Operators of hotels, resorts, theme parks, and cruises succeed by making their customers feel welcome, looked-after, and alive. It’s therefore understandable that they are often cautious about adopting technology that might make their customer experience less human.

When it comes to AI adoption, however, there’s a real danger that operators will suffer strategic damage if they don’t move fast enough.

AI has rapidly established a promising foothold in travel because it simplifies the complex and often overwhelming task of finding, evaluating, and booking trips. Consumers are genuinely grateful for the itinerary suggestions generated by AI platforms and tools, as well as their time-saving summaries of travel options.

Sure, there’s also user frustration about the current limitations of AI tools, such as the risk of getting incorrect information and the fragmentation of customer interfaces. But even though a killer app is yet to emerge and end-to-end autonomous booking remains embryonic, it’s clear to us that the entire pre-trip journey is shifting rapidly and that travel operators must make some equally urgent strategic decisions about their response.

Just look at the growth in traffic to travel websites via AI platforms such as ChatGPT. For hotels and short-term rentals, the share of website traffic coming from AI platform referrals has quadrupled over a year, according to Similarweb, while other travel categories have seen AI’s share of web traffic more than double (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

That AI referral growth is from a low base, of course, but it should continue to benefit from the launch of new AI tools, such as the travel booking functionality recently added to Google search’s AI mode. There’s also good reason to believe that AI use will prove very sticky. In the US, for instance, data from Bain’s Consumer Lab suggests that 49% of consumers who have used AI for help researching and booking travel now rely on it most of or all the time for travel-related tasks; the equivalent average across the UK, France, and Germany is 41%.

With AI poised to reroute the customer journey in travel, operators face multiple threats. For one thing, growing consumer reliance on AI could lead to fewer direct bookings, leaving operators more reliant on lower-margin indirect booking traffic. But there’s also a general risk of commoditization for travel operators given how bots will often prioritize cost over other features as they autonomously narrow down options for travelers as well as other factors.

How should operators respond? Waiting to see how things pan out is one option, of course, despite its risks. Operators that choose this path must be willing to live with the booking funnel changes determined by the market and big tech players.

We think many operators would be better served if they instead try to define the future of travel booking early on, setting the terms as much as they can for how and where their brand and assets are leveraged. That task will be complicated by pockets of weakness and volatility in the global economy, which have slowed the industry’s post-Covid growth surge. It’s true also that smaller brands are more likely to be optimizing for an agentic AI future than defining it. But with the right strategic moves today, significant progress is possible.

Past e-commerce shifts don’t make a case for wait and see

The digitalization of the travel industry has come a long way over the past 15 years. In 2025, an estimated 70% of bookings were made online, up from 43% in 2011. However, the split of direct bookings vs. bookings through intermediaries such as travel agents has, perhaps surprisingly, remained broadly stable over that same period, even amid such disruptions as the rise of mobile commerce and social media (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

The wait-and-see camp might be tempted to take comfort in this consistency and hope that operators will emerge from AI’s flux with a similarly stable mix of direct bookings and indirect bookings (which of course tend to be less lucrative but are essential to high occupancy rates). That might suggest that the overall health of their business wouldn’t be affected much by AI’s increasing influence on travel.

But that’s likely to be wishful thinking. The superficial stability of the direct-to-indirect mix masks huge behavioral changes by consumers, such as their embrace of online travel agencies. Over the past 15 years, market players of every type have also had to paddle furiously beneath the surface to get to where they are today (for example, hotel brands investing heavily in their customer relationship management software to strengthen direct bookings).

Now isn’t the time to ease up on paddling. Consider a relatively benign scenario in which an operator succeeds in defending its flow of direct bookings as agentic commerce goes mainstream. Would the economics of the indirect channel remain at the same level as pre-AI? Not necessarily, given the likely emergence of AI platforms as a conduit for many indirect bookings.

It remains to be seen whether AI platforms will become as powerful a commercial partner as Google is today, thanks to its preeminence in search, but their sheer scale and wraparound usefulness to consumers could give them fearsome negotiating muscle in travel. AI agents could also put pressure on pricing by enabling budget-conscious travelers to find bargains more systematically.

Operators should also consider a more challenging scenario in which AI tilts the mix toward indirect bookings, limiting operators’ access to valuable first-party data (crucial for AI-powered personalization) and diluting earnings.

For instance, AI’s mastery of the inspiration stage of a trip purchase could persuade more consumers to use the technology as an intermediary, not just via AI platforms but also through AI-powered tools introduced by online travel agents. Against this backdrop, operators could struggle if they fail to master the art of AI-assisted search and remain wedded to obsolete SEO tactics as direct bookings dwindle. These are just some of the potential catalysts for a change in mix; the signs are that operators will be required to battle just to maintain the status quo.

How travel operators can respond to agentic commerce

In the short term, the most pressing task is to rethink and restructure online content with AI discoverability in mind rather than following a now-outdated playbook focused on traditional SEO.

Operators should make sure they are still showing up as the brand of choice for the use cases and customer segments they’ve historically won or want to win (and have a right to win). They also need to keep up with the gradual movement of marketing spending toward AI platforms, developing new capabilities along the way.

To optimize and enrich content for AI-powered search on both owned and third-party properties, operators must understand the subtly different ways in which large language models “think” on each AI platform as well as which content sources they use to create their answers. Operators should also make sure their pricing is similarly discoverable and understandable by AI agents, potentially while updating their broader pricing strategy to accommodate the increased price transparency these agents will bring.

Many operators will need to intensify their efforts to make direct booking at least as attractive to consumers as going through an intermediary by using AI to personalize their marketing, by strengthening their loyalty offerings, and by introducing customer-facing AI tools (including agents) that can replicate the smoothness and convenience that a consumer experiences when using an AI platform. In some cases, the largest operators might be powerful enough to wall off at least some inventory from AI search partners or find ways to create joint ventures with them that mitigate the threat of margin dilution from AI-powered indirect bookings.

For all the understandable caution about diluting the human element of hospitality, operators should also investigate how to use AI and other technology to develop an even more personalized experience that draws on their valuable stores of data. The end goal is giving guests such a memorable experience that they have the operator’s brand in mind when they next use AI to find a hotel room, resort, theme park, or cruise.

Questions to get started

The disruption from AI and agentic commerce is coming to all travel providers whether they help shape the new customer booking journey or just adapt to it once others have done the shaping. In framing their strategic response, executive teams at travel operators might benefit from asking the following questions:

• How exposed are we to the disruption ahead in customer acquisition? How does the disruption affect our vision for customer engagement over the next 5 to 10 years? Could it even be an opportunity to grow share? What’s the downside risk of any erosion in our direct share?
• Are we best off trying to retain our current place in the travel value chain, or should we move into adjacencies or beyond? What new capabilities would be needed to make a transition?
• How should our assets (including data, customer relationships, and competitive moats) evolve to realize those visions of customer engagement and our future ecosystem position? To what extent should we partner with others or build capabilities ourselves?

Travel operators have evolved with e-commerce over three decades now, responding to the rise of online bookings, mobile commerce, and social media while maintaining their focus on human connection and fulfillment. They can’t afford to sit still as AI creates a new cycle of disruption and opportunity.