What to Ask a New Travel Lead: The Intake Checklist

The short answer

A new travel lead needs ten pieces of information before you can plan. Ask only the ones that change your next step.

That means three things:

1. Collect the ten fields in the table below.
2. Skip what the traveler already told you, and leave passport details for booking.
3. Hand the advisor a complete brief, in the traveler’s own words where they matter.

A customer-facing AI agent built with Agentplace can do this for travel agencies, advisors and tour operators. Travelers talk with it on its own page, by text or voice. It asks only for what’s missing, hands you a complete brief, recommends suitable trips and moves the traveler toward booking.

If your inquiries already arrive complete, a form builder such as Typeform or Jotform is enough.

What should a travel agency collect from a new lead?

Ten fields. Each one changes what you’d propose.

Field	Why it matters	How to ask it
Dates and flexibility	Season decides price, weather and what’s open	“When are you hoping to travel, and could you move a few days?”
Party size and ages	Ages decide tour eligibility, rooms and child pricing	“Who’s coming? How old will any children be?”
Budget	It rules out whole categories of hotel and route	“What would you spend per person? Does that include flights?”
Destination or interests	Some name a place, others name a feeling	“Somewhere in mind, or start from how the trip should feel?”
Pace	Same country, opposite itineraries	“Full days, or a slower trip with free afternoons?”
Mobility, fitness, diet, accessibility	They decide which tours, hotels and transfers suit	“Anything we should plan around, such as walking, stairs, diet or health?”
Occasion	A honeymoon and a school holiday differ in price and pace	“Is this trip for anything special?”
Past trips	The best evidence of taste you’ll get	“Which trip did you love most, and what would you never repeat?”
Decision maker	The person writing may not say yes	“Is anyone else involved in deciding?”
Booking timeline	How fast to reply and how hard to hold space	“When would you like to have this booked?”

The last column matters as much as the first. The same question, asked badly, gets a blank or a guess.

Why do travel inquiries turn into back-and-forth?

Travelers describe the trip they want, rarely in your fields. A typical inquiry:

“Hi! We’re thinking about Italy next summer, maybe two weeks. Food, some history, a bit of beach. Can you help?”

It sounds complete. It isn’t:

• Who is “we”?
• Is “next summer” June or late August?
• Is the budget four thousand or forty thousand?
• Does anyone need to avoid the hill towns because of the stairs?

You send four questions. The traveler answers two. You write again.

By the time you can plan, a week has passed and they’ve spoken to someone else.

How do you take a travel inquiry to a complete brief, step by step?

1. Start from what the traveler already said

The Italy message already gives you a destination, a rough month, a trip length and three interests.

Never ask “Where would you like to go?” Ask who’s traveling and the budget instead.

A form asks every question. A good intake asks only the ones still open.

2. Ask only what changes the next step

Split the list by when you need it:

• First useful reply: dates, party and ages, destination or interests, rough budget.
• Before the consultation: pace, constraints, occasion, past trips, decision maker, timeline.
• At booking: passport details, dates of birth, room configuration, loyalty numbers, payment.

Rule of thumb: if the answer won’t change your next step, don’t ask it yet.

• Asking for passport expiry in the first reply makes the inquiry feel like paperwork.
• Save “How did you hear about us?” for later. It does nothing for the traveler.

3. Ask for budget as a range per person

A single “Budget” box often goes blank. Travelers fear any number raises the quote, or don’t know what trips cost.

Offer bands: under 3,000, 3,000 to 5,000, 5,000 to 8,000, or above 8,000 per person. Then ask what the figure includes.

Example:

“We were thinking around 6,000 each, but we’ve already got the flights.”

That gives you the land budget, and tells you not to quote flights.

4. Ask about mobility, health and diet with one open question

Ask early, and don’t ask for a diagnosis.

• Good: “Is there anything we should plan around?”
• Weak: a list of medical checkboxes.

“My mum is 78. She’s fine on flat ground but can’t do lots of stairs, and she’s diabetic.”

That rules out hotels without lifts, some old-town walking tours and long gaps between meals. No medical judgment needed.

Record the need clearly and leave medical answers to a person. Altitude with a heart condition is a question for an advisor, and often a doctor.

5. Find out who decides and when they’ll book

Often it’s not the person writing. A daughter plans the family trip, but her parents are paying.

Asking “Is anyone else involved in deciding?” saves a proposal written for the wrong person.

Pair it with the timeline. A lead booking next month and one researching next year need different follow-up.

6. Capture preferences in the traveler’s own words

Pace and taste need a conversation. “Relaxed, but we want to see a lot” needs unpacking. Ask:

• “What’s one thing you’d be disappointed to miss?”
• “Anything you already know you don’t want?”
• “Boutique hotel, larger hotel with facilities, or somewhere with a kitchen?”
• “How do you feel about early starts?”

“We hated the 6am starts in Peru” tells an advisor more than a ticked “relaxed” box.

7. Hand over one complete brief

Aim for a brief an advisor can plan from without writing back.

Example:

Italy, 12 to 14 nights, flexible between 20 June and 10 July. Two adults (48, 51) and two children (11, 15). Around 6,000 per person, flights already booked. Food, Roman history, three or four beach days at the end. Two or three bases, no 6am starts. The 11-year-old has a nut allergy. 20th wedding anniversary on 2 July. Loved Portugal, found Greek island-hopping too rushed. Both parents decide. Wants to book by the end of next month.

Everything in it changes the proposal. Nothing in it needs chasing. From here, itinerary software can take over.

What tools can help you collect trip details?

Many agencies combine two, so the call starts from a complete brief.

Tool	Good for	Where it stops
Email questionnaire	A few leads a week	Every gap is another email
Web form (Typeform, Jotform, Google Forms)	Trips that follow a predictable pattern	Asks every traveler every question
Form plus Zapier or Make into HubSpot	Fixed fields into a CRM	Moves data, but can’t ask for what’s missing
20-minute discovery call	High-value or complex trips	Uses advisor time on every lead
Customer-facing AI agent built with Agentplace	Travelers who write in their own words	Needs your rules written down, and a connected system for live availability

The real test: does it skip what the traveler already said, and ask for the rest?

How does Agentplace help collect travel lead information?

Agentplace creates AI agents that serve customers and help run a business. Each agent gets its own web page and URL. It uses business knowledge and authorized tools to deliver a personal plan, estimate, product comparison, document, or other result. The AI controls the interface and updates the work as customers make requests by text or voice.

In practice, it works like this:

1. The traveler describes the trip in their own words.
2. The agent notices which fields are already covered.
3. It asks for the missing ones and applies your rules.
4. It answers common questions from the information you gave it.
5. The traveler sees and corrects a summary on the page.
6. You receive the brief, in the traveler’s words where they matter.

Example: For the Italy inquiry, it might ask:

“That sounds like a great mix. Who’s traveling with you, and are there any children?”

You set it up by describing the outcome in plain language, for example:

“Collect trip details from new inquiries for our Italy and Greece trips. Ask about dates and flexibility, travelers and children’s ages, budget per person and whether it includes flights, pace, and mobility or dietary needs. Don’t ask for anything the traveler has already told you. Don’t ask for passport details. Send medical questions and groups over ten people to Elena.”

The AI Builder discusses the idea, clarifies requirements, creates the agent and helps test it. You choose when to publish. No code is required.

Set guardrails too: price ranges only, no visa or medical answers, named people for exceptions. No departure is called available unless your booking system confirms it.

What stays where it is:

• Your booking system, CRM and itinerary tool stay where they are.
• The agent connects to them through Composio’s integration catalog or compatible MCP tools, so the brief lands where your team works. You authorize each account and its actions.

Pricing: Agentplace has a free plan and paid plans that use AI credits. A credit is not a customer message. See pricing.

Templates to start from: AI Adventure Tour Suitability Agent · AI travel planner for travel advisors

When don’t you need an AI agent?

• Inquiries already arrive complete? A form builder and your CRM are enough.
• The bottleneck is writing proposals? Look at itinerary software such as Travefy, Tourwriter or Umapped.
• You want a person on every first contact? Keep the discovery call.
• Travelers write freely and you keep re-sending the same four questions? That’s where a customer-facing AI agent built with Agentplace fits.

Quick checklist

• Write down the ten fields and the question you’ll use for each
• Ask budget as a per-person range, and ask what it includes
• Route medical questions to a named person
• Keep the traveler’s own words in the brief
• Track reply cycles, complete-on-arrival leads, time to first proposal and late rewrites

Related reading: tour operator lead qualification · AI agents that recommend tours · best AI agents for tour operators · AI agents for travel agencies

Bottom line

A new travel lead needs ten things before you can plan. Ask only what changes the next step.

• If inquiries follow a fixed pattern, a form and your CRM will do.
• If travelers write in their own words, give them a customer-facing AI agent built with Agentplace. It asks only for what’s missing, flags what needs a person, writes the brief into your systems and recommends suitable trips.