Emirates' AI traveller profile means the airline is writing down what the agent used to know: it says it is using AI to build a profile for each traveller, with biometrics to identify that traveller along the journey. An agency that does not keep its own client file risks the relationship moving to the airline.
Key facts
- More than 44,700 distinct customers passed through the desks I ran (the author's operations archive).
- Emirates says it is exploring this across the whole trip: before travel, on board and after (Keenan Hamza, via Gulf News).
- AI builds the profile for the individual; biometrics identify that individual (Keenan Hamza, via Gulf News).
The news. Gulf News reports that Emirates is betting on a future of flying in which the passenger asks less, because the airline already knows what they need. Speaking to media on the sidelines of Forsatek, Emirates Group's annual technology and innovation forum, Keenan Hamza, Emirates' vice-president of Innovation and New Technologies, described how the airline is exploring this across the whole trip: before travel, on board and after. Before the trip, the service would depend on who you are, what your profile is and whether you are travelling with children. On board, he said, it means the airline can bring you your tea or coffee before you ask for it. He described several technologies meeting, principally AI and biometrics: "We’re using the AI to build the profile for the individual," he said, with biometrics there to identify that individual. He also said Emirates does not intend to remove the human element from its premium service.
Who used to own the client file?
That was the agent's edge. Not the fare; anyone who looks can find the fare. The edge was knowing the client: who travels with whom, what went wrong last time, what they never wrote in a request but always wanted. A client came back to the agent who remembered.
More than 44,700 distinct customers passed through the desks I ran. Nobody remembers that many people. What an agent knows about a client, if it lives only in that agent's head, walks out of the door with them. An agency that keeps the booking but not the person has kept the wrong half.
What is the airline writing down now?
What Emirates described is the same knowledge, built on purpose: a profile for each traveller, and a way to recognise that traveller along the journey. The airline says it is exploring this from the moment a trip is planned to the moment the passenger is home. Planning the trip is where the agency has always stood. If the airline knows the family is travelling with children before the agent does, the agent is no longer the one who knows.
Nor is the airline giving up its people. So the human touch is not an answer on its own: the airline intends to keep both its staff and the file.
Why does it matter for the agency?
The client file is the asset, worth more than any single rate. Write it down: who travels with whom, what went wrong last time, the room they asked for once and should never have to ask for again. Keep it inside the agency, where the whole desk can read it, and use it before the client asks. Whatever tools the agency uses later, AI or not, can only work from a file that exists. If the airline builds that file and the agency does not, the relationship moves to the airline.