CX Travel and Hospitality Exchange - Day 2
8:00 - 8:30
Breakfast & Networking
8:30 - 8:40
Chair's Opening Remarks
Nienke Bloem -
Professional Customer Experience Expert,
Nienke Bloem Services BV
8:40 - 9:10
Fireside Chat | Crafting a Customer-Centric Culture: The Vision & Incentives that Cement Customer Loyalty
Sue Bradley -
Head of Customer Experience,
Hays Travel
Nienke Bloem - Professional Customer Experience Expert, Nienke Bloem Services BV
Building strong customer loyalty starts from within. Explore how fostering employee engagement, brand alignment, and a customer-first culture can directly influence guest satisfaction and long-term loyalty. Gain insights into how internal culture, training, and leadership strategies can empower teams to consistently deliver exceptional experiences that strengthen brand advocacy and retention.
9:10 - 9:40
Fireside Chat | The Invisible Travel Experience: When the Best Service is No Service
Greg Cheetham -
CX Consultant, Hospitality, Travel & Recreation,
NiCE Cognigy
Luke Cuthbertson - Head of CX Consulting Practice, Route 101
Laura McMurniman - Senior Manager, Guest Services, Carnival UK
Travellers expect bookings, journeys and disruptions to take care of themselves. When they have to get in touch, something has already gone wrong. As AI, automation, and journey orchestration continue to evolve, are we moving towards a future where the best customer experience is one the customer never has to think about?
• Can travel brands predict customer needs before contact is made and how much avoidable demand can be removed through proactive service?
• Where does AI add genuine value, and where does human interaction still matter most?
• How do you deliver personalised experiences without adding complexity?
Sponsored by: NiCE
9:45 - 10:15
1:1 Business Meetings
Conversational and agentic AI has moved from experiment to expectation - but turning a promising pilot into something that reliably runs in production, at scale, across real customer interactions, remains the hard part. Some organisations already have agentic AI live and are pushing toward what's next; others are still working out where AI belongs in operations built for a different purpose.
This session brings together industry leaders to tackle the questions that come up at every stage of that journey: how to prove ROI and build the case for further investment, how to govern AI fast enough to keep pace without stalling innovation, how to protect the human touch that customers trust as automation scales, and how to give AI agents the customer context they need to actually resolve issues - not just deflect them.
Join this session to hear how peers across travel and hospitality are approaching production-grade AI agents across the customer journey, and to share what's working, and what isn't - in your own organisation.
Sponsored by: ElevenLabs
Customer experience often spans multiple teams, from marketing and operations to digital, customer service, and product. Yet disconnected strategies and data can hinder positive CX work. Discover practical ways to align CX functions, improve cross-department collaboration, and create a unified customer journey.
• Discover what causes fragmentation across customer experience functions and how leading organisations break down silos to deliver a seamless, end-to-end customer journey
• Learn why cross-functional alignment, across marketing, operations, digital, and customer service, is critical to consistent CX delivery, and how shared goals, data, and accountability drive better outcomes
• Explore how organisations can use collaboration and integrated systems to unify customer insights, streamline decision-making, and create more personalised, efficient, and impactful customer experiences.
11:30 - 12:00
Presentation | Cracking the Data - Using Customer Data Platforms to Draw Valuable Customer Conclusions & Personalise Experiences
Tommaso Bertini -
Chief Marketing Officer,
Alpitour World
Understanding how to interpret and connect the dots between data points is one of the key methods used to put yourself in the customers' shoes. Nonetheless how do we comprehend such vast amounts of data, reduce silos, and architect a coherent trend to personalise customer experiences?
12:00 - 12:30
Fireside Chat | Personalisation at Scale: The Role of AI Agents
Des Traynor -
Co-Founder,
Fin
Nienke Bloem - Professional Customer Experience Expert, Nienke Bloem Services BV
Travel is inherently personal, but for many companies individualized service can be difficult to scale. Done well, AI agents can close that gap – helping customers find the right hotel or destination, supporting them after they book, and responding immediately when delays, cancellations, or other unexpected events disrupt their plans.
Delivering that experience requires the AI agent to move beyond providing information to actually solving problems and completing tasks on the customer's behalf. Its value comes from understanding what the customer is trying to accomplish, remembering relevant context, drawing from trusted information and knowing when a human should step in.
Des Traynor, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Fin, has spent the past three years building and deploying Fin, an AI agent that can work across the entire customer journey. In this conversation, Des will explore how travel companies can leverage their existing data and content base, expand their support operations without sacrificing quality, and deliver experiences that feel genuinely personal at scale.
Sponsored by: Fin
12:40 - 13:10
1:1 Business Meetings
13:10 - 14:00
Networking Lunch
As AI transforms the contact centre from a cost centre into a value driver, the role of frontline agents is rapidly evolving. With intelligent tools handling routine queries and surfacing real-time insights, agents are now expected to deliver higher-value, emotionally intelligent interactions. The question is how do we empower agents to thrive alongside AI while maintaining efficiency, consistency, and customer trust?
• Explore how AI can augment, not replace, agents by automating repetitive tasks and enabling faster, more informed decision-making
• Define the optimal balance between human empathy and AI efficiency across different types of customer interactions
• Discover how to equip contact centre teams with the tools, training, and autonomy needed to deliver personalised, high-impact customer experiences
14:40 - 15:10
Presentation | The New Era of Web Content: From Organic Search to GEO – How to Increase Visibility & Personalize Digital Experiences
Mario Manfuro -
Senior Director of Digital Experience,
Radisson Hotels
With the recent shift to AI-powered search due to the 'AI overview' feature on Google, there has been a notable decrease in organic traffic with the hospitality industry being hit the hardest. Speculations over the demise of website interfaces due to increasing usage of app services and large language models (Chat GPT, Claude AI, and Co-Pilot) have been on the rise. Therefore, the questions on everyone's minds are: Is there a way to remain visible by integrating AI, partnering with LLM's, or improving SEO/GEO to acquire new customers and how does personalisation help with this?
• Learn about how organic search has permanently altered the travel and hospitality landscape after the introduction of AI overviews and how the sector has responded
• Discover strategies to retain and increase visibility on search by adapting searches to rank higher for AI search such as focusing on generative engine optimization (GEO)
• Explore the ways that AI integration and partnering with LLM's can offer in successfully adapting to the changes in organic search to acquire new customers
15:10 - 15:40
Fireside Chat | Data in a Volatile World – Forecasting Travel Patterns & Personalising Offers to Satisfy Customers in an Ever-changing Market
Kinnari Ladha -
Chief Data Officer,
Travelodge
Nienke Bloem - Professional Customer Experience Expert, Nienke Bloem Services BV
A heated discussion on how the changing geopolitical landscape is leading to ever-evolving travel patterns that are becoming increasingly challenging to predict. Explore how to stay ahead of the curve with travel pattern trends and how to personalise offers accordingly, capitalising on a turbulent environment rather than missing out because of it.
• How can data integration improve organisations' ability to forecast shifting travel demand, customer behaviour, and ultimately help travel and hospitality brands maintain service continuity and customer trust during global instability?
• In what ways can diplomatic data-sharing partnerships between travel organisations and international stakeholders enhance CX strategy and potential personalisation offers?
• How can predictive analytics tools that monitor regulatory, climate, and geopolitical changes be harnessed so that brands can proactively mitigate changes to travel plans and redirect customers in a highly tailored way, establishing stronger customer confidence and brand loyalty?
