New Industry Study Reveals How Contact Center Automation and Conversational AI Are Transforming Travel CX — With Major Implications for the US Market.
Joint research by Frost & Sullivan and Covisian uncovers breakthrough ROI data on AI customer service implementation, multilingual chatbot performance, and workforce optimization strategies.
NEW YORK – December 1, 2025 – A comprehensive new study from Frost & Sullivan on AI in travel and hospitality CX reveals that over 70% of industry leaders consider strengthening brand awareness and loyalty as very important or even crucial to their success, with 66% identifying contact center automation as essential to achieving both customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) objectives.
The market research, conducted by Frost & Sullivan with implementation case studies from European CX leader Covisian, provides data-driven insights on how Travel & Hospitality companies can reduce average handle time (AHT), implement self-service CX technologies, and address critical workforce challenges through AI-enabled customer service platforms.
According to the Frost & Sullivan data, Travel & Hospitality companies face three primary operational barriers to CX transformation. Budget limitations for new technologies affect 35% of organizations, while an equal percentage struggle with inability to scale customer service operations flexibly. Employee experience challenges—specifically agent burnout and quiet quitting—impact 34% of contact centers, driving urgent demand for AI agent assist software and workforce optimization tools.
These adoption patterns also reflect many of the priorities observed across US Travel & Hospitality organizations, especially around security, multilingual CX, and scalable omnichannel service delivery.
Frost & Sullivan’s research shows that the most strategically relevant AI investments for Travel & Hospitality companies in 2024–2025 are shifting toward advanced automation and agent-assist capabilities designed to directly enhance CX and EX. While security and biometrics continue to attract interest, the strongest forward-looking momentum is concentrated in technologies that empower agents and enable more intelligent, emotionally aware service. These include speech analytics (45%), sentiment analysis (42%), and emotion recognition (47%), the three fastest-growing AI categories in terms of planned adoption.
These solutions are expected to deliver measurable competitive advantage by improving real-time decision support, accelerating resolution times, and enabling more personalized and emotionally intelligent interactions across channels. Their growth also signals a clear evolution beyond the AI tools that are already widely deployed in the industry, such as language translation (57%), conversational AI (53%), and transcription services (53%). As Travel & Hospitality organizations in both global and US markets prioritize scalable omnichannel service delivery and operational efficiency, analytics-driven and automation-enabled platforms are emerging as the next major differentiator for CX leaders.
Despite accelerating contact center automation T&H adoption, the research identified persistent technical challenges with first-generation virtual agents. Technical difficulty represents the top user frustration at 37%, closely followed by bot inability to understand complex queries and poor error recovery at 35%. Poor integration across channels affects 28% of implementations, creating friction in omnichannel customer journeys.
These operational pain points are accelerating investment in next-generation GenAI for customer service agents. Technology leaders expect GenAI implementation to improve agent performance metrics by 58%, reduce average handle time by 56%, and enhance self-service capabilities by 56%.
The Frost & Sullivan study showcases how Covisian’s Smile.CX solution addressed the complex CX challenges of a major international Travel & Hospitality brand. The client faced a high volume of post-sales inquiries handled primarily through phone support, resulting in long wait times, increased operational costs, and significant pressure on agents. The situation was further complicated by the need to deliver consistent service across 6 brand websites and in more than 17 languages, requiring a scalable and fully multilingual support model.
To solve these challenges, the company implemented Smile.CX GAIA, Covisian’s 24/7 multilingual AI assistant based on a human-in-the-loop architecture. The results demonstrate the transformative impact of automation at scale: the solution enabled a 31% increase in chat channel utilization, allowing the company to shift a substantial portion of interactions away from phone support—directly reducing operational costs while maintaining quality standards. In addition, the AI autonomously resolves 50% of customer requests, improving agent productivity and enabling staff to focus on higher-value, more complex cases.
Frost & Sullivan’s research highlights several macro trends that are redefining customer expectations in the Travel & Hospitality sector. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations increasingly influence consumer booking decisions, prompting companies to rethink how they communicate trust, responsibility, and value. At the same time, the growth of luxury travel and the rising popularity of bleisure trips are driving demand for more personalized and differentiated service experiences.
These shifts create pressure on organizations to modernize CX systems and deliver personalization at scale — something that traditional contact center models struggle to support. Frost & Sullivan notes that companies are prioritizing technologies and operational models that enable them to meet these evolving expectations while maintaining efficiency and consistency across channels.
To explore the full findings and discover how next-generation AI can accelerate your CX transformation, click here!