Earlier this year, Signature Travel Network previewed its upcoming Storybook tool, which will help luxury travel advisors find the right product for a client and will then help them pitch it to their clients. At Signature’s 2025 Annual Conference in Las Vegas, taking place this week, Karen Yeates, EVP, Information Technologies, shared some updates on the product.

Currently, the platform is being tested by 25 advisors with the plan to launch for all advisors in the network by the end of Q1 2026. For those who have not previewed the platform, Storybook will be Signature’s new “shopping” tool. It will, at first, be available only for cruises but will later offer hotel, land and destination capabilities.

Storybook and the existing shopping tool, said Yeates, “will live side-by-side inside SigNet for everybody before the end of Quarter 1 in 2026, but that’s not going to be a hard cut-over. I want to make sure everybody’s comfortable with it, making sure all the pieces are working the way that we want them—the ability to quote through it, to send emails, to live-share. Once everything’s bulletproof, then I’ll make a hard switch, so that I’m not supporting two platforms.”

How Storybook Works

As part of a single sign-on within SigNet, advisors will be able to browse all of Signature’s cruise partners’ ships, itineraries and more. While advisors can choose to filter the products by information relevant to the semantics of the trip—travel dates, length of trip, embarkation port, destinations visited, etc.—they can also select information about the specific clients to help narrow down the options. (Advisors can additionally filter by “collections,” such as Signature Collection sailings, hosted sailings and private car.)

These client-oriented tags are used to compute a Human Factor Score, which is rated on a scale up to 100. Advisors can plug in specific info like: are the clients a young, middle-aged or senior couple; are they a younger or older family; solo travelers; frequent cruisers; what their desired onboard experiences are; and much more.

The Storybook tool will then consider all of the inputs and via trusted online consumer reviews will give each specific sailing a rating (the Human Factor Score) for the given clients. Advisors will have the opportunity to click through the itineraries and see why it was given its exact rating.

Where Storybook stands apart from the existing shopping experience, however, is that this platform can be shared live with clients, so advisors can walk them through the itinerary, shore excursions, promos, staterooms, deck plans and more. Even the menus at onboard restaurants are available.

Yeates said that nearly all of the content available on Storybook comes directly from the cruise lines, so the more they supply, the more Signature can provide. While this does mean some lines may have a more comprehensive experience, the network would be putting some pressure on the other lines to keep up.

In the live preview, advisors can drag and drop two cruises into the window to compare them side-by-side. Should an advisor want, they can also simply ask the AI tool to summarize the product rather than clicking through all of the tiles.

Importantly, said Yeates, this tool is not just for advisors who are new to selling cruise; this is intended for advisors of all experience levels. “For people who know the products really well, it’ll even help them, because the scoring alone will help them see why that’s a good product match for their clients,” she told LATTE U.S.

Once the advisor has finished showing the cruises to their clients, they can send them a link so the client can continue browsing at their own. Each page is complete with a call-to-action, and advisors can review the analytics for each link they share, so the Storybook platform will tell you if you have any hot leads.

From there, Storybook connects to Sig Cruise Pro, where advisors can complete the booking.

What’s Next for Storybook

Following the launch of this version of the Storybook tool, Yeates said Signature’s 1,300 hotel partners are next. This way, should a client be disembarking from, say, Seattle, the advisor can show their clients a selection of hotels they can book for a pre- or post-cruise stay.  She also wants to add a natural language search, so instead of selecting all of the inputs, advisors can just type out the style of sailing and clients they have, and Storybook will produce the best products, still ranked by Human Factor Score.

Yeates added Signature is also working with excursions partners to incorporate shore excursions and other activities into the shopping tool. She did not provide a timeline for hotel, excursions or natural language search incorporation.

In short, “the whole product itself is pretty [cool],” said Yeates.

Other Tech Updates

In other AI news, Signature just this month added a new content summary tool for advisors.

Should an advisor see something in Signature’s existing shopping platform, they can have this tool perform a myriad of tasks, including summarizing it, creating a social media post (specific to each platform), marketing materials, emails and more. Advisors can choose the tone, give creative direction and input any other info they want included. The AI tool will create the message, which can be used as is or edited.

Advisors can alternatively use that AI tool to create content comparing different hotels that they can, for instance, send to clients via email. “It’s a very slick little tool,” said Yeates.

Despite the innovations, Yeates told LATTE U.S. that some folks within the network are still skeptical about the use of artificial intelligence. From her point of view, she’d prefer as many tools as she can afford in her toolbelt. “We’re living in a world where this exists. Why would you not take advantage of it?”

Lastly from the tech side, Yeates said that SigNet is currently undergoing a redesign. It is moving away from its menu-driven design and will instead utilize a natural language search.