In France, outsourced Travel & Hospitality customer relations grew 9% in 2025, while the wider French market for outsourced customer relations declined 1.4%. In a sector where the experience is the product, customer relations aren’t a cost to squeeze, they’re an asset to cultivate. Here’s a look at this sector exception, drawing on the SP2C 2026 barometer and the CX Horizon 2030 study.
Travel & Hospitality is among the most dynamic sectors of the French market in 2025. While outsourced customer relations declined overall in France, travel and hospitality grew 9%, alongside Media & Entertainment (+10%), according to the SP2C 2026 barometer, produced with EY. By contrast, historically high-volume sectors like Telecoms & ISPs (-8%) or Manufacturing (-12%) declined sharply. These figures reflect the French market specifically; the underlying dynamics, however, apply broadly across international travel and hospitality outsourcing.
This divergence isn't a coincidence. In tourism, every interaction weighs directly on the purchase decision and on loyalty. A hesitant traveller who hits friction or waits too long for an answer doesn't always complain: they simply switch brands. Relational quality becomes a conversion and retention lever, not a line of expenditure.
The sector also benefits from underlying momentum. According to the World Tourism Organization, the world will see close to 2 billion international tourist arrivals by 2030. Growing volume, hyperconnected travellers, increasingly omnichannel journeys: all reasons to entrust customer relations to partners able to absorb this complexity without degrading quality.
Customer relations in Travel & Hospitality stand out through four constraints few other sectors combine: seasonality, urgency, multilingual coverage, and emotional weight. These specifics explain why outsourcing is particularly relevant here, provided you choose a partner who masters them.
Seasonality first. Interaction volumes can triple or quadruple within a few weeks, between holiday departures, peak periods, and weather or geopolitical disruptions. Building an in-house team able to absorb these peaks while sustaining it the rest of the year is economically difficult. Outsourcing turns this fixed cost into flexible capacity.
Urgency next. In travel, waiting isn't a mere inconvenience, it's a service failure. A flight cancelled at 11pm, a hotel that can't be found on arrival, a missed connection: the customer expects an immediate, reliable, contextualised answer. Armatis's CX Horizon 2030 study, conducted among French CX leaders, confirms this: speed standards, set by on-demand economy leaders, have made any latency costly. Travellers no longer live in delayed time, they live in a permanent present.
Multilingual coverage, finally, is inherent to the sector. Serving international travellers means answering in their language, around the clock, with the right level of cultural fluency. And the emotional stakes are high: a trip is a personal project, sometimes the culmination of a year of saving. The slightest disappointment costs dearly in reputation and loyalty.
In Travel, artificial intelligence is an accelerator, not a substitute for humans. It handles simple, repetitive requests, bookings, changes, tracking, which frees advisors for high-value moments. But it doesn't replace relational expertise on complex or sensitive situations.
SP2C 2026 barometer figures confirm this across the sector in France: in 2025, 90.4% of outsourced customer relations revenue still relies on human advisors, versus 8.7% for AI solutions. Far from replacing teams, AI augments them: it absorbs low-value volume to refocus humans on resolution, advice, and emotion.
That logic fits travel particularly well. Booking a room or changing a ticket can be done in selfcare, in a few clicks. But handling a customer stranded abroad, supporting a premium traveller, or recovering a failed experience demands a human presence. The CX Horizon 2030 study puts it this way: in a world saturated with automated content, authentic human conversation becomes a scarce resource, and therefore a differentiator. In premium tourism, this requirement echoes the codes of luxury customer service, where every interaction extends the experience being lived.
Good Travel customer service must combine multilingual coverage with cultural closeness, not trade one for the other. Technology removes the language barrier, but it doesn't translate cultural codes. That balance is what distinguishes a high-performing tourism customer relations setup.
Recent advances in real-time translation open up, in theory, access to a global talent pool to serve any customer. But the CX Horizon 2030 study tempers that enthusiasm: while the machine translates words, it doesn't translate cultural subtext, humour, or references to local context. For a sector built on rapport, cultural closeness remains a marker of trust.
That's why the model taking hold isn't the cheapest geography, but the intelligent orchestration of locations based on the nature of the interaction: closeness for emotionally-charged moments and premium segments, expertise for more standardised processes. A partner's multi-country presence, with teams across France, Portugal, Poland, and Tunisia among others, lets you build exactly that setup, tailored to each brand's needs.
Choosing an outsourcing partner in Travel means checking their ability to combine flexibility, sector expertise, and AI-human orchestration. Cost per contact is no longer the right criterion: in a sector where experience drives the sale, what counts is the contribution to satisfaction and loyalty.
Four criteria deserve particular attention:
This is the combination Armatis deploys for Travel & Leisure players, with teams trained in tourism-specific needs and setups designed to absorb peaks as well as deliver a high-value experience. Customer relations then stop being a cost item and become a growth driver.
Outsourcing absorbs seasonal peaks without structural overhead, gives access to multilingual teams trained in sector specifics, and provides advanced technology tools without funding them entirely. In a sector where experience drives sales and loyalty, a specialised partner secures service quality at every interaction.
A BPO provider can quickly mobilise additional teams to absorb a rise in contacts tied to a peak period or a disruption. This flexibility turns a fixed cost into variable capacity, particularly suited to tourism, where volumes can triple or quadruple within a few weeks.
AI handles simple requests like booking or changes, which refocuses advisors on complex, emotionally-charged situations. According to the SP2C 2026 barometer, 90.4% of outsourced customer relations revenue in France still relies on human advisors: AI augments teams, it doesn't replace them.
Yes. Tourism by nature serves an international customer base expecting an answer in their language, around the clock. Beyond language, cultural closeness remains decisive for building trust on emotionally-charged interactions, particularly in premium segments.
Travel & Hospitality's 9% growth in France in 2025, in a declining market, isn't an accident. It's the sign of a sector that understood ahead of others that customer relations aren't a cost to cut, but an asset to cultivate. Automating simple volume, entrusting critical moments to experts, orchestrating languages and cultures: that's the recipe for a differentiated traveller experience.
To go further on Armatis's view of customer relations through 2030, covering traveller expectations, the rise of AI, and the irreplaceable role of humans, download our CX Horizon 2030 study. And to discuss your tourism customer relations challenges, discover our dedicated Travel & Leisure support.
Sources
Armatis is a European specialist in customer relations and business process outsourcing (BPO), operating across multiple continents with thousands of employees serving companies of all sizes and sectors. The company designs and manages end-to-end customer service operations: multichannel contact centres, complaints handling, technical support, back-office and digitised processes. Backed by integrated technology infrastructure and the ability to adapt to any sectoral and regulatory context, Armatis helps its clients combine operational performance, quality of experience and cost control, wherever they need it.
Contact our teams to discuss your challenges and find out how we can support you
Join the leaders who trust our multilingual and technological expertise.