Who wins from agentic AI tools in travel? In the past few months, I am sure that this question has come up often for you. Maybe in a client meeting, or in the office hallway, or at the bar? It seems that everyone has an opinion and they are often at odds with each other. 

With so many different views on AI and travel out there, the challenge is how we know what we “know” about the future. What assumptions (often unspoken) are we making about the future and how much confidence do we have in them? So, for this edition of the Skift Research Data Pulse, I want to make our implicit assumptions explicit. 

Let’s lay out what we think we know about the future and support each statement with any evidence we have. In the end, we can draw some conclusions, but I think you will find most of the value comes from showing our work.  

Technology is a tool but it won’t fundamentally change the dynamics of the travel industry. The biggest constraints on leisure travel are time and money. This will almost certainly remain true well into the future. The average American worker starts a new job with 11 paid vacation days (European friends, laugh it up). A typical American family may spend as much as 7% of their annual income on travel — and that’s if they travel at all. Nearly 40% of U.S. households don’t travel at all in any given year; they can’t find the time or money. A key factor for travelers is not what they could gain, but what they could lose. If you use an 80%-accurate AI agent to buy a $30 tchotchke online, it doesn’t matter so much if it messes up now and again. But a one-in-five failure rate is unacceptable when it comes to booking the one family vacation you get a year at a cost of $7k. The bar for AI in travel will be higher than in almost any other consumer sector. 

Over the next few years, we expect that AI assistants will drive significant changes in where trip planning starts. Our travel research clearly shows growing momentum for the adoption of AI tools to plan trips. The share of American travelers using them extensively more than doubled in just one year, from 13% of travelers in 2024 to 30% of travelers in 2025.

Matching consumer momentum, we find similar enthusiasm on the industry side. A research study conducted by Skift and McKinsey & Co. found that 80% of senior travel executives plan to implement agentic-AI-enabled use cases at scale across many domains and functions within the next three to five years. It's clear that AI tools will play a large role in the travel search, discovery, and booking ecosystem.

Skift Research believes that AI tools will probably reward travel brands and suppliers of distinction. Agentic tools search for personalized answers that match travelers’ needs on a one-to-one basis. The latest Skift Research report on hotels finds that almost three in four travelers feel that many hotel brands feel at least somewhat similar to one another. If a human can’t tell your brands apart, what hope does a robot have? Monotonous brands will have limited “surface area” for AI tools to latch on to and trigger it to make a recommendation.

Global distribution systems remain relevant more than 35 years after enterprise databases became commonplace. Traditional human travel agents remain relevant 25+ years after the invention of the web. Desktop front-ends remain relevant 15+ years after the rise of mobile phones. Online travel agencies are a critical piece of digital travel infrastructure, used by millions of travelers every day. They have built highly relevant consumer brands. They are masters of digital marketing. They have connections to thousands of travel suppliers. Why are we so eager to pronounce the OTA dead due to AI? 

Booking platforms employ more software developers than the entire airline and accommodation sectors combined, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Shouldn’t the biggest employers of computer engineers in the travel sector see some of the earliest benefit from technological innovation?

On the other hand, as intermediaries, online travel agencies are at some of the greatest risk of disruption. Clearly, their business models will have to evolve to keep up with AI tools. Perhaps their margins will compress and their market share will come under pressure. But we anticipate that the big OTAs will probably not become fully obsolete in a world of AI. 

Perhaps the best way to understand how an AI travel agent might work is to study how human travel agents already work today. What we see is that for some smaller, repetitive, or corporate bookings, human agents are given full discretion. But the majority of complex travel bookings benefit from an interactive process of the customer working alongside the travel agent. Why shouldn’t we see similar patterns with AI agents?

After all, we are confident that travel will remain a high-consideration purchase, so it’s unlikely that travelers will delegate full authority to AI agents. Plus, that is what travelers themselves explicitly tell us they want. Only 2% of U.S. travelers surveyed by Skift Research want to let an AI travel tool handle the whole booking process.

Combining our assumptions gets us to a future baseline: Travel will remain a relevant, highly considered purchase that will see AI widely integrated into all stages of a trip, from planning to booking to in-destination but not without human oversight of the most critical parts of the process.

Distinctive brands that invest in unique experiences may have a newfound power to go direct to consumers through personalized AI recommendation. But for everyone else, travel intermediaries may continue to play an important distribution role, supplemented by new AI tools and agents.

What do you think? Have we got it wrong? Are there other important drivers or assumptions we have overlooked? Let me know what you think: [email protected]

In the last issue of this newsletter, we brought you our Skift Research Travel Outlook for 2026. We called for a year of travel industry growth supported by enthusiastic consumers, but we also flagged that the single greatest risk factor for that outlook would be geopolitics.

Sadly, with the conflict in Iran, that risk has materialized in a deadly new way. Most importantly, the Skift Research team sends our thoughts and sympathy to everyone affected. We are thinking of you and hoping everyone stays safe and that this situation can be resolved as quickly and peaceably as possible.

The Middle East is one of the bright spots for the global tourism industry. It is a place of great hospitality that understands the power of investing in travel and tourism. It is also one of the most critical connecting flight corridors in the world. Travel disruptions across the Middle East are not just regional challenges; they threaten the health of the global tourism industry.

For years now, we have discussed whether travel is recession-proof. But maybe we have been debating the wrong topic. Travel has proven itself to be remarkably resilient across a range of economic outcomes. Perhaps we should have been asking: Is travel politics-proof? 

Sadly, the answer is no, and that puts the impetus on us. It’s our duty as part of the global travel industry to do all we can to help our political leaders understand the importance of tourism and the need for geopolitical stability to make our business function.