Only Tourism Automates 80% of Visa Inquiries with Respond.io’s AI Agent

Only Tourism is a Dubai-based travel services provider simplifying global travel for customers across the UAE and international destinations. Its services include visa processing, tours and holiday packages to Sri Lanka, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Philippines. Known especially for its expertise in handling visas, the business receives frequent inquiries over WhatsApp.

The problem: Agents overwhelmed with repetitive processes

As Only Tourism expanded its customer base, conversation volumes grew rapidly. The business relied heavily on WhatsApp to manage inquiries, but manually replying to every message became unsustainable. Agents were spending hours repeating information about visa requirements, pricing, and application statuses. Response times slowed, which caused leads to drop off and seek answers elsewhere.

To improve efficiency, Only Tourism subscribed to respond.io to manage all conversations in a single inbox. In the meantime, it also experimented with Intercom’s AI Agent, Fin, to test the best solution for scaling conversations. However, Intercom’s solution was extremely expensive, and offered less personalized customer support.

The respond.io solution

When respond.io’s customer team understood Only Tourism’s challenges, they stepped in to work out a solution. Customer Success Manager Joshua Loo demonstrated that respond.io could deliver the same automation capabilities as Intercom at a far lower cost. Additionally, the team offered guidance on how to achieve Meta’s verified blue tick, further solidifying Only Tourism’s confidence in the platform.

The customer success team worked closely with Only Tourism to deploy a customized AI agent that could handle the complexity of visa inquiries, provide 24/7 coverage, and deliver consistent, professional responses.

Customized AI Agent setup for accuracy and reliability

Respond.io’s customer success team conducted a dedicated AI Agent setup session to ensure the AI Agent responded in Only Tourism’s brand tone, with clear guardrails in place for precision and reliability. Another key step was optimizing the company’s knowledge sources for AI, so that the AI agent could accurately retrieve and deliver detailed visa information without human intervention.

The AI Agents can be set up for specific roles with templates and then further customized. They learn from a business’s knowledge sources, which can include PDFs or web content. Once AI Agents are trained on the knowledge sources, they should be fully equipped to answer inquiries related to their roles, but it’s important to set guidelines and test the agents before deploying.

Integration with APIs for visa application processing

It was important that the AI Agent could not only answer new leads asking about visa requirements, but also manage follow-ups from customers who had already applied. For that, the AI Agent needed access to real-time visa application data. Using APIs, Only Tourism set up an integration to enable the AI Agent to retrieve visa application statuses using the applicant’s ID number.

Eliminate weekend chat backlog with 24/7 instant replies

When human agents were handling conversations manually, it was difficult to keep up with inquiries that came in overnight or on weekends. This meant agents came into work with a large backlog, and customers were kept waiting.

To reduce pressure on human agents, the AI agent was configured to manage all incoming conversations during off-hours. This provided immediate, structured responses 24/7, ensuring customers received the same high level of service regardless of time or day.

“With respond.io’s AI Agent managing 80% of our visa inquiries, we handle twice as many conversations while keeping customers satisfied with prompt, accurate answers. Since our team no longer faces an endless backlog of routine inquiries, they can focus on providing quality support for more complex cases.”

— Adam Xaniar, CEO of Only Tourism

The results

Since enabling its new AI Agent, Only Tourism has seen rapid growth along with dramatic improvements in operational efficiency. The businesses now processes 6x more monthly leads than in the past as it now has the capacity to handle them and leads no longer drop off.

The AI Agent handles 2x more conversations per day than agents could respond to manually, and automates 80% of visa-related inquiries. Agents have reclaimed hours previously spent on repetitive questions and can now concentrate on higher-value conversations, such as complex travel packages and customer retention efforts.

With fewer manual tasks, faster response times, and a scalable AI system in place, Only Tourism is better positioned to handle increasing demand and maintain round-the-clock service quality.

Want to achieve similar results for your business? Contact us for a free consultation today!