A concierge on duty at 9pm on a Wednesday.
A travel membership business where the product is access: better trips, better deals, better service than members can find on their own. We embedded Otto as the concierge that answers the moment a member gets curious.
The gap between curiosity and a human.
The travel agents are the relationship layer. They know the members, understand what they are looking for, and build itineraries a search engine cannot. The product was never the problem.
The problem was the gap. A member wakes at 9pm on a Wednesday wondering what flights to Milan look like in October: two people, business class. They open the site. There is no one to ask. They drift to a search engine, squint at combinations for twenty minutes, and either forget about it or book it themselves, without the support the membership is supposed to provide.
No one can be on call every hour for every “I am just exploring” conversation. And by the time a member is serious enough to make contact, half of them have already decided.
Not a chatbot. A concierge.
The decision was not to build another FAQ chatbot or a contact form dressed up with AI branding. It was to build an actual concierge: one that lives inside the membership platform, knows who the member is, searches live flights in real time, and knows when to hand off to a human agent.
The distinction matters.A chatbot that says “our team will be in touch” does not solve the problem. A concierge that gives you five ranked flight options at 9pm on a Wednesday, with prices, layovers, baggage, and a one-click path to your own agent, does.
Otto sits inside the membership site as a first-class experience, not a widget bolted on. It knows the member’s name, their points balance, their home departure city, and who their travel agent is. It also runs as a standalone full-screen concierge for members who want it. Every conversation is personal from the first message.
From a vague thought to five ranked options.
Members type naturally: “I am thinking about a couple of weeks in Italy in September, flying from Sydney, what are we looking at?” Otto reads the intent, extracts the travel parameters, and responds like a knowledgeable person, not a form. Vague starting points are handled as naturally as specific requests.
Behind the conversation, flight search runs against real availability: actual itineraries, not cached data or price guides. Each option comes back as a structured card: airline, stop count with layover cities written out, departure and arrival times, per-person and total price, baggage allowance, refundability. Five deduplicated options, ranked, in seconds.
Otto knows the member’s points balance and factors it into the conversation. It knows their usual departure city so they never repeat it. The concierge is member-aware by default, not by request.
When browsing turns into intent, one click sends a booking request to the member’s assigned agent, with the full conversation and shortlist attached. The agent receives a warm lead, not a cold contact form.
Conversations and travel ideas are stored, so members pick up where they left off. Deals monitoring, saved itineraries, and proactive suggestions are already scaffolded in for the next phase.
What changed.
Before
- The 9pm curiosity drifted off to a search engine.
- Agents fielded early-stage enquiries all day.
- Members self-booked without the service they pay for.
- Exploration disappeared outside the platform.
- The membership felt like a website with a contact form.
After
- Every travel thought has somewhere to go, any hour.
- Exploratory conversations are captured inside the membership.
- Agents convert serious intent instead of triaging curiosity.
- Booking requests arrive with the groundwork done.
- The membership feels staffed around the clock.
Four entries from the record.
The scenario that defined the build: two people, business class, October, asked at 9pm. Answered in seconds: five ranked itineraries with layovers, baggage, and prices for the party, and a path to the member’s own agent.
By the time an agent picks up the conversation, the member has seen options, shortlisted a preference, and arrived ready to move. The early-stage research is done before a human spends a minute on it.
The concierge greets the member by name, knows their points balance, and assumes their usual departure city. No anonymous sessions, no repeated preferences. The membership’s relationship, carried into the conversation.
Otto does not replace the agents. It does not negotiate rates, build complex multi-destination itineraries from scratch, or know that one member will not fly through Dubai in August. That judgment belongs to the agents. It should.
Otto removes the access gap and hands the agents a warm lead instead of a cold form.
The numbers will be the run log’s, not ours.
The measure for this work is retention of the transaction: a member who would have self-booked is routed through the concierge to their agent, and the membership keeps the booking. At typical margins, a small number of recovered bookings covers the build and the annual running cost. The concierge does not need to be the busiest thing on the site. It needs to be the thing members reach for first.
We publish verified numbers or none. Figures from this engagement are available on request once the measurement period closes.