There is no bad time to adopt AI. There are a lot of bad ways.
What follows is how I'd think it through if I were you — regardless of whether my product ends up being the fit. Skim the map, then read what interests you.
I built Orbis — an AI back-of-house for companies that run on relationships. Not just software: a small senior team behind the product that actually shapes and implements it for each business. That's a real conflict of interest in a document like this.
So the deal: the first six sections don't mention Orbis. They're the questions I'd want a friend to ask before spending a dollar on any AI tool, including mine. The seventh section is where I lay out honestly where Orbis fits and where it doesn't. Then you decide.
Tap any node to jump to the detail. Read in any order.
The worst AI adoptions start with "we need AI." The best start with "this week my team lost twelve hours chasing supplier confirmations."
Before you evaluate any tool — including mine — you owe yourself honest answers to four questions:
If you can't answer those, no AI will help. You'll pay to run your existing confusion faster.
Most vendors tell you what's possible. Fewer tell you what's reliable. For a travel business, the distinction matters.
What modern AI is good at:
What AI is still not good at:
The useful frame: treat AI as an operational second brain, not as an autonomous agent making binding decisions on your behalf. The moment a tool promises the second thing, ask harder questions.
Every AI purchase falls into one of three buckets. They serve different needs and cost very different amounts.
| Path | What it is | When it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Generic tools | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. You + good prompts. Zero integration. | Solo operators, early experimentation, drafting. Almost always part of the stack regardless. |
| Vertical SaaS | Off-the-shelf travel-industry software with AI features bolted on. | Commodity workflows you're happy to share with competitors — booking engines, reconciliation, content generation. |
| Productized partnership | Your own dedicated AI instance. Your data, your voice, your channels. Not a login product — it lives where your team already works. | Relationship-driven operations. Information in heads and chats. You want differentiation, not parity. |
These aren't exclusive. Most serious travel operators end up using all three — ChatGPT for drafting, a vertical tool for GDS or reconciliation, and a partnership for the operational spine that ties clients, suppliers, and staff together.
The real question isn't which path?. It's which path for which problem?
If a vendor can't answer these crisply in a first call, that's itself an answer.
Any vendor — including mine — should welcome these questions. A vendor that deflects is telling you something important.
Travel is not a generic industry. The things that make it wonderful — trust, relationships, human judgment under pressure — are exactly the things AI handles worst.
Most AI disasters trace back to someone skipping the audit and buying a platform to solve a problem they hadn't yet defined. The antidote is boring and works.
Track where the team actually spends hours. Tag every activity. You will be surprised. This document alone is worth more than most AI tools.
Pick a single workflow with obvious ROI — client briefings, supplier follow-ups, trip debriefs. Automate it end-to-end with one tool. Measure before and after.
Did coordination overhead drop? Did response times improve? Did anything slip? Only now are you qualified to evaluate a bigger platform commitment.
If you follow this, you will make better vendor decisions than 90% of your competitors — regardless of whose product you pick. If a salesperson (including mine) tries to sell you a platform before you've done the time audit, push back.
I built Orbis for my own companies — an agency, a fund, a travel concierge — and productised it when the operational pattern held across all three. That's where my bias comes from. Here is the honest shape of it.
Most AI vendors sell you a tool and hand you the documentation. Orbis works differently. Think of us as a small senior team sitting behind your business — shaping the AI layer to your actual workflows, building custom integrations when off-the-shelf isn't the right answer, and staying on as things change.
The software is the starting point. The implementation — and the humans maintaining it with you — is the product.
For a travel business, that typically looks like:
Not a subscription you log into. A partnership you call when things get real.
Your own dedicated instance. Your own database. Your own voice and rules. WhatsApp and Slack first — it listens in the channels your team already uses, not in a new portal you have to log into.
The core function is coordination overhead: follow-ups, briefings, stale-deal nudges, contact intelligence across channels, surfacing what's falling through the cracks. The things a great operations person does, done continuously.
The questions in section 04 apply to Orbis exactly as much as to anyone else. Ask them. If any answer is softer than you'd like, push me on it before buying anything.