Virgin Atlantic CEO: AI books, people win
Voice reading · ~1 min
Corneel Koster has a clear line drawn on the AI map. According to Skift Global Forum's preview, Virgin Atlantic's CEO is betting the airline wins not on algorithmic wizardry but on what humans do better: the feeling of belonging a crew creates, the emotional thread that holds a brand together when the booking engineBooking engineA booking engine is the tool that lets guests book directly on the hotel's own website. It shows availability, prices and takes the payment with no middleman. It is the key piece for winning direct bookings and saving... runs on automation.
This is the split happening now across travel. AI handles the transaction. ChatbotsChatbotA chatbot is a program that converses with the guest by text or voice to solve questions or guide a booking. The old ones followed rigid scripts, today's use language models and sound natural. Done well it takes load... meddle with channel management. Revenue algorithms optimize price points. But Koster is backing his wager with premium cabin investment and scenario-planning discipline, the kind of structural bets you make when you believe the margin lives in intangibles, not efficiency gains.
There's a lesson here for hoteleros. The temptation is to read this as "AI doesn't matter." Wrong. It's the opposite. AI does the work that scales and standardizes. That frees the crew, the concierge, the night manager to do the work that sticks. The bet isn't human versus machine. It's knowing which job belongs to which. Koster's playbook says: automate the friction, invest in the feeling.
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