Trigger library
Weather, closures, transit delays, supplier cancellations, air quality and late arrivals, each with thresholds tuned to your activities and terrain.
Services · Disruption Response Automation
When the forecast turns, the plan moves first
We turn the way your best operations lead handles a storm, a closed road or a late train into playbooks that run in minutes. Impact is assessed, a re-plan drafted and messages prepared, and a person approves before anything goes out.
A Tuesday in monsoon season
At 11:50 AM the forecast shows a thunderstorm cell building over the high trails from 1:40 PM. Fourteen travelers in three groups are on the mountain this afternoon. One guide is out of signal until the ridge. The shuttle company needs an hour’s notice to change a pickup. The indoor pottery studio that could take one group has a single afternoon slot.
What happens next depends on who’s on shift. Your best operations lead knows which group to pull first, which supplier will pick up the phone and which travelers would rather have a quiet alternative than a refund. She spends the next ninety minutes on calls and texts, working from memory, and does it well. The next day a road closure lands on someone with less experience, and two travelers wait at the wrong trailhead.
Disruption isn’t a rare event in travel. It’s a weekly operating condition. Northern New Mexico’s summer monsoon brings afternoon thunderstorms, mountain passes close, trains run late and a venue loses power. Handling each one by phone is expensive, inconsistent and hard to learn from.
Re-planning instead of rebooking
The goal isn’t to automate the decision. It’s to put a good draft in front of the right person while there’s still time to act: a re-planned day that keeps what can be kept, moves what has to move and tells everyone affected. That’s the difference between saving a trip and refunding one. It matters most for outdoor and adventure operators, corporate travel and events teams and tour operators juggling many moving parts at once.
Timeline
The same storm, run by a playbook
Times are counted back from the forecast impact at 1:40 PM.
- T − 110 min
Signal
A weather alert crosses the threshold your playbook sets for exposed afternoon activities. Closures, transit delays and supplier cancellations trigger the same way.
- T − 108 min
Impact
The system lists who is affected: three groups, fourteen travelers, two suppliers and one guide out of signal, with each traveler's mobility notes and preferences attached.
- T − 104 min
Draft
Route Engine re-plans the afternoon. The exposed hike moves to tomorrow morning, one group takes the studio slot, dinner stays put and pickups shift by forty minutes.
- T − 98 min
Approve
The duty lead reviews the draft on a phone, changes one swap and approves. Anything above your cost or risk threshold waits for this step.
- T − 96 min
Notify
Supplier changes go out through Booking Flow. Travelers get a plain-language update through Concierge. The guide's message waits for the ridge.
- After
Learn
Every trigger, draft, edit and reply is logged. Each month we review what the playbook got right and what your lead changed.
What we deliver
Playbooks as configuration
Your team's judgment written down: what's exposed, what the fallback is, who approves and how much flexibility each trip type allows.
Impact assessment
Who and what is affected, ranked by urgency, with traveler needs and supplier constraints attached.
Re-plan drafts
Feasible alternatives that respect opening windows, travel times, pacing and accessibility. Re-planning first, rebooking only when it has to happen.
Approval console
One screen on any device to review, edit and approve. Thresholds decide what can run on its own and what waits for a person.
Message templates
Traveler, supplier and guide messages in your voice, across email, SMS, WhatsApp and web chat, with a record of who saw what.
How it works
How we build it
- 01
Disruption review
2 weeksWe go through a season of incidents with your team and pick the five to eight scenarios worth automating first.
- 02
Playbook design
2–3 weeksEach playbook is written with your most experienced people: triggers, thresholds, fallbacks, approvals and the words you'd use.
- 03
Build and connect
3–5 weeksWe connect weather, closure and transit data with your reservations and supplier contacts, then replay past incidents through each playbook.
- 04
Shadow, then go live
2–4 weeksPlaybooks run beside your team, drafting but not sending. When your leads trust the drafts, approvals go live.
Measured, not promised
What our pilots have shown
From a 10-week pilot with a corporate offsite planning firm, across four live events. Read the case study.
- from a disruption trigger to an approved plan reaching attendees
- 74 → 19 min
- Pilot median across 17 disruptions; baseline from group-chat timestamps
- less disruption-handling time assumed by our ROI calculator
- 40%
- Deliberately below the pilot figure, because conversations with travelers and suppliers don't shrink much
Internal measurements from one Nova pilot. Results depend on trip complexity, supplier responsiveness and how much you choose to automate.
Side by side
Phone tree or playbook
AspectHandled by phoneHandled by playbook
First responseWhenever someone notices the forecastAs soon as a trigger crosses your threshold
Who's affectedPieced together from spreadsheets and memoryListed automatically, with traveler needs attached
The new planImprovised under time pressureDrafted to be feasible, then edited by your lead
MessagesDozens of separate calls and textsOne approval sends supplier, traveler and guide updates
AfterwardA story told in the break roomA log you can review and a playbook that improves
The first time it drafted a storm re-plan, our lead changed one thing and approved it from the parking lot. That afternoon used to cost her more than an hour in group chats.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Will the system rebook or cancel things on its own?
Only within thresholds you set. Most clients let small, reversible changes go out automatically, such as a pickup moved by twenty minutes. Anything that costs money, swaps an activity or touches a traveler's accessibility needs waits for approval. We explain why in Draft, don't decide.
Where does the weather and closure data come from?
From weather data providers, official road and park closure feeds, transit data and your own suppliers, chosen for your region during playbook design. We don't rely on a single source for a decision that moves travelers.
What if a supplier doesn't answer a change request?
Every playbook has a clock. If a supplier hasn't confirmed within the window you set, the request goes to a person with the fallback options already drafted.
Won't travelers get too many messages?
They shouldn't. Playbooks batch changes, skip travelers who aren't affected and stay quiet about non-events; a forecast that clears doesn't need a message. The principle is in When an AI concierge should stay quiet.
Do we need every Nova module?
No. A playbook needs routing to draft the re-plan and a way to send messages. Many clients start with Route Engine and their existing messaging, then add Booking Flow and Concierge as volume grows.
Related
Keep exploring
- Field Notes · Operations & AutomationDisruption Playbooks: Re-planning a Trip Before the Shuttle LeavesHow to build disruption playbooks for weather, closures and delays: triggers, pre-approved options, decision deadlines, supplier terms and one clear message.
- WorkCorporate offsite planning firmHow a corporate offsite planning firm cut shuttle-plan builds from six hours to 70 minutes and got approved storm-day re-plans to attendees in under 20 minutes.
- ResourcesROI calculatorEstimate the hours and cost your travel team could get back when proposals, supplier confirmations and disruptions are partly automated. Conservative by design.
- Field Notes · Operations & AutomationWhen an AI Concierge Should Stay QuietA practical framework for proactive messages, hand-offs and silence in AI travel concierges: four message tiers, an attention budget and the metrics that matter.
- Use casesGroup Travel CoordinationGroup travel planning AI that weighs each traveler's constraints, splits and rejoins subgroups, respects vehicle and table capacity, and keeps the trip fair.
Bring us your worst week of last season
We'll walk through it together on a discovery call and show you which parts a playbook would have drafted for you.