Building AI Capability at Scale: How Awaze Created AI Champions

How QA helped build in-house AI capability across all levels of experience. creating solutions and actively championing AI adoption throughout teams.

Through a tailored AI Champion programme, Awaze empowered employees across the business to confidently adopt, apply, and advocate for AI.

The challenge

Awaze, one of Europe’s leading managed vacation rentals groups, delivers end-to-end holiday experiences – from guest personalisation, autonomy and flexibility, to managing properties and optimising occupancy.

In an increasingly digital and competitive market, Awaze recognised the need to accelerate AI adoption, but faced barriers to doing so effectively:

Skills gaps across teams – employees needed to build confidence in both soft skills (such as creative thinking and stakeholder engagement) and technical capabilities, including experimenting effectively with AI tools. This limited their ability to adopt AI in practice.
Low AI awareness and confidence – there was no shared understanding of the art of the possible with AI, restricting the organisation’s ability to identify opportunities or develop meaningful use cases.

The solution

QA partnered with Awaze to design and deliver a bespoke AI Champion pathway, developed in collaboration with David Pool, Data & AI Development Director. This end-to-end programme builds both AI capability and advocacy across the organisation.

Structured around three stages – Learn, Master and Apply – the pathway blends AI literacy, soft skills, and hands-on application, enabling learners to translate knowledge into real business outcomes.

Building cross-functional AI pioneers

A cohort of 20 employees was selected from across the organisation, spanning DevOps, Cyber Security, Product, Marketing, HR, and Finance.
This cross-functional approach ensured AI knowledge was shared across teams, breaking down silos and enabling wider organisational impact.

Bridging technical and non-technical AI capability

An intensive eight-week programme combined self-paced learning, instructor-led sessions, and live interactive workshops.
Content covered both technical and non-technical skills, including AI prompting, building AI agents using low and no-code tools, alongside soft skills such as creative thinking and stakeholder engagement.
Learning was tailored to be role-relevant, enabling participants to apply new skills immediately in their day-to-day work.

Cementing learning through real-world application

The programme culminated in a hands-on hackathon, designed to embed learning through practical application.
Participants worked collaboratively to solve real business challenges, designing and building fully functional AI solutions aligned to Awaze’s environment.

Key outcomes

Employees are significantly more confident using AI tools, improving their ability to identify opportunities for automation and AI-driven innovation.
Development of two functional AI bots, one for HR and the other for product owners.
Hackathon projects produced relevant, scalable solutions now showcased internally.

“The AI Champions Pathway was invaluable at really helping to super-charge AI adoption across Awaze. Since the training we have seen the application of AI first thinking grow rapidly; from simple everyday ChatGPT usage for communications, to the creation of GPTs, to evolved complaints handling processes. As a business we now see innovative, AI first thinking as a key enabler to our strategic priorities, rather than a nice to have.”

- Charlotte Hickey, People Transformation Lead, Awaze

Conclusion

For Awaze, the programme marked a pivotal step towards becoming a frontier firm. The AI Champion pathway has created sustainable, in-house capability enabling teams to drive innovation from within the business and build momentum for long-term AI adoption.

Crucially, the impact has extended across all levels of experience. Non-technical employees, with no prior exposure to AI, are now using AI tools in their day-to-day roles, creating solutions and actively championing adoption within their areas.

Many participants have already begun introducing AI initiatives within their teams, a clear indicator of both the programme’s relevance and its lasting impact.

By embedding capability across the organisation, Awaze has established a strong foundation for continued efficiency, innovation, and long-term competitive advantage.

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