How Xanterra is Transforming Guest Experiences with Cresta AI Agent to Amplify the Voice of America’s National Parks

About Xanterra Travel Collection

Xanterra Travel Collection® is the largest operator of lodges, restaurants, and concessions in U.S. national parks, with a portfolio that spans iconic destinations, adventure travel, and premium hospitality experiences. Headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado, Xanterra’s family of brands includes operations at Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Rocky Mountain, Mount Rushmore, and Glacier National Parks, as well as Windstar Cruises, Country Walkers, VBT Bicycling Vacations, and Holiday Vacations. Guided by a legacy of stewardship and a commitment to sustainability, Xanterra provides unforgettable experiences for millions of travelers each year, offering lodging, tours, dining, and unique adventures that connect guests to some of the world’s most extraordinary places.

Challenges

With multiple travel brands and four distinct contact centers, Xanterra faces wide-ranging customer needs — from luxury cruise guests with Windstar to travelers booking active walking or bicycling tours through VBT or Country Walkers, to national park visitors interested in lodging, camping, historic train rides, mule trips, or guided wildlife tours. The Central Reservations team that handles the lodging and national park guests manages extremely high volumes of inquiries, creating pressure on agents and making it difficult to maintain fast, consistent, and personal service at scale.

On top of that, QA processes were entirely manual. Managers lacked the visibility and tools they needed to coach and train agents effectively and efficiently. Leadership recognized the need for a modern AI platform; one that could unify insights across business units, help agents perform better, and scale with Xanterra’s growth.

“Our Central Reservations team handles a diverse range of guests at large volumes every day, and we recognized the need for a smarter, scalable solution to maintain fast, consistent, and personal service—without overwhelming our agents or compromising quality.” — Andrew Heltzel, Chief Commercial Officer

Solution

Xanterra partnered with Cresta to roll out AI Agent for voice and chat across its Central Reservations team, starting with routine guest inquiries over chat. Within months, five AI Agents were live across brands, with plans to expand to 16. Early performance during work hours has been strong: “Faith,” Yellowstone’s AI Agent, is achieving a 76% containment rate, while “Cali,” the AI Agent for Death Valley, is containing 62% of chats without agent intervention and “Skye”, the AI Agent for Glacier National Park, is seeing a 84% containment rate.

Cresta’s platform also ensures AI Agents don’t operate in isolation. Insights from AI Agent feed back into Agent Assist and Conversational Intelligence, giving live agents real-time guidance, automated summaries, and analytics that reinforce sales behaviors and continuously improve service quality. Agents have embraced AI Agent as a learning resource, using it to quickly find answers during live chats and improve their knowledge in real time.

Xanterra adopted AI Analyst to turn contact center data into actionable insights. By surfacing trends across brands and providing supporting evidence, AI Analyst helps leaders make smarter decisions that directly impact both customer experience and sales. For a company competing with a wide range of travel providers, these insights provide meaningful differentiation.

When evaluating vendors, Cresta distinguished itself with a compelling combination of proven results and a confident, collaborative team. While other solutions offered lower pricing, they didn’t demonstrate the same level of impact or readiness to support Xanterra’s goals at scale. Across its National Parks operations, Xanterra has since realized a $3.3M revenue increase by reinforcing sales behaviors through Cresta, while avoiding hundreds of thousands in potential guest recovery costs. These outcomes underscore how Cresta is helping Xanterra elevate the guest experience and drive measurable business impact.

“We saw Cresta not just as a tool, but as a partner in our AI transformation, helping us introduce automation where it makes sense and empowering our agents at the same time.” — Andrew Heltzel, Chief Commercial Officer

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