-day itineraries in two to three minutes. Unlike standard conversational bots that output conceptual suggestions, every flight, room, transfer, and excursion within the generated plan is dynamically priced and immediately bookable without offline reconfirmation. Quotations that previously required up to four or five days of DMC coordination can now be delivered and revised during the initial client consultation. 

Alongside the standalone tool, TBO has launched direct connectors using Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations. Advisors can work directly within Claude or ChatGPT, prompting the LLM with customer parameters to call live TBO inventory directly into the conversation. 

“If an advisor cannot deliver something markedly better, faster and more contextualised than what an end-consumer can pull from ChatGPT, their relevance evaporates,” Bhatnagar warns. “That is the new benchmark.” 

The ultra-luxury bet

To safeguard advisor margins, TBO is moving aggressively up the value chain. Following its acquisition of US luxury powerhouse Classic Vacations - a 50-year-old preferred partner to top North American consortia - TBO is deepening its alignment with premium industry networks. 

The platform is rapidly aggregating offline inventory that bots cannot scrape or self-serve. Case in point being exclusive private aviation and Mediterranean yacht charters; curated accommodation such as high-end villas complete with private butlers and dedicated culinary staff across Europe and exotic leisure retreats; and bespoke experiences. Think niche, destination-specific cultural and sporting encounters that require deep local contracting. 

Bhatnagar clarifies that moving upmarket does not mean abandoning the core platform. 

“We are not taking anything away from the platform,” he explains. “Even the most affluent traveller occasionally needs a point-to-point regional flight or an airport transit hotel. What we are doing is ensuring the platform is ready for where consumer demand is naturally migrating: higher ADRs, curated experiences and connected logistics.” 

Our founding mission was to empower travel agents through technology. We haven’t pivoted away from that - we have simply climbed the value chain together

Future-proofing

To support this luxury evolution, TBO Academy is rolling out specialised curriculums covering practical generative AI deployment, luxury product mastery, and high-touch consultative selling. 

On the commercial and financial front, the company is refining its fintech infrastructure to shield advisor liquidity. Operating as merchant of record, TBO enables travel agencies to collect client payments directly in their customer’s currency while safeguarding advisor commissions and providing working-capital credit facilities where required. 

Furthermore, as booking lead times and ticket sizes swell in the luxury bracket, TBO is actively evaluating dedicated Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) travel protection products to offer end-to-end booking security. 

For Bhatnagar, who co-founded TBO two decades ago as an airline ticket consolidator, the company’s evolution mirrors that enduring momentum.

“Twenty years ago, our agents sold only flights with us; then they added hotels, then ancillaries, and now they are selling complex AI-orchestrated itineraries,” he says. “Our founding mission was to empower travel agents through technology. We haven’t pivoted away from that - we have simply climbed the value chain together.”