AI Email Parsing: Optimizing Travel Agency Efficiency
Watch the video for a quick explainer about the AI email parsing pilot:
The Challenge: Balancing Speed and Personalization
Travel agencies face a delicate balance between leveraging technology and delivering a human touch. While some travelers prefer self-service, others value direct interaction with a travel consultant – but in both cases, speed is critical.
Email has emerged as a vital communication channel in travel. For example, nearly 85% of travel – related communications between Sabre employees and the company’s TMC partner happen via email. However, handling these emails – often filled with routine requests – can consume significant time and resources for the TMC. With email handling times ranging from 5 to 15 minutes per message, Gen AI presents an opportunity to enhance productivity and improve customer experiences.
The Solution: AI-Powered Email Parsing
Sabre’s email parsing application streamlines workflows by generating high-quality email summaries and suggesting actionable next steps. It handles common requests, such as sharing invoices or booking confirmations, allowing travel consultants to focus on more complex tasks.
Key features include:
- Actionable insights: Predicts next steps based on email context, helping agents respond quickly.
- Automated shopping: Automatically extracts key details for booking requests and generates proposals, integrating customer policies to ensure accuracy.
- Enhanced reliability: Consultants review proposals before finalizing a booking, ensuring human oversight where needed.
Building Long-Term Value
Beyond individual emails, the application builds a repository of use cases, offering agencies valuable insights.
These insights can help:
- Identify patterns in traveler requests.
- Set up skills-based routing frameworks for efficient support.
- Expand Gen AI applications across other operational areas.
Innovation in Action
This project began at a Google Cloud-hosted hackathon, where the Sabre Labs team built a demo using just 10 sample emails. The result was a simple yet powerful tool: paste an email, push a button, and receive actionable offers.
Senior Vice President and President of Sabre Labs, Sundar Narasimhan, observed: “The travel industry is ripe for innovation. By leveraging Gen AI, we’re discovering ways to enhance shopping, booking, and servicing processes, driving growth and improving efficiency for our customers as they operate in an increasing complex world of multi-source content.
What’s Next?
As Sabre prepares to roll out this email parsing tool broadly, the focus remains on helping travel agencies boost productivity, reduce operational costs, and provide exceptional service. By combining human expertise with cutting-edge AI, Sabre is shaping the future of travel management.
“The collaboration with Sabre has helped to expand the application of Gen AI in travel. Combining Google Cloud’s Gemini AI algorithms with Sabre’s travel expertise has helped both companies identify speed to value use cases where Gen AI can be applied to solve increasingly complex challenges for travel companies and the travelers they serve. The email parser is compelling because travel consultants rely on it daily; it’s not workflow automation that happens silently in the background.”
Cindy Falschlehner, Director, Google Cloud Consulting
