As the global travel industry moves beyond price-driven competition, experience, personalisation and technology are redefining how journeys are planned and delivered. From AI-powered tools to seamless end-to-end travel ecosystems, platforms like TravClan are helping travel agents adapt to rapidly evolving consumer expectations. In this interview, Chirag Agarwal, Co-founder of TravClan, shares insights on the rise of experience-first travel, the growing role of automation and data, and why human expertise will remain central to the future of the travel business.
The travel industry is undergoing a major shift from price-based competition to experience-first service. What key consumer behaviours or insights led TravClan to focus on this transformation?
A little over a decade ago, travel for most people meant a family vacation in the summer or a once-in-a-lifetime honeymoon. Today, it’s become a continuous part of everyday life — something people plan multiple times a year, often driven by what they see online. There are now countless sources of awareness — videos, reels, online communities — all nudging people not just to travel, but to travel a certain way.
Travellers today know exactly what they want. They’re clear about which café they wish to visit in Bali, which street to shoot content on in Istanbul, or which island they want to tick off next. Many are chasing personal milestones — “30 countries before 30” or “every continent once” — and that sense of FOMO has become a genuine purchase driver.
Naturally, the way travel is bought and sold has changed. Agents are no longer just ticketing desks; they’re curators, competing on expertise and niche experiences. At TravClan, this trend was hard to miss. We saw early on that empowering agents to deliver these personalised, experience-first journeys would define the next decade of travel.
Millennials and Gen Z travellers prioritise authenticity and personalisation. How is TravClan helping travel agents cater to these evolving expectations?
Travellers today don’t just want something unique — they want something specific. Every customer has their own version of an ideal trip, and that level of personalisation means agents often spend hours revising quotes and coordinating with multiple suppliers just to make small changes. It’s time-consuming, and it slows the entire sales process.
We built Instant Quotations to fix that. It lets agents create, edit, and share customised quotes instantly — whether it’s changing a hotel, updating inclusions, or adjusting transfers — with live prices reflected in real time. What once took two to three hours can now be done in minutes, helping agents meet the expectations of customers who want quick, tailored responses.
And once a trip is confirmed, our OnTrip App ensures the same seamless experience continues during travel. A generation that orders food, shops, and hails cabs through apps won’t want their international trip managed on WhatsApp groups. OnTrip gives travellers live access to their itinerary, pick-ups, sightseeing details, and 24×7 support — everything they need, exactly where they expect it to be.
Could you share how TravClan’s platform uses AI and automation to create seamless, end-to-end customer journeys?
AI has the power to fundamentally change how travel is sold and experienced. It can make everyday tasks faster, reduce dependency on manual processes, and make great design and customer experience accessible to everyone. At TravClan, our focus has been to use AI not for the sake of innovation, but to solve practical problems that help them move faster and work more efficiently.
Take Flyr, for instance — our AI-led poster generator. It makes marketing effortless for travel agencies. With Flyr, agents can create professional, customised posters within seconds, without needing a designer or creative team. Most agencies struggle to produce fresh, engaging marketing material consistently, and that limits their visibility. Flyr changes that by giving every agent access to easy, on-demand designs tailored to their needs — making quality marketing as simple as typing a few words.
We’ve also built AI WhatsApp Quotes, keeping in mind that most agents run their business on WhatsApp. With this, an agent can type a few keywords about a destination or package and receive a complete quote with live prices in under two minutes. It helps them respond to clients instantly and close sales faster — often while still on the call.
And finally, we’ve automated reconfirmations, one of the most repetitive but essential parts of the travel process. Our AI-led system manages these checks automatically, ensuring a smoother experience for travellers while freeing up our team to focus on more meaningful customer interactions.
What emerging travel technologies or trends do you believe will disrupt the industry in the next 3 years?
Over the next few years, we’ll see technology not just support the travel industry but reshape it entirely. AI will play the most visible role — it’s already changing how customers discover, compare, and purchase travel. By bridging the information gap, it’s making travel planning faster and more transparent, while also enabling smaller businesses to compete with larger ones through efficiency and scale.
We’re also heading toward a world of connected trips, where flights, hotels, transfers, and experiences won’t exist as separate bookings but as a single, seamless journey. This shift will reduce the fragmentation that has long defined the industry, delivering better outcomes for both agents and travellers.
The third major change will be in content and data standardisation. Today, content across categories (especially hotels, attractions/experiences, and transport) is highly fragmented, making consolidation/ curation, and thus integration, complex and time-consuming. As the industry matures, shared structures and open data frameworks will be key to unlocking collaboration and innovation across the ecosystem.
Together, these shifts point to a simpler, smarter, and more connected travel industry — one where technology empowers, rather than replaces, human expertise.
In your experience, how have real-time support or concierge services changed booking behaviours over the past few years?
Real-time support has moved from being a differentiator to becoming the baseline. Travellers today expect quick, reliable assistance at every stage of their journey — it’s no longer a “nice to have,” it’s a necessity. Comfort and responsiveness now drive satisfaction as much as price or itinerary.
We’ve seen this shift clearly at the agent level. When customers feel supported throughout their trip — whether through chat, app, or a real person — they’re far more likely to book again or refer others. That trust compounds over time.
What’s interesting is that customers are also becoming more comfortable interacting with chatbots or automated systems, as long as they work well. For most travellers, efficiency matters more than formality. The key is to keep the human layer intact — so when something goes wrong, there’s still someone accountable on the other end.
Tell us more about Volt. What inspired its launch, and how is it helping travel businesses improve customer experience and efficiency?
Volt was built to address one of the travel industry’s oldest and toughest problems — fragmentation. Even today, large travel businesses manage multiple supplier integrations, inconsistent content, and mapping issues that lead to inefficiencies and errors. We wanted to solve this at scale through technology.
Volt by TravClan is a high-performance hotel API that brings together directly contracted properties, 50+ global suppliers, and advanced content solutions into one unified system. It’s designed to simplify how large travel companies access, compare, and book hotels by standardising content, improving mapping accuracy, and ensuring real-time availability and pricing.
Our strength lies in combining superior technology with on-ground expertise. Volt doesn’t just aggregate supply — it creates a reliable infrastructure layer that eliminates duplication, reduces downtime, and enhances service consistency. This allows our partners to scale faster, improve customer experience, and operate with the speed and reliability expected in modern travel. For us, Volt isn’t just another API product — it’s how we’re building the backbone for a more connected, efficient, and trustworthy B2B travel ecosystem.
What role do data and customer feedback play in enhancing the travel experience through your platform?
Data sits at the heart of how we make decisions. We’ve built systems that collect and evaluate feedback continuously so that every trip helps us improve the next one.
For instance, through our OnTrip App, travellers can share feedback for each component of their journey — hotels, transfers, sightseeing, and more. That granular data helps us identify what’s working, what’s not, and which partners deliver the best experience. It directly informs how we negotiate contracts and expand our network.
We also track search and booking patterns closely to understand demand trends. This allows us to strengthen inventory where interest is rising and negotiate better prices where volume is high. In short, data helps us stay ahead of what travellers want — and ensures that every improvement we make is grounded in real insight, not assumption.
How do you balance personalisation with scalability in a B2B platform? Is there a risk of losing the human touch in tech-driven travel?
At TravClan, we’ve always believed that technology and personalisation don’t compete — they complement each other. Technology is what makes scale possible, but it has to be built the right way. Every product we create is designed to be scalable for all — whether you’re a small agency or a large enterprise — while still keeping the human element at the centre of the experience.
Our focus has never been on replacing agents, but on empowering them. We build tools that take care of repetitive and operational work so that agents can focus on what truly matters — understanding travellers, building relationships, and offering expert guidance.
That’s also why we continue to invest in strong on-ground contracting and customer service. Efficiency may come from technology, but trust still comes from people. The goal isn’t to remove the human touch — it’s to strengthen it through smarter, scalable technology.
How do you see the role of travel agents evolving in the next five years—and how is TravClan preparing them for the future? Finally, what’s your vision for the future of travel—will it be fully tech-enabled or will human interaction remain central?
In the next few years, customers will expect much more from their travel agents than just good prices. As booking processes become more streamlined and information becomes widely accessible, travellers will turn to agents for expertise — someone who understands destinations deeply, recommends what truly fits their needs, and responds quickly. The agents who adapt to this shift — by combining knowledge with speed — will build stronger, more loyal customer bases.
At TravClan, our focus is to help them get there. We’re building tools that take care of the operational load so agents can spend their time doing what truly adds value — advising, personalising, and strengthening relationships with their clients.
The future of travel will undoubtedly be more tech-driven because there are too many inefficiencies that good technology can solve. But even as AI and automation scale, human connection will remain central. In fact, it may become even more valuable. As travellers become accustomed to automated interactions everywhere else, a real conversation or a thoughtful recommendation will stand out as a premium experience — something people will seek out and remember.
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