What does AI really mean for travel advisors?
March 11, 2026 – Andy Ogg sits down with Chad Burt of Outside Agents for a candid, no-hype conversation about artificial intelligence and what it actually means for today’s travel professional. From smart teenage interns to fire and frying pans, Chad breaks down AI in a way that makes sense — and makes the case that the most powerful intelligence in the room will always be yours. Watch the full conversation below, and find the complete transcript underneath.
Andy Ogg: Hello, everyone. My name is Andy Ogg and I am the worker bee here. Our Ogg family of brands represents TravelProfessionalNews.com, FindAHostTravelAgency.com, and HomeBasedTravelAgent.com — all fantastic resources for the new travel advisor and the experienced advisor looking to grow and continue their business.
All of our websites offer tons of free downloads in terms of marketing, and tons of great news, information and education to help you get started or really grow your business. Today I am actually very excited, to be honest with you. I got my buddy — he’s a colleague.
But I’m going to call him my buddy — I got Chad Burt with me, and we’re going to be talking today about AI: what is it, what’s it going to do to our travel industry, and more importantly, what’s it going to do to the travel advisors as we move forward. Chad, thanks for joining me, my man.
Chad Burt: Andy, I could not be happier to be here. What we need to do nowadays is be human, right? We got all this artificial stuff coming, and I could not possibly be more comfortable being human with anybody else in the industry than you.
Andy Ogg: That’s because I can’t see you.
Chad Burt: Well, there’s that — full disclosure, I am… I’ve got a little bit of light perception in my left eye, but I am blind, so hence the shades. Just feel a little bit better — you don’t have to look at my eye wandering around.
But we’re going to dive in here, and I think the first question, Chad — I want to talk to you about — is if someone has heard the term AI, if you’re seeing the news: AI this, AI that…
Andy Ogg: What the heck is AI and how does it affect the travel advisor today?
Chad Burt: Right now, AI is nothing more than a pretty smart teenage intern. Folks, you are the actual intelligence behind the artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence — look, Andy, man, I got two teenage boys, right? They’re testing me every day. We go out, we play, wrestle around, all that kind of stuff. But Andy, they’re smarter than me. They’re bigger than me. They’re stronger than me. They’re everything I’d ever hoped to be. What do I do with it? I lead. I lead.
You know, I tell them — I got a whole stack of books filled with coulda, shoulda, wouldas. I am their actual intelligence. Do I have the right answers? No. Can I help them think? Yes.
That brings me back to this AI thing. Artificial intelligence has been around forever. Just ask your neighbor Karen. Ask anybody standing next to you — they got what they think is intelligence. What you have, what our agents have, is actual intelligence.
Andy Ogg: I like that. I like that. And I agree. So one of the things I really feel is — six months ago, let’s rewind back to last summer — the word AI was not only prevalent, but a little scary. A little bit scary on how fast it was going and what it was doing. You see competing countries come out with an AI and the whole world shifts, and it’s like, what is going on here?
And I have to be honest with you, Chad — six, nine months ago, I was sitting there going, what is going to happen to the travel industry with this intelligence? You know, I like to call it a robot. I’m not the biggest supporter of AI. My wife uses it, and in our days, I’m kind of straight up against it. I’m not really the kind of guy to put my hands in the dirt and grow vegetables in my garden.
So my interaction with AI started with the Meta glasses that my dad — he’s not seeing very well — my dad got the Meta glasses, and I know he did it on purpose. He bought a new pair for himself and gave me his old ones. He’s like, “Just try it. Just try it.” So I fought that for three weeks.
I put them on, and the thing I like about them is I can actually hold something up and say, “What am I holding?” and it’ll tell me. I like to cook a lot, so I hold up a bag of wood chunks for my good old-fashioned Weber and it says, “Hey, these are cherry flavor” or “these are apple flavor.” I’m like, well, that’s something I can’t do — that helped me.
But we’re here today, and I think the realization has come to play that AI is a tool for agents. It’s not taking away the agent.
Chad Burt: Yes, sir. So I’ve been on a — and you know me — I get on a crusade, right? And what I’m trying to tell people is: look, the wheel was technology. Fire was big technology. Bronze — huge technology. Now we just call it a frying pan. It’s not “technology” anymore, okay? It just is what it is.
All technology, sufficiently advanced, will appear as magic — a quote from Isaac Asimov. It’s technology in the sense that it’s coming. My big concern is: will we ride this horse or will the horse ride us?
I was around when the Internet happened. I’m that old. Okay, I was there when it happened. It was a wild, wild west. And my mom was a travel agent for 33 years. And she’s like — and I’m going to quote her, Andy, and I hope I don’t get you in trouble — but she said, and I quote, “I’m not doing that crap.” She felt it was a less valuable replacement for her. It would appear to have quality, but it wouldn’t.
The difference is: the Internet doesn’t care. Now, let’s fast forward just a few years. AI doesn’t care, man. It doesn’t care. It sounds like it. It looks like it. It uses words like it. But it does not care.
Andy, when you and I started to get to know each other, there was some stuff going on. And for no particular reason, we chose to care. That’s because we’re fundamentally human. We’ll figure out why in a minute. But we knew that felt right. AI can’t do that yet.
Andy Ogg: Yeah. At the end of the day, as we’re looking at AI coming — please, if you all just turn off right now and you only remember one thing — please remember: this is about you. You are not the tools in your belt. The tools in the belt amplify you. They augment you. They make you better at what you’re doing. But they will not, cannot, and shall not replace you.
That’s the point. You know, I was having a discussion with one of my neighbors, and he’s worried about AI taking his job. He’s like, “Man, what I am is replaceable.” And I’m arguing with him because the human mind has this thing — it’s a wonderful gift of logic. We have the ability to problem-solve in real time. Not looking at the whole picture and doing what other people have done, but going in the right direction given that specific moment in time.
And I don’t think that if an end user books a trip to Europe using Anthropic or OpenAI or any of these big developments, I’m pretty sure Sam Altman’s not going to pick up the phone for customer service if they get to the hotel and it’s closed for good. What do you think?
Chad Burt: Of course. And that’s the power of the human right now. And I think that advisors — I’m looking at this and I see so many tools in our business. One of my great partner assistants, he’s like my right hand. He uses AI for everything. He’s automated so many parts of our business. He makes these great-looking images and these great videos for agents to download and use in their marketing. And he uses everything AI, and I’m just impressed with the results. But he is the driver of that bus. He’s got a bus full of tools and he uses those tools daily.
And that’s where the advisor — I feel like today — needs to move in the direction of: how can AI help an agent? I know that they can stay organized, they can keep schedules, and you can set up agents to follow up with people, remind you to follow up with people, or even just remind you, “Hey, it’s been a year since Karen went on vacation. I bet she’s jonesing, and she probably just got her tax return. It’s time to reach out.”
That’s one of the things — outside agent, shameless plug — we built the industry’s leading AI starting about three years ago. And we started with: how can I understand the agent? Not how can I give information the agent can use. The latter is really easy, but I need to do it in your voice. Andy, we’ve known each other for a minute. You know I drop a “dude” and maybe a couple of choice phrases now and again. That’s part of my personality.
Outside Agents became successful, I think, for a number of reasons. One of them is that we’re real. When I go to fight for an agent, it’s because I want to fight for the agent, not because I want to make an extra dollar. Well, maybe not — but you know what I mean. I’m here to help.
What I’ve learned is: AI is nothing more than the newest Phillips head screwdriver. Andy, back in the day, man, we had flathead screwdrivers, period. That’s all there was. And we had square nails, right? And as we kept on evolving, we got Allen heads, we got Phillips, and all that. It’s the tool that suits your need at the time. As a leader, that’s the most valuable thing to you.
Andy Ogg: How do you think an agent today could open their eyes to AI and find the tools that can help them with their business? How would they start?
Chad Burt: Go play. Play. Ladies and gentlemen, look — we taught ourselves not just how to speak English in a year and a half, but what language was in a year and a half, by playing with our moms and dads. We say “mama,” and she says, “No, no — mama.” We’d all giggle, right? Play is the method by which humans learn the best. Think Montessori schools.
There’s a researcher whose studies led to Montessori schools, and he said — and I want to drop a word here — he said, “If you wish for somebody to master something, place them in a room full of it.” Touch it, feel it, play with it, mess with it. Do not ignore AI.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve got a 19-month-old right now who is just attempting all kinds of words. She’s in that secret language phase where only the family knows what the heck she’s saying. It’s the best phase in the entire world.
Andy Ogg: So you think just diving in and playing with it. And I actually tend to agree. I would say if an agent is working through their day and they’re doing task X, Y, Z — whether it’s a follow-up, accounting, booking, whatever it is — I think they could go in and play with: what can the AI do to streamline this or do it for them?
Chad Burt: Yes, sir. At no time would I tell an agent to “save time using AI.” Reallocate it. Look — give yourself a few minutes to think. Not in a structured way. I don’t have a goal. I just need to sit there and look at a blank page and think about it for a minute.
And now if I had a friend — do the last article I gave you, give me your feedback, your thoughts — because I grow from that. AI should be exactly that. It should be a relatively trusted confidant that will tell you if you look fat in those pants.
Andy Ogg: Okay, that’s good. So let me ask you — in terms of the AI that Outside Agents has created and is providing their agents — can you share some success stories of maybe where it stepped in and helped an agent, where maybe they were against it or not using it before?
Chad Burt: Oh, gee, Andy. Maybe about 5,000 examples.
Andy Ogg: Okay, I would like to hear all of them, starting at 5,000 and going forward, please.
Chad Burt: Okay, so Lionel Garcia, our up-and-coming national director of sales — he’s a Copilot guy. He’s like, “Hey, you know, it knows my voice, it knows my emails, it knows all this kind of stuff. I don’t know why I’m using Maggie.” And he’s a man I employ, and I respect people who disagree with me. His point was: “It looks good.” I said, “Okay, well, it looks good. Great. Do me a favor — try both. Do what you’re doing with Copilot and do what you’re doing with Maggie.”
A few days later, he comes back and I’m going to quote him — he said, “Holy crap, this is amazing.” And what he’s using it for is he’s taking questions from agents that are kind of detailed, nuanced, more challenging. He’s grabbing stuff out of Maggie, popping it into the email, and then he is tuning it to the question and the person with whom he’s interacting. So it’s a starting point. It’s a jump point.
Andy Ogg: Now, just to clarify — Maggie is the name of your AI for Outside Agents, correct?
Chad Burt: Oh, I’m sorry, yeah. And just to be clear — Maggie’s not a real person, correct. But she is really cool. She’s a nurturer. She’s here to help. She’s trying to be there for you. And she’ll also kick you in the butt.
The point is, Maggie — we developed her because Outside Agents has been around a long, long time. I’ve talked with tens of thousands of agents, and instead of presuming I knew what they needed or wanted, we let them show us. So Maggie is a contextually driven AI entity — I hate to say “bot” — entity that’s built for the travel industry.
Andy, if my wife and I go to my barber and I ask him what the word “fine” means, I won’t get at least three answers, right? Context matters. Maggie has context.
Folks, when you go to ChatGPT, Perplexity, whatever engine out there — it sounds good because it’s plausible. It doesn’t mean it’s contextually correct. Folks, as you’re using AI, please understand: you’re the grown-up in the room. You might not be as smart as it as far as overall horsepower, but you’re the one with the tires. You’re the one that knows how to drive. You’re the one with the experience. Use it.
And that all goes back to prompting and learning — the toddler playing. Prompting and how to ask questions. So as I’ve played with it — minuscule, but I have — when I got those Meta glasses from my pop, I said, “I am fully blind, so please use as descriptive wording as possible.” And it saved that. And now when I go, “Hey, what am I looking at?” it’ll give me — “You’re in your backyard, it looks to be a sunny day, and you’re looking at palm trees and a pool in the distance.”
Andy Ogg: Okay, well, that’s pretty descriptive. It doesn’t tell me the temperature of the pool, but it does tell me there’s a pool. And I have to say something else on this — because the way you just said that, you’re driving the bus, you’re driving the car. I heard a video of someone recently asking one of the AI models: is it better to walk 500 meters to get my car washed at the car wash, or is it better to drive? And that model kept saying to walk. Well, how the heck are you going to get your car washed if it’s sitting at home?
Chad Burt: That is a perfect example. It’s better to walk in, but I need to go get my car washed. If I walk there, I don’t have a car to wash.
Andy Ogg: And I think that’s a really great way of characterizing what AI is. And I think the world right now is excited. Do you remember when CDs came out, how cool that was? Do you want to own a CD player right now? Do you want to go buy a DVD store? Let’s go invest in iPods — we’re going to make a million bucks selling iPods. There were these wonderful technologies that were groundbreaking at the time — earth-changing, shattering. And then they go away, and no one thinks about them anymore.
AI, I don’t think, is going to be that way. But I do think we’re in that earth-shattering “oh my gosh” part where it is so exciting and we don’t know what’s coming.
Chad Burt: Andy, let me share with you a very personal and authentic story. You know me and my stories, right? When AI hit — February 23, 2023 — I wrote in my journal that night that I saw the face of God, lowercase G. I’m not trying to make a religious statement. I’m saying omnipotent, all-present, and so on. I was like, “Holy crap, what is this?”
And then I kind of went through a Descartes moment — “I think, therefore I am.” I deconstructed a little bit, and I realized that a twinkle in the eye is something AI will never have. It can’t. That “I’ve got a bad idea but let’s try it out, it’ll be a lot of fun” — that moment of not being entirely logical is fundamentally human. Sometimes we take a risk, sometimes we jump.
And I explained it to my sons this way — God bless them. Chad, Nicholas — here’s a shout out. Here’s the thing I told them: “Boys, if you ever see a dragon flying by, grab the tip of the tail. You see a dragon flying by, grab onto that tail, hold on as hard as you can.” I explained that the dragon probably can’t bite you from the tip of his tail.
About two months later, my oldest son comes back to me and says, “Dad, that wasn’t about the tail, was it?” I said, “Well, what are you saying, son?” He said, “It’s about — if I saw a dragon flying by, I ought to do something.”
Andy Ogg: Dude, I rang that dad bell.
Chad Burt: I said, “Yeah. That’s what I was trying to convey.” To me, that’s what AI is. It’s a dragon. Don’t ignore it. It’s the most remarkable thing in the history of man. Embrace it, use it. Be better at it than your clients. If it’s not the thing that floats your boat, cool — know what it is and use it.
Andy Ogg: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think that’s the overall. Now, I have a question — and I’m going to say this from the supplier-to-agent side. I’ve noticed a bit of a change in some of the suppliers and how they are choosing to work with agents. It seems to me that suppliers are going to be using a lot of bots, and it could be possible that the BDM role — you know, the business development manager — that role might be changing. Do you see anything like that coming for today’s agent?
Chad Burt: Andy, that question was not queued. That was not set up. I want to tell you something. We just deployed something called “Give a Rose.” And what it is — Maggie sees what you’re doing. When you’ve done some trainings, you’ve made a couple of sales, and a couple of other criteria are met with a given vendor, she fires off an email to your BDM. And in your case it would say, “Hi, I’m Andy Ogg. I just finished this vendor training, I made these sales. I’d like to get to know you a little bit.”
Your BDM is one of your best resources ever. Why not introduce them? Look, I run a billion-dollar-a-year company — I cannot believe I can say that; we started off with $10.62, right? But if you come to me and you know things, that’s great. Show me — put a little skin in the game. Then I really want to talk.
What’s happening is our BDMs are going, “Holy smokes, these are the people I want to talk to.” I only want to send them qualified stuff. People that have gotten their fingers dirty. You know me — my pro series slogan is “cool people, dirty boots.” I want to know you’ve been there, you talk the talk, you walk the walk.
When we look at the opportunity to use AI to facilitate relationships as opposed to replace them — for me, that’s gold.
Andy Ogg: I like that. That’s a really good way to look at it. But your mom told you never bring a girl you’re dating a dozen roses — just bring her one in the color that she likes.
Chad Burt: Maggie is trying to get you not just the candy you want for dinner, but the broccoli you need. So if she can help you facilitate a relationship — get over that cold moment, “I don’t know who they are, why am I reaching out” — let her do it for you. Not that big of a deal. But make sure it reflects you. At the end of the day, our AI is all about you, our agent.
Andy Ogg: Let me ask you — I know you’ve got a lot of agents working with you. What percentage of your agents are using Maggie, this AI?
Chad Burt: Well, you know, if I was here to sell stuff, Andy, I’d tell you everybody. I’ll be honest with you — about 2,400 so far. But the depth of engagement is really important. In Internet terms, “time on page” — if I get six seconds, that’s a good day, right, Andy?
Andy Ogg: That’s a long time. Twelve seconds — holy smokes.
Chad Burt: We’re seeing three and a half minutes. So the agents that are using it are diving in deeper. And more importantly, Andy, they’re doing it longitudinally. Everybody goes in there and posts — done, check that box and move on. Folks, you’ve got to think about doing things consistently over time. Let AI help you with that a little bit. Don’t feel like you have to come up with a six-week campaign by yourself. Let Maggie help you. She knows what training you’ve done, the sales you’re making, all kinds of stuff.
So — and I don’t know if you saw it or not — we just released a press release, probably the first couple weeks of the year. We added a proprietary AI agent to FindAHostTravelAgency.com. We figured that was just a home run. People are looking for a host agency. We can get the bot to learn. We started that thing and we’ve already had over 5,000 discussions. And those discussions are not one question.
Andy Ogg: It’s back and forth.
Chad Burt: I’m looking for a host agency partnered with Travel Leaders, Virtuoso, whatever consortium. I’m looking for a host agency that offers leads. I’m looking for a host agency that, you know, offers travel to Mexico specifically. There are so many things, and they’re having these engaging conversations, and that bot is getting so smart. I mean, we’ve got to go in there every once in a while and tweak it, but my goodness — the information it’s putting out there and helping people find the right host agency for their business. It’s powerful. It’s powerful.
And that is one of those things like — okay, I can’t sit on the phone all day and do that, and I can’t sit at my computer and type to that many people every day. But this AI bot is doing work for us to help them.
Andy Ogg: I like that. And when you get a call, Andy, that call is better qualified.
Chad Burt: Through some of that discussion, they now have more pointed questions. I’ve been doing this for 23 years. Bring me your most pointed questions, please.
Andy Ogg: Yeah, yeah, get to the point, you know what I mean?
Chad Burt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s really cool.
Andy Ogg: Well, I think there’s a lot — obviously this could go on for hours and hours and hours. I think one of the big takeaways I want to leave agents with today is: one, go play. Get your hands dirty. Yes — go out and explore, put your hands in the dirt, throw some things at these AI tools. Whether it’s Claude, or ChatGPT, or Perplexity — there are so many of them now. Play with it. Find one and play with it. It may not be the one you stick with forever, but play with it, see what it can do for you.
And I think the second thing — and I think Chad, both you and I agree on this one — it is a tool. You are the driver. It is not going to take your job, take your house, and leave you on the front stoop cold and wet. It’s a tool that you are going to use in your business to make more time to focus on growing your business, make more time to get that blank piece of paper out, like Chad said, to come up with some ideas. It’s going to give you some more time to run and grow what you’ve already built.
And that AI tool — whichever one you decide to use — it should be there to help you. And my bud Chad here, at Outside Agents, you guys do have a proprietary AI already working very well with agents. And that’s something you need to think about too. If you’re in the market for a host agency or if you’re looking to partner with a host agency, I think that’s something agents should be looking at.
Chad Burt: I just gave myself — I think I’m going to add a segment on the site to say, “Is AI available?” So here’s a thought for you, Andy. Kind of in closing — Adam Grant, he’s a pretty smart dude. Professor — I think Yale or Harvard. Behavioral economics. But he pointed out that we don’t always know the answer, and it’s really important to embrace that.
I think the strongest person in the room is the one who can say, “I might not be the strongest one.” If I’m the smartest person in the room, I might be in the wrong room. FDR, at the tail end of the Great Depression, became president, and they asked him, “What will you do to fix it?” And he said, “I do not know yet, but I will work with every American to discover the solution that we need.”
That humble “I do not know the answer” — any of this — but by all that I hold dear, I promise you I’m going to keep on falling forward until I find it.
Andy, you know, human beings are an apex predator not because we have big teeth or big claws, but because we’re the most efficient mover on the planet. We cover ground by simply falling forward and locking our knees. Which means if I hit a line in the head with a rock, I just have to keep falling forward.
Andy, I just beg — literally beg — that all things considered, and knowing that we cannot know what we don’t know yet, I just ask: we go play, go try it, test it. Do not rely on it. Just like my sons will give me the best answer they have at the moment — it may not always be the one I want them to use ink on to sign a mortgage for me. It’s a matter of falling forward.
Here’s what I learned recently. My kids are kidding around because they’re kids — kids are always kidding around. Then it occurred to me: well, if they’re kids and they’re kidding, I’m a dad, I must be “daddy.” Let’s make “humaning” a verb again now. Not a state, not a place that you achieve. Let’s make it a function of action over time. And let’s make the actual intelligence far more valuable than the artificial intelligence.
It’s imperative that we lead these young, smart people into these things, these artificials — whatever. We must lead them. They don’t know the pain we’ve had. They don’t know the successes we’ve had. And I’m a dad of an 11-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 19-month-old.
Andy Ogg: All girls.
Chad Burt: Trust me — my biggest lessons are showing them scars on my body from mistakes I’ve made. “Yes, fall down. I’ll be right here by you. I promise you I’ll pick you back up and we’ll do it again.” Let’s learn from it. Everybody — just keep on keeping on. That’s the most important thing you can do. Hey, life’s a garden. Dig it.
Andy Ogg: There you go. There you go. Chad, man, I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and I appreciate you taking the time. I know you’re busy. And you know what? These conversations are probably the most important things in the world because, as we’re talking — much like AI — we’re learning, we’re vectorizing, we’re narrowing and adjusting our perceptions of things in a manner such that the result is greater than the sum of the parts. That’s all we have to do — just pull a miracle every so often, every day.
Chad Burt: Yeah. This is unprecedented. We will not understand what tomorrow brings. You must stand in tomorrow, though, to see what it brings.
Andy Ogg: That’s right. That’s A.I. — actual intelligence. I like that. I like that, man. Well, I appreciate you, and I look forward to talking to you again very soon. Is there anything else you want to close off the day with?
Chad Burt: Yeah. Andy, since you and I met, you’ve grown my heart many times. You’ve taught me things. I was telling you a story about the airport the other day. These lessons don’t necessarily make empirical sense. They don’t necessarily deliver dollar value. And they’re the most valuable things I’ve ever learned as a human.
Let’s keep humaning, dude. That’s the most important thing.
Andy Ogg: I agree. I agree. All right, well, thank you very much, man.
Interview conducted by Andy Ogg, Travel Professional News. Guest: Chad Burt, Outside Agents.