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Flight Path by Tern

Tern Software Inc

Welcome to Flight Path, your weekly insider’s guide to the latest in travel technology with Tern, the premier platform for travel advisors. Join us every Friday as Tern’s R&D leadership takes you on a journey through what’s new and exciting in Tern, unveiling the features and updates shipped each week.

Hosted by Tern’s co-founder and CEO David Shull, Head of Product Molly Johnson, and Head of Design Brad Turner, Flight Path offers a unique peek behind the curtain of building the best platform for travel advisors. From in-depth discussions about new releases to behind-the-scenes insights into the design and development process, you’ll gain a comprehensive understanding of the innovation and hard work that drive Tern’s success.

Whether you’re a travel advisor looking to stay ahead of the curve or a tech enthusiast curious about the latest advancements in travel technology, Flight Path is your go-to source for all things Tern. Tune in every Friday and let us navigate you through the future of travel.

Hosts:

David Shull: Co-founder and CEO of Tern
Molly Johnson: Head of Product at Tern
Brad Turner: Head of Design at Tern

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  • 24 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 36 min
  • English

Episodes 24

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  • May 22 · 37 min

    Tern's AI Guides You Through Your Work

    Episode Overview: David Shull, Molly Johnson, and Brad Turner cover a week of meaningful AI chat improvements. The biggest change: instead of typing answers back into the chat, advisors can now pick from clickable options and move through workflows in seconds. David demos this live, including a cruise search pulling ports, ships, and cabin options on command. Abby, Head of Customer Experience, walks through the relaunched Tern and Learn training hub, which now ships content alongside every weekly product update. Agency permissions, preferred supplier tags, and a quality-of-life roundup round out the episode. Episode Topics: (0:00) Week in Review Early advisor reactions in the Facebook group about the AI assistant saving hours on 60-day cruise itineraries. (4:46) Tern and Learn Update Abby walks through the relaunched training hub at turn.travel/learn and new agency owner courses shipping in near real time. (11:37) AI Chat: What Shipped Clickable multiple-choice responses, automatic chat renaming, and expanded cruise port knowledge. (14:06) AI Onboarding Demo David demos the onboarding skill live, showing the AI asking targeted questions and walking through a cruise search by port and date. (17:17) More AI Updates Trip details section awareness, default currency support, ship-specific search, and cabin options. (20:33) Agency Permissions New role-level controls over team data access and credit card visibility on trips. (22:49) Supplier Tags and Preferred Status Preferred supplier star indicator for agents and custom tags for filtering by region, consortia, or travel type. (26:03) Quality of Life Updates Trip board performance improvements, insurance refresh, and filtered contact list export. (29:43) Commission Improvements RTF file support, statement-level adjustments, and orphaned commission cleanup on deleted statements. (37:24) Week Ahead Insurance in a package, itinerary item hiding, rule-based commission dates, group subtrip syncing in beta, and ASTA Conference in San Diego. Show Highlights: AI chat surfaces clickable options so advisors stop typing answers mid-workflow Onboarding skill tailors the experience based on what the advisor wants to do first AI searches cruise ports, ships, and cabin options when building itineraries Preferred supplier tags guide agent booking behavior without cluttering client-facing profiles AI commission reconciliation now supports RTF files and statement-level adjustments Tern and Learn ships training content the same week new features go live Keywords: Tern, Flight Path podcast, CRM for travel agents, AI product tools, travel advisor workflow, itinerary builder, product updates

  • May 15 · 43 min

    Your AI Assistant Now Lives Where You Work

    Episode Overview: David Shull, Molly Johnson, and Brad Turner cover a packed week. AI chat gets its own home in the navigation with new capabilities to search cruise templates, build comparison breakdowns, and add port images in seconds. The team also walks through agency updates on supplier management, commission payout logic, contact deduplication, and cleaner client payments. Register for the June 10 agentic AI reveal to see the full picture. Episode Topics: (0:00) Weekend check-in Back office deep dive and a live AI preview at the Las Vegas Travel Agent Forum. (7:25) AI chat gets its own home Dedicated navigation icon with recent history, suggested prompts, and a full-screen experience. (9:57) Cruise itineraries and comparisons in chat Search templates, build full itineraries, and generate side-by-side cruise comparisons from a few messages. (14:14) AI adds port images automatically Chat populates images for every port on a cruise itinerary in one step. (18:26) AI free beta and upcoming limits No usage caps for now. Limits and upgrade options arriving over the next month. (22:00) Preferred suppliers and custom tags Mark preferred suppliers and add searchable tags that surface to advisors at booking. (23:45) Commission payout logic per supplier Set timing rules by supplier type so advisors stop entering expected commission dates manually. (26:43) Clearer client payment balances Invoices now show total cost, amount paid, and balance due, with on-property charges listed separately. (31:59) Contact deduplication org-wide One-click merge for suggested duplicates, now working across all advisors and shared contacts. (35:51) Required fields on client forms Red star indicators and automatic scroll to missed fields on submit. (38:30) Insurance per itinerary and reporting updates Insurance options per itinerary, an advisor sales pie chart, and balance due fields added to reports. (40:19) Trip names on calendar payments Payment entries now show the associated trip name alongside the activity. (42:16) Advisor and supplier survey Tern is surveying advisors on their supplier experience, with $250 gift card giveaways for participants. Show Highlights: AI chat has its own navigation hub with history and suggested prompts Chat builds cruise itineraries and comparison grids from a few messages Port images populate automatically through chat Preferred supplier marking and custom tags give agencies more control at booking Supplier payout logic removes manual commission date entry Client invoices now clearly show what is still owed Contact deduplication works org-wide with one-click merging

  • May 8 · 38 min

    AI That Matches Clients to Supplier Deals

    Episode Overview: David Shull, Molly Johnson, and Brad Turner had a week that felt bigger than most. A host agency came back after 14 months to demo their full workflow in Tern, and the before-and-after data on advisor sales moved the room. That energy carries through everything the team shipped: meetings now live inside Tern, AI chat can find the right client for a supplier promo and send a personalized email in one click, and agencies can finally assign workflow tasks to specific team members. Las Vegas Travel Agent Forum is next week, and there's more in the pipeline than the team is ready to say out loud. Episode Topics: (00:00) A host agency demo, 14 months in the making, shows real before-and-after conversion data. (09:11) Calendar meetings appear inside Tern, with one-click contact profiles and note taker controls. (16:29) Workflow tasks can now be assigned to specific team members or VAs at the template level. (21:47) AI chat improvements: send emails from chat, auto-populate hotel properties, create trips without a client name or exact dates. (25:01) Live demo: supplier promo email becomes a personalized client outreach, sent in one click. (33:47) Trip creation moves to a drawer layout. Agencies get a new setting to lock trips to agency access. (35:34) What's coming: group subtrip syncing, collaborator credit card permissions, Las Vegas Travel Agent Forum. Show Highlights: Calendar meetings now live in Tern with note taker controls built in AI can go from a supplier email to a sent, personalized client outreach without leaving Tern Workflow tasks are now assignable to team members and VAs at the template level New agency setting prevents advisors from removing agency access on their way out

  • May 1 · 35 min

    Commission Reconciliation, Now Powered by AI

    Episode Overview: David Shull, Molly Johnson, and Brad Turner dig into what may be the biggest agency back office feature Tern has shipped: AI commission reconciliation. The team walks through how it works, what it actually means for the accounting teams and agency owners who spend hours on statement matching every month, and why Tern is uniquely positioned to build this kind of end-to-end flow. They also cover a wave of AI chat upgrades, including email search, form response reading, and contact creation, plus major Chrome extension improvements and a quality of life section covering smarter trip search and task page fixes. A big reveal is coming in June. Episode Topics: (00:00) Week in Review David, Molly, and Brad share highlights from the week, including a listener who built a $20,000 FIT proposal in under 20 minutes using Tern, and Brad's call with a major cruise line that revealed how little suppliers understand about how advisors actually work day to day. (06:20) AI Commission Reconciliation Molly walks through the new AI-powered reconciliation feature, explaining how it reads supplier statements in any format, auto-matches line items to bookings, and surfaces partial matches for human review. The team discusses what "training the AI" actually means, how data privacy works, and why Tern's vertical integration makes this flow possible in a way no other tool can replicate. (17:57) AI Chat Updates Brad runs through a full list of new capabilities added to the AI chat this week: reading trip request form responses, creating detailed contact profiles from notes or emails, and searching connected email inboxes to pull context into conversations and draft replies. David notes that full-body email search is also coming early next week. (27:00) Chrome Extension Updates Molly covers the latest Chrome extension release, which now supports importing full itineraries to existing trips or creating new ones directly from any website. She also highlights small loading screen touches added by engineer Gaal that have become a fan favorite. (31:56) Quality of Life Brad covers two improvements: trip search now surfaces results by confirmation number, traveler email, and traveler phone, not just trip title. The task page overflow bug that advisor Walter flagged has also been fixed. (34:30) Week Ahead Molly teases workflow task assignment coming next week, group subtrip syncing getting underway, and new agency supplier capabilities. Brad previews insurance in package pricing and canceled booking visibility on itineraries. David flags early previews of agentic AI features at Las Vegas Travel Agent Forum and ASTA. Show Highlights: A travel advisor built a $20,000 FIT proposal from idea to full proposal in under 20 minutes using Tern's Chrome extension and AI tools. AI commission reconciliation reads supplier statements in any format, auto-matches bookings, and flags partials for one-click review, cutting what used to be hours of manual work down to minutes. Your payout data is never shared or used to train external models. When Tern says "training the AI," it means building supplier-specific context so the model reads statements more accurately over time. The AI chat can now search your connected email inbox, read trip request form responses, and create fully detailed contact profiles from a note or an email thread. AI-drafted email replies in Tern are different because the AI actually knows the trip details, the contact history, and the context. It is not a generic response you have to rewrite. Chrome extension now imports full itineraries, not just activities, directly to new or existing trips. Trip search now works across confirmation numbers, traveler emails, and traveler phone numbers, not just trip titles. A big AI reveal is coming in June, with early previews at Las Vegas Travel Agent Forum and ASTA.

Showing 21–24 of 24 episodes