By Mike Foster/ One of the most valuable lessons I learned in business is that the first answer is not always the best answer. Over time, I came to understand that good decisions usually come from understanding context before evaluating options. I was reminded of that lesson years ago when I began looking for a new office location.
The realtor helping me search brought forward exactly the kind of locations most people would expect a retail travel business to want: high visibility, high traffic, and prominent exposure. On paper, they looked ideal. In fact, if you asked 10 people what a successful travel agency location should look like, most would probably describe something very similar.
The problem was that they weren’t ideal for us.
By that point, I had learned something about how our advisors worked best. A busy storefront certainly brought people through the door, but many were looking for a quick answer, a brochure, or a few minutes of free advice. Those interruptions added up. They made it harder for advisors to focus on clients who had appointments, trips in progress, or important decisions to make.
What we really needed was something different: a location that was convenient, comfortable, and designed around appointments rather than walk-in traffic. It was better for our clients, better for our advisors, and, as it turned out, less expensive as well.
The realtor’s recommendation wasn’t wrong. It was simply missing context.
Artificial intelligence
I’ve been thinking about that lesson lately because it applies surprisingly well to the conversation around artificial intelligence.
Much of what is written about AI focuses on the quality of the answers it can generate. That’s understandable. The technology has become remarkably good at producing information, comparing options, summarizing documents, organizing ideas, and generating recommendations in seconds.
The more important question, however, is whether those answers are actually useful.
AI is already becoming a valuable tool for many travel advisors. It can help with research, preparation, comparisons, brainstorming, and countless other tasks that previously consumed significant amounts of time. Used thoughtfully, it can make good work faster and often more complete. I use it myself.
Increasingly, I find myself using it for many of the same reasons I would hire a good assistant. It helps me research, challenge my thinking, identify blind spots, provide perspective, and review ideas from different angles. In many cases, it helps me produce better work than I might have produced on my own.
But I don’t assume it is right. Sometimes the output is excellent. Sometimes it completely misses the point. More often, it lands somewhere in between. That doesn’t make it useless. It makes judgement essential.
If a new employee handed you a draft itinerary, proposal, or client communication, you wouldn’t send it out unchanged simply because it looked polished. You would review it. You would consider whether it was accurate, relevant, appropriate, and aligned with the needs of the client sitting in front of you. Over time, as confidence grew, you might review less and trust more, but that trust would be earned.
AI deserves much the same relationship. The mistake is not using it. The mistake is assuming that a well-written answer is automatically a good one.
Travel advisors have always known that information alone is not enough. A traveller may ask for the cheapest fare when flexibility is what they actually need. A family may focus on price when convenience is what will ultimately determine whether the trip succeeds. A honeymoon couple may become captivated by a resort online that turns out to be completely wrong for the experience they hope to have.
Context is key
The advisor’s role has never been simply to find answers. It has been to understand context.
That is why I believe the widespread availability of AI does not make judgement less important. It makes judgement more important.
Technology can surface information and suggest options. What it cannot do is fully understand the trade-offs in the way an experienced advisor can. Technology can create speed, but advisors still decide when speed helps and when slowing down better protects the client.
As information becomes more abundant, the ability to evaluate it becomes more valuable.
Clients will increasingly be able to access answers on their own. What they will continue to need is help understanding which answers matter, which trade-offs deserve attention, and which decisions best support the outcome they are hoping to achieve.
That work remains deeply human, not because humans are emotional and machines are not, but because humans carry responsibility.
Technology does not own the outcome. It does not know the history of the client relationship. It does not sit across from a nervous traveller making a significant financial decision. It does not repair trust when expectations were unclear or plans suddenly change. The advisor does.
That does not make AI a threat, nor does it make it a magic solution. It makes it a tool – a powerful one that can help advisors become better prepared, more efficient, more informed, and more productive.
But it is still a tool.
The future will not belong to advisors who ignore AI, any more than it will belong to those who blindly trust it. It will belong to advisors who remain curious enough to experiment, thoughtful enough to evaluate, and confident enough to apply judgement when it matters most.
The conversation around AI often focuses on technology. That is understandable. The tools are changing quickly, and they will continue to improve. But the lesson I keep coming back to is much older than AI itself: Good decisions come from understanding context before evaluating options.
The answers may be easier to find than ever before. Helping clients understand which answers matter – and what to do with them – remains the real work.
And perhaps that is why judgement, not technology, may become the most valuable skill of all.
(After nearly 50-years in the Canadian travel industry, Mike Foster recently retired as the president of Nexion Travel Group Canada, having also served with ACTA, TICO (still serving), and other industry organizations, as well as teaching tourism at Fanshawe College, in London, Ont., during his distinguished career).
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