Case Study: Pacific Destinations and Itinerary Assist AI
How our AI Copilot for DMCs helped Pacific Destinations automate itinerary creation, saving time and enabling their team to focus more on client service.
Background: Pacific Destinations’ People-First Approach
Pacific Destinations (PDNZ) is a leading inbound tour operator (Destination Management Company) in New Zealand, founded in 1996. As a family-owned business built on strong relationships and trust, PDNZ prides itself on its people-first ethos and destination expertise. The company’s experienced team crafts one-of-a-kind itineraries with world-class service and attention to detail. Innovation and continuous improvement are core to PDNZ’s culture, so the team was open to adopting new travel tech solutions to support their growth and maintain high service standards.
The Challenge: Improve quote response times without losing quality
Despite PDNZ’s strengths, an operational bottleneck had been identified: consultants were spending significant time building itineraries within Tourplan (the company’s reservation platform) for each quote request. This was eating into time that could be used on higher value tasks - like adding expert level customisation to each trip.
“We wanted a solution that would help to free up the time of our experienced team to focus on the skilled work of consulting and operating. Reducing the amount of time it takes to manually load itineraries into Tourplan was one area identified that would help hugely with this, as it applies to almost every request that is received,” Trent Harnett, Director and Co-Owner, PDNZ.
With a high volume of FIT quote requests coming in daily, the time was adding up to a very significant amount across their operations team, slowing down response times and limiting the number of quotes that PDNZ could respond to within a 24 hour timeframe. The challenge of timely responses was heightened by the fact that many of their clients are in Europe and other distant time zones.
Solution: Implementing an AI Copilot to automate itinerary workflows
PDNZ discovered their answer in TourConnect’s Itinerary Assist AI, the AI-powered quoting Copilot for DMCs. The introduction came at ITB, where the PDNZ team first met with TourConnect.
“When we were shown the platform in action, we immediately saw how it could assist our team every day.” Trent Harnett recalls.
It was clear that Itinerary Assist AI, with it’s deep integration with Tourplan, could provide a step change with none of the risk associated with changing booking systems.
After deciding to move forward, PDNZ worked closely with TourConnect AI on implementation. The onboarding experience included training, regular check-ins and access to our technical staff when needed, ensuring the AI would work effectively with PDNZ’s Tourplan setup and request formats. “The set up and implementation process was very thorough, which meant the rollout was smooth. The way the software works, there is a degree of hand holding required through the set up and the TourConnect AI team were great at helping us, making tweaks and answering questions quickly throughout,” notes Trent Harnett.
Today, PDNZ’s consultants use Itinerary Assist AI to handle many incoming quote requests fro various travel agent partners in different formats. The AI reads each agent’s request (whether in an email, PDF, or spreadsheet), extracts the details, and creates a draft itinerary based on PDNZ’s database of thousands of service line options, each with live availability and pricing. The result has moved them close to the notion of an automated reservation platform, while retaining full control. “We are using Itinerary Assist AI for requests that come through to us in a consistent format from partners. The AI tool is used to read the request and load itineraries into Tourplan, saving our team considerable time on a number of files that are received each day” says Trent Harnett.
Results: Efficiency Gains and Focus on High-Value Work
After over a year of using Itinerary Assist AI, PDNZ is seeing significant operational benefits. Quote building is much faster, and consultants can turn around proposals to partners more quickly than before. “Itinerary Assist AI has made a real impact for our team on a day-to-day basis. We receive a high volume of requests and saving 10 – 20 minutes on a number of files each day helps us with efficiency and gives our specialists more time to focus on the parts of their role they enjoy the most,” reports Trent Harnett.
Importantly, the enhanced efficiency has not come at the cost of service quality – faster responses and extra attention to itinerary personalisation are reinforcing PDNZ’s reputation for excellent service.
Future Plans: Expanding AI Integration
Encouraged by the results, Pacific Destinations plans to deepen its use of AI in the coming months. “We want to continue to embed the system across a wider range of file formats received and continually learn how we can utilise the technology to assist us in delivering the very best service for our partners around the world.”
TourConnect AI is laser focused on helping all our our DMC clients achieve similar goals. We’re working hard to maximise the accuracy of our AI models and extend the applicable use cases with every product update. One recent example being Automated Product Rules, which enables a significant quality and consistency improvement to our already high standards.
Conclusion: A Leap Forward in DMC Operations
For Pacific Destinations, adopting Itinerary Assist AI has been a game-changer in their operations.
“Itinerary Assist AI has been a real leap forward for our team. The time saved manually loading itineraries from scratch into Tourplan helps with both processing times, and more importantly, it frees up our specialists to focus on what they do best: curating itineraries and personalising experiences for our partners around the world. The TourConnect AI team have been fantastic at getting us set up and trained, meaning we saw benefits quickly after the initial roll out” says Trent Harnett.
To other DMCs and inbound tour operators facing similar challenges, PDNZ’s advice is straightforward: “Try the technology to see if it works for your team.” Implementing an AI solution may seem daunting, but the payoff in saved time and improved service can be substantial.
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