Exclusive interview with Cyril Guiraud, CEO of Travel Tech Factory
Cyril Guiraud leads Travel Tech Factory, a company specialising in digital transformation for the travel sector. A pioneer in integrating AI into agency and TMC processes, he shares his perspective on practical uses already changing teams’ daily work.
Tour Hebdo: Travel Tech Factory recently presented the productivity gains travel agencies can achieve with AI in Le Quotidien du Tourisme. Are we finally entering the operational phase?
Yes, AI has moved from curiosity to everyday usefulness. I mean a very concrete change: an agent arrives in the morning with ten bookings to process, and some tasks that used to take twenty minutes now take three. It may not make a spectacular story, but it profoundly changes the workload. At TTF, we began by identifying the most time-consuming and least rewarding tasks: drafting confirmation emails, preparing quote variations and developing sales arguments. Those are our first three use cases. Frankly, teams embraced them immediately — because the benefit is visible in the first week.
Tour Hebdo: You started by mentioning emails. Why?
Because they are an invisible bottleneck, especially in tourism. A complex booking with a flight, hotel, hire car and transfer? That means four different providers, four different confirmation formats and four different sets of jargon. The agent has to combine everything into a readable, error-free email, personalised for the traveller. Before AI, that took 20 to 25 minutes per booking. Now AI generates the draft in 30 seconds. The agent reviews and adjusts it in 2 minutes. Over a day with ten bookings, that potentially saves two hours. Two hours the agent can spend on the phone with a customer, building a relationship and providing advice. That is where value is created, rather than copying and pasting between interfaces.
Tour Hebdo: You also stress the need to present quote variations to maximise sales, which agencies are not doing.
No, because it took too long. Preparing a good quote takes time. Preparing three multiplied the effort by… three, obviously. So agencies make the pragmatic but risky choice to offer only one. Yet the customer always compares. They look for an alternative online, and if it is cheaper — even for a lower level of service — they may be tempted. With AI integrated into our tool, two additional variations can be generated in minutes from the original booking: one budget, one premium. The customer then has three clearly explained options, with their advantages and limitations. Conversion improves and, above all, the customer feels better supported in their decision. They buy with confidence.
Tour Hebdo: The third case, sales arguments — some might say that sounds like manipulation?
I understand the suspicion, but no — it is the exact opposite. Manipulation means hiding information to steer a choice. AI sales arguments highlight objective information the customer may not have in front of them. Why is this flight that costs €200 more relevant to them? Because it can be changed without a fee, because it arrives two hours earlier, because the airline has a better punctuality record on that route.
AI structures those arguments around the customer’s known profile — it does not invent them. And the agent remains in control of the conversation: they choose what to use and how to phrase it. It is assisted sales education. It really improves the customer relationship because the agent speaks precisely and confidently, rather than improvising.
Tour Hebdo: What resistance do you encounter when presenting these solutions?
The usual things! (laughs) Fear that AI will “take jobs”, distrust of output quality and, above all, a kind of inertia — “we’ve done it this way for twenty years, why change?”.
What I have learned is that you should not sell AI as a revolution: you should show it as a tool. In practice, when an agent sees AI write an email in 30 seconds that would have taken them 20 minutes, the user benefit is immediately clear.
Tour Hebdo: There is still education to be done.
That is the primary issue. The real work is not the technology, but learning how to use it. How do you formulate a request to AI? When should you trust it? When should you check? Ultimately, AI is effective when the person using it knows their subject. It does not invent; it assists. It is a new skill, not a particularly complicated one, but one that has to be learned.
Tour Hebdo: A message for agencies still hesitating to take the plunge?
Start small, but start quickly. Choose one use case, the most painful part of your daily work, and test AI on it. Just one. In three weeks, you will know whether it is worthwhile. I can guarantee that if you choose a real source of friction, you will be convinced without further hesitation. Competitive advantage does not come from having the most sophisticated technology — it comes from adopting quickly and learning how to benefit from it.
Tour Hebdo: Does it work?
Agencies starting today are certainly building a lead over those that wait. In terms of cost, it is not free: it takes time and some investment, but the reward is a clear improvement in ROI.
Article published in Le Quotidien du Tourisme.