In 2024, Kim Becker and Nodar Revazishvili left their full-time jobs in the travel industry to launch Travel Buddy for Life, a user-friendly agentic AI platform for independent travel advisors. At the time, they knew exactly what their target clientele needed and wanted out of a specialized AI tool.
“While we were working with travel advisors, we noticed that there were a lot of hiccups coming in, especially when it came to AI in that time period,” said Becker, a former creative marketing expert who first met her co-founder Revazishvili at the host agency Travel Planners International (TPI).
The latter worked in business development and IT, where he came to understand the tech pain points of the average TPI travel advisor. Both wanted to build something that would help get advisors used to working with AI while keeping some kind of human touch.
Since then, the pair have teamed up with independent travel advisor Steven Gould of Gould’s Travel and relaunched their product as Trmnl (pronounced “terminal”), a one-stop suite of AI agents specifically designed to help travel advisors with specialized research, email marketing and more. One AI agent, for example, specializes in cruise travel, while another focuses on travel insurance.
Compared to other forms of AI, Trmnl is fairly foolproof.
“We tell all our users: Pretend and talk to them like they are your remote employees,” Revazishvili said.
For less tech-savvy advisors, Trmnl could be a potential way to utilize AI without having to learn basic prompting techniques. Gould shared the story of one current user who fielded an inquiry on a destination she knew nothing about. With a simple question or two asked to one of Trmnl’s agents, she was able to glean enough information to take a discovery call and win over a client she wouldn’t have been able to take on otherwise.
“It cuts down on my research tremendously,” said Lynn Fenster, a current Trmnl user and Vacation Planners franchise owner. “I can take whatever kind of clients I’m dealing with, some of whom may have some accessibility issues. Then I can plug all that in and say, ‘Okay, what do you recommend here?’”
For advisors who are already savvy with generative search, Becker said that they could still benefit from using it due to the platform’s specialized knowledge base. Unlike most generative search engines, Trmnl sources all its information directly from supplier websites, reducing the chance of misinformation or unhelpful, overgeneralized responses. It also currently integrates with ChatGPT and Gemini, and plans to bring on Claude soon.
“At the end of every single answer [an AI agent] gives you, it actually provides you with the specific links used, so you make sure the research was done properly,” Revazishvili said.
While a handful of other host agencies are beginning to pilot AI tools for their advisors, Trmnl stresses its flexibility for the independent travel advisor who may want to switch agencies or strike out on their own.
The travel advisor is always going to have the last say when it comes to anything our platform creates.
Ultimately, Gould said he hopes Trmnl can partner with host agencies that are hoping to generate more revenue and build up their advisor communities.
“Realistically, there is not a lot of movement in the host AI space to even be competing with,” he added.
As of this writing, Trmnl has 32 active users, and charges $35 a month for a subscription with a 14-day free trial. For now, the plan is to sell subscriptions to independent travel advisors, though Becker says they may one day partner not just with host agencies, but suppliers as well.
Above all, the trio stress that Trmnl is meant to assist, not replace.
“The travel advisor is always going to have the last say when it comes to anything our platform creates,” Revazishvili said.
