Most travel advisors treat AI like a search engine, then wonder why the answers feel generic. AI works more like a new hire. It needs context, a role, and permission to push back before it delivers anything useful. Set up that structure and it can personalize client communication, flag your most profitable niche, and hand back hours of your week.
David Shull’s father-in-law was in the hospital the same week his family was gearing up for a trip to Greece. The payment reminder from the travel advisor landed the day he was admitted.
It was a basic template, nothing more than a due-date notice. Nothing wrong with the words. Everything wrong with the timing.
That is the risk every templated system runs. Consistency without context can read as cold. But the answer is not to throw out templates and write every email from scratch. The answer is AI that reads the context a template cannot.
David Shull is the co-founder and CEO of Tern, the CRM platform where a lot of travel advisors run their day-to-day. He watches advisors use AI up close. Most are stuck at level one, typing a quick question into a chat box. The answer that comes back is built for nobody in particular.
Treat AI Like A New Hire, Not A Search Engine
A new AI conversation starts from nothing. It has no memory of your last conversation unless you give it one. It cannot read your mind about your business, your clients, or your voice.
According to Shull, most advisors expect it to work like a coworker who remembers everything automatically. It does not. That gap between expectation and reality is why so many advisors get flat, generic output and give up.
A Google-style question gets a Google-style answer. If you want AI to search its memory, pull from your files, or use a specific tool, you have to tell it to. Vague questions get vague answers.
Specific instructions, with the right background attached, get something you can send without a rewrite. The fix is treating every new chat like onboarding a new hire. Give it the files, the voice guide, the client history, whatever it needs to do the job right, before you ask for the output. The more focused the request, the better the result.
Build Your Own Advisory Board
A vague question gets a vague answer. A specific expert persona gets a specific one. Ask AI to analyze a P&L and you get generic commentary.
Ask it to analyze the same P&L as a named business strategist, and the answer shifts to match that person’s actual thinking. The model has read what that person has written and said publicly, so it can borrow the lens. TIQUE uses this internally.
Frameworks from business thinkers the team respects, Alex Hormozi on scaling and Amy Porterfield on marketing, are loaded directly into the relevant project files. Every prompt in that project pulls from that thinking automatically.
Shull takes it further with what he calls a board. A handful of named experts get assigned to one AI project, each with a distinct point of view, debating a problem instead of agreeing with each other. His own board includes Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and a mix of venture investors.
He gives the board a problem and asks it to deliberate, not agree. AI defaults to being agreeable. That default works against a business owner who needs the truth.
Give AI explicit permission to push back, or it will spend its energy trying to please you.
Let Templates Do The Structure, Let AI Do The Personalization
A template that never changes feels cold. That is the whole argument against automation, and the whole reason Shull’s hospital story stings. But a template that starts from zero every time does not scale. The answer is not choosing one or the other.
It is giving AI a strong example, in this case a proven template, and telling it exactly how to personalize it. TIQUE’s Client Communication Templates already work inside Tern for this reason.
An advisor can point AI at the payment reminder template, then ask it to pull in specific trip details. It can note the client’s excitement about a particular excursion and reference how the relationship has gone so far. The result reads like a human wrote it, because a human did. It is not written from a blank page.
The same logic works for booking confirmations. Instead of manually filling in every detail, an advisor can ask AI to pull the booking documents and reference the itinerary. It can remove anything that does not apply: an international driver’s license note on a domestic trip, an insurance reminder on a policy already purchased.
That is the difference between a chat and an agent. A chat answers one question. An agent completes a task using the tools and context it has been given.
Ask It To Find The Data You Didn’t Know To Look For
Most advisors can tell you which clients they enjoy working with. Fewer can tell you which clients make them the most money. Fewer still know which trip type is driving their highest revenue and highest fees.
That gap is not a lack of ambition. It is a lack of time to pull the data and make sense of it.
Advisors using Tern’s AI features are already asking it to sort top clients by revenue, commission, and paid fees. They use the answer to decide what to market. One advisor asked Tern to weigh in on repositioning her business as approachable luxury.
The AI pulled her last 100 trips and priced them out. It told her the rebrand already matched her booking history. She was not starting a new direction. She was naming the one she was already in.
The same approach works for a bio, a niche description, or a website rewrite. Ask AI to look at your real trips, your real clients, and your real communication style before it writes anything about you. It produces something specific instead of something generic, because it pulls from your real business instead of guessing.
Use It To Make The Hard Calls
Some decisions are hard because the math is uncomfortable, not because the math is unclear. Shull walks through a hypothetical: a client of ten years, worth three thousand dollars in total commission, who still generates fifty emails in two weeks. Compare that same time investment to five river cruise clients who need little hand-holding and bring in ten thousand dollars in commission combined. The math is not close.
AI can lay it out in minutes. The advisor still has to decide what to do with it. The same data can point toward opportunity, not only away from it.
Ask AI to scan recent supplier promotions against client trip history. It can flag who might want to hear about a new property opening near a destination they already loved. That kind of personalized outreach beats a generic newsletter blast, and it takes minutes instead of hours once the AI has the context to do the matching.
Every travel advisor knows the client experience matters. Fewer treat the health of the business itself, the metrics, the margins, the time spent per client, as work worth doing. AI does not replace that judgment. It gives you the numbers fast enough to use before the decision goes stale.
Systems Get You Started. A Room Full Of Advisors Keeps You Sharp
None of this works without AI having the right documents, whether that is your client communication templates or your own brand voice guide, loaded before you ask for anything specific. Building that structure on your own has never been more possible.
It also has a limit. Shull said it plainly: this is a human industry, built on relationships. No AI agent replaces sitting in a room, virtual or otherwise, with people solving the same problems you are.
Niche exists for the part of the business AI cannot do, the gut check from someone who has already made the mistake you are about to make.
Catch The Tern Team Inside Niche On October 8th
If any of this made you want a live walkthrough instead of reading about it, Niche is hosting the Tern team for a takeover on October 8th, open Q&A included. Two more live AI sessions for travel advisors follow it. The four financial metrics every travel advisor should watch lands on November 5th, and a second AI-focused session lands on December 3rd.
Niche membership starts at $35 a month for Essentials. Pro runs $55 a month and adds full community interaction plus the replay library. Join Niche to get access to all three sessions.
FAQ
Why does my AI give generic answers even when I ask good questions? Every new AI chat starts with no memory of your business unless you give it one. Without your brand voice, your client history, or a specific role to play, it defaults to average answers built for anyone. Load the context first, then ask the question.
What is an AI advisory board? An advisory board is a set of named experts you assign inside one AI project, each with a distinct point of view. The AI debates a decision instead of agreeing with your first idea. Business owners use this to pressure-test decisions the way they would with real mentors, without needing those mentors on call.
How do travel advisors use AI with client communication templates? Advisors pair a proven template with AI personalization instead of choosing one or the other. The template supplies the structure and the brand voice. AI fills in the trip details, client history, and tone so the email reads like it was written from scratch.
What should I ask AI to do first in my travel business? Start with a question you cannot easily answer yourself, like which clients are most profitable or which trip type has generated the most revenue this year. Ask AI to sort your own booking history before asking it to write anything. Let the data shape the marketing decision instead of a hunch.
Where can I learn more about using Tern’s AI features as a travel advisor? Niche is hosting a live Tern team takeover on October 8th, open to member questions about the platform’s AI features. Niche membership starts at $35 a month for Essentials access to the resource library and monthly trainings.
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