We feature here an Article by our MD & CEO Mahesh Iyer, which was published in the CEO’s AI Playbook.
This initiative is a collaborative effort between the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and the Indian Express Group.
“It brings together the collective wisdom of nearly 50 of India’s leading CEOs across diverse industry sectors/leaders — who are not observing disruption from the sidelines, but architecting it from within. Their voices reflect the pragmatism and innovation that characterise Indian enterprise today.”
We are proud to say that among those voices, and among the 50 leading CEOs is Mahesh! We reproduce here, the article which was featured.
Leading the AI Shift: How Intelligent Technology
Is Redefining the Future of Travel
By Mr. Mahesh Iyer – Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Thomas Cook (India) Limited
The travel and travel services industry is at an inflection point with the confluence of two large macro socio economic trends. On the one hand, customers have evolved rapidly – they are now increasingly digital-first, have access to a variety of global sources offering real-time information and highly personalized/curated instant fulfillment across industries such as retail, banking and e-commerce. Consequently, customers today have the same expectations when it comes to their travel solutions.
If the challenges that these customer-led “demand side” changes were not enough, we as service providers, are also navigating a host of “supply side challenges” with rapidly changing political & climate-change induced disruptions causing volatile demand cycles & increasing operational complexity.
As a result, the imperative for the travel industry, are solutions that enable us to deliver consistent quality service at speed & scale while offering enough flexibility to pivot and adapt. This is why AI has moved decisively at Thomas Cook & SOTC – from being just being a part of our boardroom conversations – to being a strategic priority. For us, AI is no longer a future consideration or an isolated digital experiment. It is a core business focus aimed at building current & future capability to directly fuel growth, build resilience, enhance productivity and reinforce customer trust.
Our AI journey has been guided by 3 clear fundamentals:
- AI must be deployed to deliver against very clearly defined purposes/outcomes
- AI should enable & enhance our precious human expertise to deliver more, faster & better and 3
- AI should help us learn fast, adapt and get better continually to match changing expectations.
The modern Indian traveler expects real-time, seamless experiences across discovery, booking and post-booking engagement—whether browsing online, interacting with a call center, or managing travel on the move. Traditional operating models that desire sustainable growth, will always struggle to keep pace with these rising expectations.
AI offers us the opportunity to rethink how customers can be engaged, how teams can be empowered, and how an organization can scale continually without the traditional, linear cost structure – while retaining the expertise & importantly the emotional connect of a genuine “human experience” that our customers expect when they approach us to plan their travel.
Our AI execution strategy at Thomas Cook & SOTC focusses on embedding AI as an integrated enterprise capability rather than a digital overlay, so AI adoption is holistic – this is to ensure it is driven by business teams, embraced by frontline employees, and governed responsibly across the organization.
Our AI initiatives span across our lines of business & are clearly aligned to specific outcomes. While have been deployed and helping business teams, some are in an advanced stage of testing before roll-out.
To enhance our customer engagement & experience, we have introduced a suite of AI solutions. These include:
1. GenAI chat bots – For our retail travel customers, Tacy for thomascook.in and Ezy for sotc.in provide engagement for digital first customers – offering personalized trip recommendations & nudging prospects to either book directly or speak to our human agents to conclude bookings. Using advanced natural language processing and GenAI models, these chatbots today provide ready matches based on customer needs and will soon be capable of building (based on dynamic availability & pricing) and booking complete customized itineraries in under ten minutes.
This will transform the scale, speed and quality of our digital engagement, drive enquiry-to-booking conversion improvements and reduce average response times significantly allowing our sellers to focus only on complex conversations.
Soon, Tacy & Ezy will have Multilingual Voice bot capabilities as well.
2. Our new sellers are also being supported when they receive calls, by our Agent Assist solution that listens to the calls and prompts our sellers with relevant information/response suggestions to deal faster and more effectively with real-time queries from customers. This ensures we deliver a superior customer experience and get better with each conversation.
3. We also have deployed an AI powered Quality Check Bot that audits all our agent & customer calls, transcribe & score them on various parameters to identify seller-specific training and improvement areas so we can continually learn & improve future interactions.
4. For our Business Travel team, AI has been a key enabler through TravelOne and ai Together, these platforms power an intelligent travel management ecosystem that supports end-to-end automated bookings through policy-aware, enterprise AI digital agents across voice, email & chat channels. The platform enables real-time traveler servicing, accelerates fare change and approval turnaround, and improves exception handling and communication efficiency, while operating fully within enterprise travel policies, approval frameworks, and integrated with an invoicing and corporate governance model.
5. AI has also significantly enhanced customer experience in our Foreign Exchange business. Customers can now complete end-to-end forex transactions via an AI-enabled WhatsApp chatbot with 24×7 access. From viewing live rates to executing transactions, the experience is designed for speed, convenience and transparency.
We are now mainstreaming AI in our communication as well. Tacy & Ezy feature prominently on our websites, prompting visitors to chat with them. In Thomas Cook’s recent print & digital ad campaign launching our Europe Holidays for Summer of 2026 and beyond, we have used a digital avatar of our AI chat bot– Tacy, to present our Europe itineraries, where “she” anchors multiple individual videos, blending destination & itinerary propositions with engaging storytelling. These AI powered videos feature Tacy also double as powerful sales tools and social media content assets. In the print ad, a QR code scan leads to videos that have Tacy take them on video journeys to inspire and nudge – a great example of how we are bridging the “divide” between traditional media and digital capabilities to create a seamless marketing journey.
Our experience across these initiatives has shown that AI delivers its greatest value when it augments human capability rather than replace it. Successful adoption depends on leadership ownership, cross-functional collaboration, ethical guardrails, and a culture that embraces learning and change.
AI must be measured not by novelty, but by outcomes—improvements in customer experience, productivity, risk management, and long-term value creation. As AI capabilities mature, the industry will move from reactive service models to anticipatory, insight-led engagement—where travel companies can predict intent, personalize experiences in real time, and manage disruptions better.
Looking ahead, I believe that AI will continue to reshape the travel and travel services sector. From hyper-personalized planning and predictive demand management to intelligent disruption handling and deeper ecosystem integration, its influence will only grow. One thing is non-negotiable: AI must be treated as a core strategic asset, aligned to business priorities and deployed responsibly.
At Thomas Cook India and SOTC, the AI journey will evolve & adapt continually. What will remain constant is our long-term commitment to leveraging technology to deliver sustainable growth & exceptional customer experience that retains the warmth and emotion of human interaction – so planning and booking travel with us, is as enjoyable as the holiday itself!