At the core of the travel business are the people that provide service to guests and clients in the form of frontline travel workers and travel agents or advisors. Those individual interactions have immediate and lasting impact on the travel business itself and maximizing engagements will have a profound effect on revenue and the brand’s bottom line. The travel market in terms of valuation finally recovered from the COVID-19 lockdowns in early 2025 and the forecast calls for increases in passenger volume and trips taken through 2030. Robust demand driven by emerging markets are slated to push the tourism sector above US$1.3 trillion, a CAGR of 6.83%. This growth can put strains on travel business resources and getting the most of guest and client facing teams is critical in controlling costs and growing revenue. The biggest challenge for travel businesses has always been training and skills development. The fast past nature of the business can put training and development by the wayside but new innovations in AI and data handling have created new opportunities for faster and more effective training that delivers foundational skills for maximizing each and every guest and client interaction. hospit-AI-lity is a new travel training platform from TTS that delivers next generation training and business benefits.

Optimizing Resource Loading and Processing

At the heart of the hospit-AI-lity platform is WALT, the AI powered travel training coach that trainees will interact with. WALT stands for Worker Augmented Localized Trainer and is built upon a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) based framework to deliver training and skills content. By using static resources such as markdown documents, RAG systems can be curated and optimized for specific tasks. In this case, WALT draws his travel training and skills content from his own, human created, knowledge base and provides output through a locally served Large Language Model (LLM). The third generation of WALT will see extensive upgrades to data loading and management including more precise character chunking and vector comparisons for better question recognition and response accuracy. Resources themselves will be overhauled and restructured with the first official training unit, “Active Listening Skills”, to be deployed to WALT_3.0. Improvements in static documentation and resource processing will enable WALT to handle sub topics within units and keep track of trainee progress as they both move through the training program.

WALT’s First Words?

WALT’s role as virtual training coach means he has to be able to start conversations and actively interact with human users. The current version of WALT 2.0 can answer travel skills questions using a static knowledge base and cloud based LLM but the next generation will take the next step in 2 way engagement. WALT_3.0 will see higher performance prompting mechanisms that will engage and start conversations with users and begin a ‘mini’ training class with the completed Active Listening Skills training unit. WALT will refer to his knowledge base and attempt to ‘teach’ the user active listening techniques, the importance of the skill in the travel business and examples of how it can be applied in real world scenarios. This version of WALT will also ‘evaluate’ the user’s knowledge on the subject with a ‘mini-quiz’ to complement the training session. This next step for WALT will set the stage for longer interactions, larger and more detailed knowledge bases and deeper interactions and engagements with trainees and workers. WALT will also display his evaluation capabilities, a key feature in the hospit-AI-lity training platform.

From Evaluation to Deployment

Front end upgrades will improve WALT’s user facing elements as the platform moves closer to deployment. Intended for use on mobile devices and tablets, WALT’s next evaluation will be available in a console type format for users to experiment and interact in the intended environment. This updated interface will be available during the WALT 3.0 rollout in late Q3 / 2026. Updated static mock-ups and design layouts will be available in early July to illustrate the vision for both smartphone and tablet use of hospit-AI-lity and WALT. After successful testing and evaluation of WALT3.0, localized LLM experimentation will begin for server based operation and management of the platform.

Faster and More Effective Travel Training

Training and skill-sets can influence how well a travel business performs and individuals that have foundational and advanced interaction skills are in a position to positively impact the business. hospit-AI-lity is a new travel training platform that delivers those critical skills and training to new and existing travel workers and agents. WALT, the AI powered training coach and face of hospit-AI-lity, uses a RAG based framework and localized LLM to engage new and existing employees and train them to maximize guest and client interactions. Travel providers and travel agencies with teams that are highly skilled will realize more productivity and better engagement than with slower, traditional methods of travel training. For travel businesses, this translates to improved productivity, accuracy and deeper connections with guests and clients which will positively impact the businesses bottom line. The third generation of WALT sees upgrades throughout the back-end framework and a brand new evaluation interface that parallels the experience on handhelds when fully deployed. Expected release for WALT 3.0 – late Q3 / 2026. Visit the Evaluation Portal to try out the current version of WALT: https://traveltechnologysolutions.net/EvalPortal/