In what for many is the most time-crunched period of their careers, travel advisors find themselves in a dilemma. There is great technology out there to help them — but they are so busy they just don’t have the time to spend much time learning how to use it.

So it’s no surprise that at this month’s Travel Market conference, most attendees seemed to agree that the most valuable tool is the Affluent Traveler Hotel Program. It’s simple to use and delivers quick and easily recognizable benefits in customer service and loyalty. And it saves advisors hours of time by offering on-site servicing of customers who then don’t need to call their travel advisor for every little thing — or even for the occasional major snafu.

This year, though, many also are looking at, toying with or even going whole hog into artificial intelligence, using AIConnect, Toby or ChatGPT. A small investment of time in these products — which after all are designed to be user-friendly and “chat-like,” so you can just open the program and tell it what you need — quickly yields three or four hours a week in time savings, many advisors agreed.

And of course everyone here also mentioned the intrinsic value of in-person networking, which no technology can ever replace.

In the mother-daughter team of LuAnn and Marissa Lisell, for example, LuAnn acknowledges that while she’s “old-school; I need to have everything on paper,” Marissa’s “all-electronic” approach to managing really is both efficient and secure — but the personal touches the hotel program offers are invaluable.

“If we can get someone $100 credit or early check-in, it’s a huge benefit to our clients,” Melissa said.

And the On Location program, which offers “local partners on the ground who know the destinations inside and out in Italy or Greece,” has been really beneficial. When a customer wanted to cancel an excursion at the last minute, for example, she made a single call to On Location and it was done.

They’ve also put the KORE training program to good use, mentoring one advisor and then hiring her full time when she graduated.

“She’s amazing, and KORE knows we are looking to do that again,” Melissa said.

For Travel Market first-timer Susan Peavey, a seasoned advisor who just switched consortia to Travelsavers last month, just attending the conference has “renewed my energy” heading into a busy fall that includes producing a travel show for 400 potential clients.

NEST member Shelley Pynn of The Travel Group in Heathrow, Fla., still likes paper; she sends The Affluent Traveler magazine to her clientele of mostly repeat high-end customers. And Bruce Mandel at Longwood Travel loves the referral program, which has been sending him six to 10 new customers a week.

Both Lenore Carroll of Dickinson Travel and Joanne DiSalvo Kreuscher cited the “special amenities preferred suppliers tie in at most higher-end hotels” through the Affluent Traveler Hotel Program.

“I’m not a package kind of girl,” Kreuscher said. “And I always look there first for hotels for my clients.”

With 95 percent of her business coming from Europe travel, she’s also trying out the air ticketing program, which offers 24-hour support to travelers.

Jennifer Doncsecz (pictured above), president of VIP Vacations in Bethlehem, Pa., is having great success with a Points Guy video that noted that travel advisors can get you free stuff at resorts. She shared it on social media, telling potential clients, “We can do that for you!”

“Even the wealthiest clients want to know that you can get them something special,” she said.

She and her team also love the Excel file they get from Travelsavers that includes contacts at preferred properties.

“That list is gold,” she said. “We used to spend hours looking for that information.”

Now she and her travel advisors email the local contact before a client’s arrival; they attach a personal note saying something like “Welcome to Paradise! Thanks for choosing VIP Vacations. Love, Jennifer and the team” and ask to have it delivered with an amenity when the guest checks in.

She’s also been doing many things with AI in general and AIConnect in particular, including having it change her profile and cover photo and “About Me” information for each group she joins on social media to make it a perfect fit. For a wine group, for example, she might highlight a wine-themed river cruise, while for bridal sites she focuses on her expertise in destination weddings.

Having just completed ASTA’s Verified Travel Advisor course, she also used AI to create a profile picture highlighting the certificate she received.

In the Travelsavers back office, Jackson Winheim is using AIConnect to create evergreen pictures, adding in logos and then using them in Canva to create marketing pieces.

“It’s a great tool for social media,” he said.

Melissa Sutton, at Up N Away Travels, has been “very happy with my Voyager Website — so much so that we had the team totally rebuild our site from the ground up in January,” she said.

She is “continually amazed at how much time it saves me each day,” she said.

On her flight home from Travel Market she used AIConnect to write a blog post about the benefits of off-season travel.

“Toby knows my brand voice and once he was finished I only needed to change a few things to make it more ME and it was ready to go. Less than five minutes, while on a flight,” she noted.

“I used it yesterday to research three different hotels in Dublin and list their locations and walking distances to various tourist attractions — and something that might have taken me an hour was completed in less than five minutes. I really feel this is some of the best money I have ever spent for my business.”