How Aitken Spence Travels is bringing AI to the guest journey
Travel and Hospitality
A Group With a Legacy of Service
Aitken Spence is one of Sri Lanka's oldest and most diversified business groups, listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange with interests across tourism, logistics, maritime services, power and more.
Within the Group's tourism portfolio, Aitken Spence Travels is the destination management arm, with more than four decades of experience in inbound and outbound travel. It looks after international guests visiting Sri Lanka from the moment a booking is confirmed to the day they fly home. Airport transfers, hotel stays, guided tours and on the ground support all sit within one journey, and every guest experiences it as a single service.
That journey has a long stretch that happens before a guest ever lands. Travellers want reassurance about their itinerary, practical answers about visas and arrival, and a clear point of contact once they are in the country. For a business of this standing, the question was how to be present for guests across the whole trip, at every hour, without adding to the workload of the teams already running the operation.
The Weight of Routine Questions
Guest questions follow a predictable pattern. Before arrival, guests ask about pickup times, passport and visa requirements, and what to expect at the airport. During the stay, they ask about their schedule, transport and nearby experiences. When something goes wrong, such as a noisy room or a late transfer, they need it acknowledged quickly and routed to the right person.
Each of these conversations is small. Together, they take a large share of the operations team's day, and many arrive outside office hours or from guests in a different time zone. Complaints add a second pressure, because they need to reach the right department with enough context to be resolved, rather than sitting in a general inbox.
Aitken Spence Travels needed a single channel that could answer routine questions at any hour, guide guests through each stage of their trip, and pass complaints and complex itinerary queries to a person without losing the conversation.
Why BotCircuits
BotCircuits worked with the Aitken Spence Travels team to design a concierge around how guests actually travel.
A concierge on WhatsApp.
Guests receive the concierge on a channel they already use daily, with no app to download. A guest opts in once and the conversation continues from there.
Driven by booking data.
Journey messages are triggered by each guest’s booking details, so a message arrives at the right point in the trip and carries the guest’s own travel dates, destination and arrangements.
Multilingual, around the clock.
The concierge is available 24/7 in multiple languages and can switch language during a conversation, which matters for a guest base that spans many countries.
Complaints routed, not lost.
When a guest raises a concern, the concierge identifies it, categorises it and sends it to the relevant department, such as Guest Relations or Transport. The guest receives an immediate acknowledgement and updates until a person resolves it.
A path to a human.
Itinerary specific and complex queries move from the bot to a live agent through BotCircuits Helpdesk, which also gives the team analytics on resolution times, common complaint categories and escalation rates.
Built to extend.
Journey stages, messages and escalation rules are configured on the platform, so new stages, languages or flows can be added without building a separate system.
Support From Booking to Departure
The concierge stays with each guest across the trip on WhatsApp, from the weeks before arrival through to departure. It shares timely, personalised information, answers everyday questions at any hour and suggests experiences that suit the guest. When a guest raises a complaint or a question that needs judgment, it is routed to the right team or passed to a live agent through BotCircuits Helpdesk, with the conversation intact.
For the operations team, this means fewer repetitive questions and complaints that arrive already sorted. For guests, it means an answer at any hour, on a channel they already use.
