5 Practical Ways to Use AI in Your Group Travel Business (with prompts)

Ever since ChatGPT made its way into the collective consciousness that is the internet, “AI” has been the buzzword dominating conversations, headlines, and more than a few LinkedIn posts — to the point where keeping up with it all can start to feel like a job in itself. 

For busy group travel operators, knowing where to start can feel overwhelming, and that often puts AI firmly in the “nice idea, maybe later” category.

And honestly, that’s fair. 

You don’t need more things to figure out. What you need are practical wins that save time, reduce admin, and take a bit of pressure off your day. 

The good news is that there are plenty of free options — like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude — that can assist sales, customer support, and content in small, sensible ways that add up quickly,

In this guide, we’re focusing on 5 ways you can realistically start using AI — or at least trial it out — without turning your operations upside down.

If you want to go deeper, we’ve also linked a few additional resources at the end of this guide — including Zapier automation tutorials, trend insights, and a prompt playbook designed specifically for travel organizers.

1. Use AI to draft itineraries, emails and marketing content faster

Writing is one of those tasks that sounds simple, but ends up eating a lot of time, especially when you’re starting from scratch.

AI can’t replace your experience or your voice, but it can help you get past the dreaded blank page, and to a solid first draft faster.

It works best as a drafting tool:

• Turning notes into structured content
• Creating first-pass itinerary descriptions
• Drafting emails or marketing copy you can refine
  
  

The key is to think of AI as a starting point, not the finished product. You should always review, tweak, and personalize before publishing anything.

How to use AI as a drafting assistant

Here’s how to approach it:

• Start with rough notes, not perfect sentences
  Paste in bullet points, half-formed ideas, or even messy thoughts.
  
  
• Ask for structure first
  Let AI turn your notes into a clear outline or draft.
  
  
• Refine in stages
  Adjust tone, length, or audience after the first draft is done.
  
  
• Always do a final human pass
  Check accuracy, update details, and make sure it sounds like you.
  
  

Starter prompts for drafting text

For itineraries

“Draft a first-pass itinerary overview for a 7-day group trip to Italy for university students. The itinerary should balance fun activities with cultural and educational experiences, and be suitable for students aged 18–22. Keep it clear, friendly, and informative. I’ll edit and refine the details.”

For emails

“Write a friendly pre-departure email reminding travelers to complete their forms and check upcoming payment deadlines. Keep it short, scannable, and highlight the most important information.”

For marketing content

“Create an outline for a 500-word blog explaining the benefits of traveling as part of a guided group, compared to organizing a trip independently. Keep the tone friendly and practical.”

Pro Tip — Get better results by including context

Before you ask AI to draft anything, it helps to give it a quick snapshot of your business. A lot of people get poor results from AI simply because they don’t tell it enough about how they operate.

Using a single chat window as your drafting space also helps AI produce more relevant, useful drafts over time, without needing to repeat yourself.

A short paragraph of context should cover things like:

• The type of travel business you run
  (e.g. student group travel, hosted buyer trips, trade show travel, sports tours, retreats, cultural or educational travel)
  
  
• The kinds of trips you offer
  (e.g. multi-day international programs, short event-based trips, recurring annual tours)
  
  
• Who your travelers are
  (e.g. ages 18–25 university students, working professionals attending trade shows, amateur sports teams)
  
  
• The tone you usually use
  (e.g. friendly, professional, educational, detail-focused, etc.)

That’s usually enough to get started. You don’t need to describe everything in detail — even a short summary like this will noticeably improve the drafts you get back.

Here are a few examples of the kind of context you could share:

“I run a group travel business that organizes hosted buyer trips and trade show travel for professionals attending international industry events. Our travelers are typically working professionals aged 30–55, traveling from multiple regions. Our trips prioritize efficient logistics, clear schedules, and seamless coordination around event attendance. Our tone is professional, clear, and detail-oriented.”

“I run a group travel business that organizes international sports tours for amateur teams and clubs. Our travelers are typically athletes aged 16–30, along with coaches and support staff. Our trips focus on competition schedules, accommodation near venues, and smooth transport between matches. Our tone is clear, organized, and practical.”

“I run a group travel business that hosts wellness retreats focused on yoga, mindfulness, and personal development. Our travelers are usually adults aged 30–55, traveling solo or with friends. Our trips emphasize calm environments, clear schedules, and a supportive, reassuring tone throughout the experience.”

You can add to or update this context at any time as your needs change.

2. Use AI to turn enquiry emails into faster quotes and itineraries

Most enquiries don’t arrive neatly packaged. They come through as long emails with scattered details, follow-up questions, and important information buried halfway down the page.

Before you even start quoting, there’s admin work to do  — and this is precisely where AI can save a surprising amount of time.

AI is very good at handling this kind of unstructured input. It can:

• Pull out key details like dates, destinations, and group size
• Summarize what the customer is actually asking for
• Highlight missing information you may need before quoting
  

You will still need to apply pricing, logic and experience, but the time you spend organizing enquiries will be significantly reduced.

How to use AI to process enquiries

A simple approach looks like this:

• Paste the full enquiry email into your AI tool
  Include everything — even if it’s long, rambling, or unclear.
  
  
• Ask AI to summarize the request
  Focus on pulling out the details you need to quote confidently, such as dates, destinations, group size, and any special requirements.
  
  
• Use the summary as a checklist
  Quickly see what information you have, what’s missing, and what needs clarification before you start quoting.
  
  
• Build your quote or itinerary from there
  You’re starting from something structured, rather than picking details out of a long email.

Starter prompts for processing enquiries

To summarize an enquiry

“Summarize this enquiry and list the key details, including group size, dates, destinations, budget clues, and any missing information I should clarify before preparing a quote.”

To create a structured starting point

“Based on this enquiry, create a simple itinerary outline I can use as a starting point for a quote.”

To draft a follow-up email

“Write a short, friendly follow-up email asking for the missing details needed to finalize a quote.”

3. Use AI to create visuals for itineraries and marketing

Visuals play a big role in how travelers experience your trips. They help set expectations, bring itineraries to life, and make marketing content more engaging. But creating custom visuals isn’t always realistic — especially when you’re short on time or working without a design team.

Used well, AI image tools can be helpful for:

• Concept images for itineraries
• Supporting visuals for blog posts or emails
• Filling gaps when you don’t yet have final photography
  

AI-generated images aren’t perfect and prompt quality makes a huge difference. They’re not a replacement for real photos, but they can be a useful addition.

How to use AI for visuals

The key to getting usable images from AI is giving it a clear brief — basically the same way you’d brief a photographer or designer. The more specific you are, the less time you’ll waste generating images you’ll never use.

A simple approach looks like this:

• Start with what the image is for
  Is it for an itinerary PDF, a sales page, or an email? (This will influence the style and tone.)
  
  
• Use this prompt formula as a guide
  Main subject + setting/location + season/time + context or activity + mood + style + size/aspect ratio + “avoid” notes. (You don’t need to include every element — just the ones that matter for the image you’re creating.)
  
  
• Add one or two grounding details
  Think: “guided group,” “students,” “summer,” “walking tour,” “friendly and realistic.”
  
  
• Generate a few variations, then refine
  If the first image is close but not quite right, tweak one detail at a time (lighting, mood, angle, number of people).
  
  
• Always sanity-check the image
  Pay close attention to things AI often gets wrong, such as:
    - Hands, faces, and proportions 
    - Incorrect landmarks or unrealistic layouts 
    - Text or signage that doesn’t make sense 
    - Anything that could feel misleading or off-brand  
  

Starter prompts to create visuals

These prompts are intentionally simple — once you’re comfortable, you can add more detail as needed.

Itinerary visual for PDF or trip page:

“Create a realistic image of a guided group exploring Machu Picchu in Peru during early morning. Documentary-style, natural lighting. Landscape format for an itinerary PDF. Avoid text and distorted faces.”

Marketing visual for social media:

“Create a warm, candid image of travelers enjoying food and drinks at an outdoor café in Rome at golden hour. Square format for Instagram. Avoid logos and overly posed people.”

Visual for website banner / “hero” image: 

“Create a wide, scenic image of travelers on safari in the Serengeti at sunset. Cinematic but realistic style. Wide landscape format suitable for a website hero image. Leave space for text at the top.”

Here’s what Gemini Pro created using each of these prompts:



 

You’ll notice that the same prompt won’t produce the exact same image twice. That’s not something you’ve done wrong or a bug  — it’s just one of the intentionally unpredictable and quirky features of generative AI.

Pro Tip — Quick fixes if your image looks “weird”

Image generation is evolving quickly and it's not often you'll encounter a really weird or distorted visual — what you are likely to encounter however is a biased visual. If the result does come back looking too “AI”, slightly off, or biased, try adding one of these lines to your prompt to improve it:

• “Realistic, documentary-style photo”
• “Natural lighting, candid moment”
• "Diverse group of people with varied skin tones and realistic features"
• “Avoid distorted faces or hands”
• “Avoid text in the image”
• “No logos or brand names”
  
  

4. Use AI in your workflows

As a group travel operator, you'd typically use a stack of tools every day, from enquiry forms and email to accounting software and spreadsheets. Moving information between them is just part of keeping everything in sync, and that usually means copying and pasting data from one place to another.

What’s less obvious is that you don’t always need to be the one doing that.

Automation tools like Zapier allow details to be passed from one system to another automatically, so routine handoffs happen without you sitting in the middle. AI steps in by summarizing information, organizing it, or suggesting next steps, without changing how you work or how customers interact with you.

How travel operators are using AI in workflows today

Here are a few practical examples that don’t require deep technical knowledge:

• Enquiry received → AI summary → internal notification
  When a new enquiry comes in, automatically summarize it and send the key details to email, Slack, or your CRM for review.
  
  
• Booking confirmed → invoice created automatically
  Trigger invoice creation in tools like QuickBooks or Xero when a booking is confirmed.
  
  
• Traveler forms submitted → spreadsheet updated → AI summary for your team
  Collect form responses in a spreadsheet, then generate a short summary highlighting important information, patterns, or follow-ups needed before the trip.
  
  
• Support enquiry received → auto-acknowledged → summary sent to your team
  Acknowledge the enquiry right away, then send your team a summary with the key details and suggested responses or next steps.
  
  

If you’ve never used automation tools before, sign up for a free Zapier account and experiment with simple two-step automations. This short tutorial goes through the basics of the platform and shows your how to set up your first ‘Zap’:

If you’re a YouLi user and want help setting this up, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Just book an Integration Consulting session with our team, and we’ll help you design and set up Zapier workflows that make sense for your business, including automating invoices with QuickBooks or Xero, summarizing enquiries, or streamlining other admin-heavy tasks.

5. Use AI to support customer enquiries

Customer support is one of the areas where AI expectations tend to run the highest, particularly around Agentic AI. It’s an emerging way people may start researching — and eventually booking — travel, but it’s still early territory.

We’re actively watching and testing this space at YouLi, and when it makes sense to integrate with the models and tools travelers actually use, we want to be ready. At the same time, when you’re dealing with real travelers, real trips, and real payments, reliability and clarity matter more than automation for its own sake.

At YouLi, we use AI to support customer enquiries in a very specific way. Our AI assistant, Scout, handles straightforward, repeatable questions, with anything more complex routed directly to a real person. It currently supports around 15% of customer enquiries with a 90% success rate, and is always backed by human support when needed.

The reality of group travel support is that many enquiries are important but predictable. Travelers want to know when their next payment is due, whether their details have been received, or where to find their itinerary. Getting these answers right matters, but handling them manually at scale isn’t always the best use of your team’s attention.

Used this way, AI can handle low-risk questions efficiently, freeing your team to focus on more complex or sensitive enquiries. The key is clear boundaries and an obvious path to human support when it’s needed.

When to consider an AI assistant for customer support

Setting up an AI assistant usually requires a bit of technical knowledge, ongoing maintenance, and sometimes outside help. So it’s not something every operator needs right away.

Here’s a simple way to pressure-test whether it’s worth considering for your business.

You should consider an AI assistant if:

You might want to wait if:

In practice, AI assistants work best when they’re used for low-risk, predictable questions, not everything. They’re there to reduce noise and interruptions, not replace judgement, empathy, or personal communication.

If these conditions line up for your business and you want help setting things up properly, YouLi’s team can support you with testing and integrating AI assistants in a way that’s reliable and aligned with how your trips work.

And if not, that’s fine too — there are plenty of non-technical ways to use AI (like the earlier examples in this guide) that can still save time.

Keep learning with YouLi

If you want to explore AI further (without going down a rabbit hole), we’ve got resources to help:

• • Travel Tech Cafe - Automation with YouLi + Zapier (Watch)
    Learn how to automate payments, invoices, and accounting workflows by connecting YouLi to QuickBooks or Xero with Zapier.
    
    
  • Travel Trends 2026 (Read)
    Our take on the top travel trends for 2026, including who is traveling and why, plus how AI is shaping travel businesses right now.
    
    
  • The Ultimate Prompt Playbook for Retreat Leaders and Travel Planners (Download)
    A practical collection of ready-to-use AI prompts designed specifically for travel planners and group travel operators.
    
    
  • Zapier + YouLi Article Guides (Read)
    • Creating your account + Making your first Zap
    • Browse Zapier + YouLi templates
    • Automate QuickBooks (or any accounting platform) bookkeeping