On Friday night, we hosted a holiday reunion with friends we had recently travelled to Goa with and the conversation naturally turned to our recent trip.

It is a 10-hour flight to Goa, and because we were flying direct in TUI Premium seats, we had access to the airport lounge. My travelling companions devoured their “Flight Juice”, a mixture of wine, gin, and tonics, with a few beers chucked in. Ironically, I never drink on flights, as I use them as a work opportunity to catch up on mail and even write a few blogs.

This always astonishes my friends when I travel with them because, for them, the airport signifies the moment to set aside their tasks and ease into the holiday with a few drinks. It doesn’t matter whether it’s 6:30 a.m. or not; they still follow a ritual of sinking a few pints before moving on to spirits during the flight. From my many years of flying on charter flights, I know this behaviour is common among British holidaymakers.

Research shows that 64% of holidaymakers drink three times as much per day on holiday as they do at home. Obviously, a key reason is that they are not in a work environment where drinking on the job would be tolerated by few employers. However, more interestingly, most holidaymakers start drinking around the pool from midday and continue until bedtime, creating 10-hour drinking sessions that they would never dream of doing at home.

Other significant behavioural changes include TV viewing nearly disappearing, except for must-watch sporting events that can be enjoyed at a bar, with most soaps being dropped for the week. Personally, holidays are one of the few occasions when I’ll sit down to watch a live football match instead of just indulging in the Match of the Day highlights.

Social media usage also increases markedly during the holidays. Holidaymakers post five times more frequently as they share their “best lives” with friends and family. Consumption also rises, with users spending twice as much time reviewing other people’s content.

Finally, we also become more “Randy” on holiday, with 47% of adults citing reduced responsibilities and a change of environment as the primary reasons for having more sex with their partners. However, there is also good news for singles, as 34% report engaging in casual sex while on holiday, compared to under 5% at home.

However, the fundamental shift in behaviour is the desire to “sunbathe.” Although getting a suntan has some sound medical benefits, such as increased vitamin D and melatonin, which help us sleep better, there are also risks if you do not use appropriate sun protection or overdo it. Yet most of us determinedly bake ourselves to achieve a suntan that rarely lasts more than a few weeks when we return to the UK.

The desire for sunshine remains the key motivation for beach holidays, with over 70% of holidaymakers citing it as one of the top three reasons for choosing a destination, particularly for winter holidays.

Interestingly, despite this, few online travel search engines offer average temperatures and hours of sunshine as search criteria, mainly because customers must know where they want to go before they can search.

The online travel sector still does not adequately serve customers during the “Dream” stage of the holiday booking process, when they select between destinations. This is why I have concentrated my AI Business Neural Voice on addressing this gap.

We have developed AI Voice Avatars, which can be emailed to databases of previous bookers to chat about which destinations they may wish to visit this coming holiday season. Unsurprisingly, the amount of sunshine they can expect whilst on holiday is a popular question and quickly answered using historical averages.

However, customers are also interested in the range and quality of a resort’s restaurants and bars. While all this information is freely available on the Internet, it’s much easier to let the voice AI do the research for you and send you a suggested itinerary with links to live online prices and availability or to set up a call with a human agent to make the booking.

Agentic AI is excellent for stimulating demand but requires “Human Intelligence (HI)” to finalise the sale. (Copyright Lisa McAuley of Hays Travel). AI voice agents are not yet advanced enough to interpret buying signals or closing techniques to close a sale.

Utilising AI to quantify “Future” holiday demand can update travel CRMs, allowing for personalised marketing tailored to customers’ future holiday needs. This could potentially double the conversion rates of previous bookers and is merely one illustration of how AI can be employed in the travel industry. Nevertheless, it is also prudent to step back and remind oneself of how customers’ needs differ on holiday.

Sunshine, sex, and booze are underlying factors in many holiday choices, so why overlook these aspects? Interestingly, discussing these needs may be easier with an impersonal AI travel consultant, armed with the knowledge of the internet.