Combatting false reviews: Flight Centre selects ‘Wingman’ AI software

As the travel sector continues its recovery from heavy impact made by the Covid-19 pandemic, Australia-headquartered Flight Centre has chosen CodeGen’s Review Spotter, branded as Wingman, to enable its retail agents to provide and browse valuable insights of hotels, destinations and activities.

The travel group looks to provide agents with a more efficient way to share experiences, and by having access to this knowledge, staff can leverage insights from the real-life experiences of their fellow agents to better inform their customers.

Wingman includes a natural language search function, with feedback able to be semantically analysed so that thousands of reviews can be searched quickly and retrieved by category, such as ‘food’, ‘service’ and ‘location’.

Using the solution, agents can search the reviews they need either via a secured access to the platform or in their integrated TravelBox desktop.

Publicly-listed Flight Centre operates in 23 countries, and has rolled out Wingman to 4,000 agents worldwide.

CodeGen, the provider of the AI-powered software, has over 20 years’ experience in worldwide, scalable tech solution delivery for the travel industry, with the company working with tour operators, airlines, cruise and resort providers.

Its end-to-end TravelBox solution enables incremental bookings and revenue generation, as well as automating business processes, from inventory to costing and pricing, documentation and travel accounts.

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“Our agents were finding that online reviews weren’t particularly reliable, so we wanted to provide peer-to-peer recommendations that they could use to advise travellers on the best places to visit,” said Jason Hartley, program general manager at Flight Centre.

“Now, with Wingman our staff have the information they need at their fingertips and the peace of mind that they can trust it.

“It also means that with this global shared knowledgebase, we have an efficient way for our agents to browse reliable feedback and feel confident recommending places they may not have visited personally.”

Mark Melzack, head of sales at CodeGen, commented: “We are proud to have extended our partnership with Flight Centre and to launch this initiative with them.

“With Review Spotter, Flight Centre agents have a powerful tool to help them provide a better service to their customers.

“Initial response to the platform has been extremely positive and we look forward to seeing some tangible benefits in the very near future.”