A new AI tool for selling cruise holidays has been launched to help travel agents streamline bookings and “supercharge” their ability to sell cruise

The company behind the AI Cruise Assistant, Widgety, said the tool will help the trade secure more bookings for holidays at sea, even if they’ve never been on a cruise.

The technology provider assured the new platform “isn’t a replacement for travel agents”, but will instead provide support to those looking to grow sales and enquiries.

The AI Cruise Assistant has been in development for 14 months, is powered by the Widgety API, and has already been tested by more than 250 agents.

“Travel agents spend hours hunting through brochures, operator websites, and PDFs for answers they should have in seconds,” the company said. “The AI Cruise Assistant allows agents to find ‘instant answers, one chat away’, answering complex customer queries without contacting the cruise line directly.”

Agents can search 2,500 ships and more than 75,000 itineraries. Emma Sanger-Horwell, director of cruise at Travelpack and product tester, said: “This is far more than just another piece of technology.”

The assistant also features fully customisable branding to match a company’s identity, activity analytics for agency managers, and saved conversations to refer back to chats or generate instant summaries for customers.