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Weekly updates on the digital marketing news you need to know for the travel industry, including the latest news in travel, ai in the travel industry, data privacy, platform updates, travel marketing trends and more.

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Travel Brands Take Off With ChatGPT Ads
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Travel Brands Take Off With ChatGPT Ads

  • Travel is emerging as an early category in ChatGPT advertising, with brands appearing alongside telco and energy players as sponsored placements ramp up across Australia.
  • Analysis found ads in roughly half of monitored ChatGPT responses, suggesting the platform could quickly become a meaningful new discovery channel for travel marketers.
  • The opportunity is particularly relevant for travel because ChatGPT is already used for research, planning and decision-making, potentially putting advertisers close to high-intent moments in the customer journey.
  • For travel marketers, the early activity signals a need to start watching how competitors appear within AI-generated experiences and where paid placements could fit alongside search and other performance channels.
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EU AI Act Puts Travel Marketing on Notice
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EU AI Act Puts Travel Marketing on Notice

  • AI-generated marketing will need clear disclosure. Travel companies must label content that is partly or fully AI-generated, including text, imagery, audio and video, and tell customers when they’re interacting with AI tools such as chatbots or voice assistants.
  • AI imagery is already widespread in hotel marketing. A study of 25,550 hotel photos across seven destinations found around one in five were AI-generated or heavily edited, raising concerns about whether marketing accurately represents the guest experience.
  • Personalisation is fine, discriminatory pricing isn’t. AI can recommend relevant travel options, but the Act prohibits differential pricing based on socioeconomic factors and restricts manipulative practices designed to pressure consumers into bookings.
  • Marketers will need to balance AI efficiency with consumer trust. AI can legitimately help brands adapt creative, such as producing seasonal variations, but depicting rooms, facilities or surroundings that don’t reflect reality could create compliance and credibility problems.
  • The compliance stakes are significant. With enforcement of some provisions beginning, major breaches could attract penalties of up to 3% of global turnover, while recruitment AI that creates discriminatory outcomes is also restricted.
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Hotel Strategy Shifts From Forecasts to Live Demand
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Hotel Strategy Shifts From Forecasts to Live Demand

  • Global hotel demand is increasingly fragmented by market, segment and price point, making broad economic forecasts less useful. Commercial teams are leaning more heavily on property and destination-level data to understand what’s actually happening.
  • Booking volume alone is becoming a weaker measure of performance. Smaller bookings, changing trip patterns and higher acquisition costs mean marketers need to track booking value and profitability alongside raw demand.
  • Shorter booking windows are increasing the value of real-time signals. Booking pace, revenue on the books, cancellations, lead volume and conversion rates can provide a clearer picture of near-term demand than consumer sentiment or macroeconomic headlines.
  • Channel economics are becoming as important as demand generation. Hotels need to assess the incremental cost and value of direct, OTA and emerging AI-driven discovery channels rather than simply optimising for booking volume.
  • The bigger shift is towards integrated commercial decision-making. Marketing, sales and revenue teams need shared data and faster feedback loops to adjust pricing, inventory, targeting and channel investment as local demand changes.
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APAC hospitality growth masks a widening market divide
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APAC hospitality growth masks a widening market divide

  • APAC hospitality is growing, but the headline numbers hide major differences. Japan, Singapore, Australia and Southeast Asia all recorded positive revenue and profit growth in H1 2026, making market-by-market analysis increasingly important.
  • Japan remains an investment hotspot, although growth is cooling fast. After GOPPAR surged 16.1% in FY2025, growth slowed to 2.3% YTD through June 2026, suggesting investors should base expectations on today's more moderate trajectory rather than last year's boom.
  • Australia is proving the steadier performer. Its GOPPAR grew 12% in FY2025 and another 5.8% YTD in 2026, while Southeast Asia's rebound has been far more volatile and its latest growth comes off a comparatively soft 2025 base.
  • Southeast Asia's post-COVID boom hasn't necessarily returned. GOPPAR growth dropped from 18% in FY2024 to just 0.4% in FY2025, with 2026's improvement better viewed as a recovery than evidence of another demand surge.
  • Geopolitical disruption hasn't hit APAC's headline performance yet, but individual properties could tell a different story. Hotels reliant on Middle Eastern travellers may face concentrated pressure that regional benchmarks don't capture, making source-market and booking data worth watching closely.
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AI’s Travel Advantage Is Data, Not Technology
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AI’s Travel Advantage Is Data, Not Technology

  • As AI technology becomes increasingly commoditised, HBX Group believes proprietary data will be the real competitive advantage. In an interview with Phocuswire, Chief Strategy, Transformation, and AI Officer of HBX Group, Javier Cabrerizo put it simply: “the secret ingredient, the competitive advantage, is the data.”
  • The opportunity gets bigger when businesses combine their own data with partners’ data. HBX sees its travel ecosystem as a way to create datasets competitors can’t easily replicate, then use that context to power more distinctive AI experiences and recommendations.
  • That could make personalisation more important, not less, as AI adoption grows. Cabrerizo argues that with “the right context, the right data”, AI can deliver highly unique recommendations, moving travellers beyond the same filters, destinations and experiences produced by traditional search funnels.
  • HBX is also avoiding dependence on any single AI platform. It has built its own agentic infrastructure because models are changing so quickly, prioritising “control and flexibility” while treating the underlying platforms and development capabilities as increasingly interchangeable.
  • For marketers, the takeaway is that owning useful customer context could matter more than owning the latest AI tool. HBX expects AI and LLMs to create new sources of travel demand, while brands can still use their existing customer trust and proprietary data to shape how those experiences happen.
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AI is reshaping how Brits plan holidays
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AI is reshaping how Brits plan holidays

  • Nearly 40% of Brits would be likely to use AI to book a holiday rather than a travel agent, signalling a meaningful shift towards AI-assisted travel planning and purchasing.
  • Just 7% would rely solely on a traditional travel agent, highlighting how quickly consumer preferences are moving towards digital and AI-led experiences.
  • Saving time is AI’s biggest appeal, cited by 40% of respondents, followed by reducing planning stress at 25% and receiving personalised recommendations at 21.5%.
  • Consumers are increasingly open to letting AI transact for them, with more than 45% comfortable with AI booking a trip on their behalf.
  • Trust is still a significant hurdle, with 32% unwilling to let AI make bookings, suggesting brands need to balance automation with reassurance and consumer control.
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Google Maps Turns AI Into an Action Engine
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Google Maps Turns AI Into an Action Engine

  • Google Maps is making travel and hotel discovery more actionable. Ask Maps can surface hotels based on conversational requests while factoring in real-time pricing and availability, helping travellers move more easily from planning to booking.
  • The update pushes Maps further down the customer journey. Users can also discover hotels using real-time pricing and availability, find nearby events and access ticket links, turning Maps from a discovery platform into a tool that can help facilitate decisions and purchases.
  • Personalisation is becoming much deeper through Google’s ecosystem. Users can optionally connect Gmail, and eventually Calendar, allowing Ask Maps to factor existing flights, hotel bookings and restaurant reservations into its recommendations.
  • Real-time utility is expanding too. A new transit widget provides live delay information for buses, trains, subways and ferries, while conversation history lets users resume previous planning sessions rather than starting again.
  • For marketers, accurate Maps data could become even more important as AI takes action on consumers’ behalf. Businesses can now submit updates conversationally, while Google says food ordering, hotel and event discovery, and conversational contributions are initially rolling out in the US, with broader expansion planned.
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Gemini Spark Brings AI Agents to Travel Planning
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Gemini Spark Brings AI Agents to Travel Planning

  • Gemini Spark can now take action directly in Chrome, using logged-in accounts and saved passwords, with permission, to complete multi-step web tasks rather than simply providing information.
  • Spark can handle jobs like researching flights, starting the booking process and scheduling apartment viewings, highlighting how AI agents could increasingly manage travel planning and other everyday online tasks.
  • One of the examples provided by Google says: “Find the cheapest nonstop flights from the Bay Area to Seattle from August 20th to August 24th on Skytravel, log in to my account, fill in my info and let me know when it’s ready to book.”
  • Google says Spark is designed to protect against threats such as prompt injection, while sensitive actions like payments are handed back to the user for approval.
  • The Chrome browsing capabilities are initially rolling out in the US, while Gemini Spark itself is expanding to Google AI Pro subscribers across 160+ additional countries.
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What Expedia and Booking Holdings Q2 Earnings Teach Us About AI
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What Expedia and Booking Holdings Q2 Earnings Teach Us About AI

  • AI is becoming a strategic layer across travel, but direct AI-driven bookings remain tiny. Booking Holdings says LLM referrals still account for less than 1% of room nights, while Expedia describes answer engine optimisation as small but among its fastest-growing channels.
  • The immediate AI wins are coming from personalisation and operational efficiency. Expedia says AI-powered recommendations, ranking and personalised experiences are already improving performance, while Booking Holdings reports customer service cost per booking declining at a double-digit rate, with AI delivering benefits across the business.
  • Travel brands are investing ahead of proven conversion. Expedia’s conversational experiences aren't yet driving conversion, but are capturing over 60% more information about traveller intent, which it believes will improve conversion over time.
  • For marketers, AI visibility could matter before AI traffic does. Booking Holdings is already focused on how prominently its brands appear in LLM responses, while Expedia is actively managing visibility across prompts, answers and AI search. The emerging opportunity looks increasingly like AEO alongside SEO, even before AI becomes a major conversion channel.
  • Read more about Expedia or Read more about Booking
Gemini’s Southeast Asia Boom Reshapes Travel Marketing
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Gemini’s Southeast Asia Boom Reshapes Travel Marketing

  • Gemini adoption is surging across Southeast Asia, with users more than doubling between April 2025 and March 2026. Younger consumers are driving growth, while Singapore now has the world’s highest per-capita Gemini adoption.
  • Local language is critical for marketers, with nearly 70% of prompts made in languages other than English. This rises to 89% in Vietnam, 87% in Thailand and 84% in Indonesia, highlighting the need for genuinely localised AI experiences.
  • AI engagement is overwhelmingly mobile and increasingly multimodal. Three-quarters of Gemini requests in the region come from mobile, while more than 40% involve voice, images or video rather than text alone.
  • Consumer behaviour varies significantly by market, creating opportunities for more nuanced strategies. The Philippines leads in multimodal and creative use, Thailand in lifestyle and creativity prompts, Vietnam in translation, and Singapore in productivity-focused usage.
  • Google’s shift towards agentic AI could reshape the travel journey. Its new Gemini Spark agent is designed to complete tasks across Google products, pointing towards travellers delegating activities such as itinerary creation, bookings and refund follow-ups directly to AI.
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Travellers Embrace AI, But Keep Booking Control
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Travellers Embrace AI, But Keep Booking Control

  • AI is already mainstream in US travel planning: 74% of travellers have used AI to plan a trip, while 85% believe it can save time and deliver more personalised recommendations.
  • There’s a clear trust barrier when money enters the picture: 65% are interested in booking and paying through an AI assistant, but just 20% would let AI spend within a set budget without further approval.
  • Practical personalisation is where AI delivers most value: Travellers most want local guidance (55%), budget-aware recommendations (52%) and real-time rebooking when plans change (49%).
  • Data sharing needs a tangible value exchange: Travellers are most willing to share data for better deals (55%), time savings (51%) and stronger recommendations (46%), while payment and identity details remain much more sensitive.
  • Human reassurance still matters at high-stakes moments: 89% cross-check AI recommendations before booking, only 17% would trust AI to plan a trip alone, and just 7% prefer AI support during travel disruptions.
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New Study Reveals What Makes Travel Brands Visible in AI Search
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New Study Reveals What Makes Travel Brands Visible in AI Search

  • OppAlerts has launched AI Search Visibility reports built on a large dataset spanning 403,000+ LLM prompts, 150,000+ search queries, 100 industries and 1,100 buyer personas. The aim is to identify which signals most strongly correlate with being recommended by AI search tools.
  • Travel sectors rely on different AI ranking signals. The research shows there is no single formula for AI visibility, with airlines, hotels, online travel agencies, car rental brands, ski resorts and holiday rental platforms each relying on different combinations of search, authority, community and content signals.
  • Airlines stand out as a community-driven category. For airline recommendations, Reddit discussions were almost as influential as search engine outbound links, outperforming traditional backlink metrics. This suggests that authentic traveller conversations are becoming just as important as SEO for AI recommendations.
  • AI recommendations don't mirror Google rankings. In the airline sector, brands recommended by ChatGPT and other LLMs differed significantly from those ranking highly in organic search or Google's AI Overviews. Niche brands such as StudentUniverse overperformed with AI despite having a much smaller traditional search footprint.
  • Traveller intent matters more than ever. AI recommendations changed dramatically depending on the traveller persona. Business travellers, families, loyalty members and students all received different top recommendations, highlighting the growing importance of creating content for specific customer segments instead of broad travel audiences.
  • Travel brands should measure visibility across every touchpoint. The report suggests success in AI search will come from building authority beyond your own website, including strong search visibility, relevant homepage content, trusted third-party citations and genuine community discussion across the web.
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Google Brings Paid Hotel Deals Into AI Trip Planning
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Google Brings Paid Hotel Deals Into AI Trip Planning

  • Google is expanding advertising inside its AI-powered trip planning experience, with IHG Hotels & Resorts confirmed as an upcoming partner in its Direct Offers program. This will allow IHG to surface special rates, loyalty perks and bundled offers while users are planning trips.
  • Direct Offers lets brands submit promotions through Google Ads and Hotel Center, with Google's AI deciding when to show them based on a traveller's purchase intent. This means offers can appear naturally within AI-generated trip recommendations rather than only in traditional search ads.
  • Google is also rolling out new AI advertising formats, including Highlighted Answers, which inserts sponsored links into AI-generated response lists. The company says these formats are already showing encouraging levels of user engagement.
  • For hotel marketers, this creates a new opportunity to influence travellers earlier in the booking journey by promoting direct booking rates and loyalty incentives within Google's conversational search experience.
  • Google has not confirmed when IHG's offers will launch, which markets will get access first, or whether the partnership is exclusive. However, its existing product documentation suggests the program could eventually expand to more hotel advertisers.
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Travel Brands Win When AI Remembers Them
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Travel Brands Win When AI Remembers Them

  • geoSurge analysed nearly 4,000 AI responses across 66 US buyer questions spanning nine industries to test whether a model's memory of a brand influences which brands it later searches for. Memory and search were measured separately across different models, making the results a conservative correlation rather than proof of causation.
  • The headline finding was clear: brands that appeared in a model's top-10 memory were searched 3.2 times more often than brands it didn't remember. Remembered brands were searched in 55.7% of cases versus 17.4% for brands outside the model's memory, with the relationship holding across every industry analysed.
  • The stronger the memory, the stronger the effect. Brands in the model's top five recalled names appeared in searches 67% of the time, compared with just 17% for brands the model didn't remember. While most AI searches remained generic, when models did search for a specific brand, 63% of those searches were for one of their top five remembered brands.
  • The travel sector stood out as the strongest memory-led category in the study. It recorded the highest search rate for remembered brands at 82%, suggesting travel brands that are firmly embedded in an AI model's memory are far more likely to be included in its search process and, ultimately, its answers. The research suggests that in highly memory-led categories like travel, being remembered by the model is close to a prerequisite for being surfaced.
  • The study also found exceptions where live web search surfaced brands the model hadn't remembered, showing that strong content can still help emerging brands gain visibility. However, geoSurge concludes that long-term AI visibility increasingly depends on building category authority that strengthens a brand's presence in model memory, rather than relying solely on being discovered at query time.
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Amex GBT Brings AI Booking Into Claude
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Amex GBT Brings AI Booking Into Claude

  • American Express Global Business Travel has launched an AI booking connector for Anthropic's Claude, allowing business travellers to search, book and manage flights and hotels directly within the AI assistant, without switching to a separate booking platform.
  • The connector is powered by Amex GBT's new agent-to-agent (A2A) architecture, enabling enterprise AI agents to complete bookings on a traveller's behalf while applying company travel policies and personal preferences automatically.
  • The integration keeps bookings inside the managed travel ecosystem, giving companies policy-compliant travel, access to Amex GBT's marketplace, and the ability to manage trips through existing Claude Enterprise workflows.
  • The launch signals a shift from AI assistants that simply recommend travel to AI agents that can complete end-to-end transactions. It positions Amex GBT among the first major business travel providers to enable full booking capabilities through a conversational AI interface.
  • For marketers and travel brands, it's another sign that AI assistants are rapidly becoming transactional channels, meaning businesses will need to optimise not just for search, but for AI agents that can discover, compare and complete purchases on behalf of users.
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EU’s Google Hotel Search Ruling May Hurt Hotels
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EU’s Google Hotel Search Ruling May Hurt Hotels

  • The European Commission has fined Google €460 million for giving its own search services, including hotel search, preferential placement over rivals as part of a wider €890 million Digital Markets Act enforcement action.
  • While the ruling is designed to boost competition, independent hotels may not be the biggest winners. More visibility for comparison sites and online travel agencies could reduce direct bookings and increase reliance on commission-based booking platforms.
  • Google claims previous DMA-driven changes led to a drop of up to 30% in direct hotel booking clicks, while hotel industry groups have also warned that removing features like maps, pricing and direct booking links makes independent hotels less visible.
  • The core challenge is that regulators are trying to curb Google's dominance, but shifting traffic from Google to intermediaries does not necessarily improve outcomes for hotels. It may simply move power from one gatekeeper to another.
  • The case highlights a broader issue with digital competition remedies. A legally sound ruling against Google's self-preferencing may still produce unintended consequences for businesses that rely on direct customer relationships, particularly independent hotels.
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Booking.com Maps the Science of Travel Happiness
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Booking.com Maps the Science of Travel Happiness

  • Booking.com's new Travel Happiness Index explores what makes travel genuinely fulfilling, surveying travellers across APAC to understand the behaviours, motivations and experiences that contribute most to happiness before, during and after a trip.
  • Technology is a key enabler of happier travel, not just a booking tool. The report finds travellers increasingly rely on digital platforms to research, compare and discover destinations, with tech reducing planning friction and making travel feel more accessible and enjoyable.
  • Technology is now central to the travel journey, with 84% of APAC travellers saying digital tools make planning and booking easier.
  • While AI tools are emerging as channel aids, booking platforms remain the most-used channels for converting travel aspirations into actual bookings.
  • Trust remains a major conversion driver, with 88% feeling more at ease when booking through a trusted platform. For marketers, brand credibility and reassurance matter just as much as functionality.
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Google Hotel Ads Shake-Up Puts Direct Bookings at Risk
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Google Hotel Ads Shake-Up Puts Direct Bookings at Risk

  • Google will retire its third-party hotel rates feed on 30 September 2026, meaning hotels that rely on Google's automatically sourced pricing will need to switch to a direct price feed or approved connectivity partner to remain visible in Google Hotel Ads.
  • The change affects some of Google's highest-intent booking surfaces, including the Hotel Booking Module, Google Hotels and Travel Promotion Ads. Performance Max campaigns will still run, but they will lose access to hotel-specific inventory if a compliant feed isn't in place.
  • This is more than a technical update. Hotels will need to implement a new pricing feed, meet Google's price accuracy requirements, and rebuild Hotel Ads campaigns, a process that can take weeks or months.
  • Hotels that delay the transition risk losing visibility, increasing their dependence on OTAs and paying higher commission costs as direct bookings decline.
  • The broader takeaway for marketers is that Google is raising its standards around real-time data quality and integrations, making technical infrastructure an increasingly important part of digital marketing strategy.
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Google Expands Demand Gen for Travel Advertisers
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Google Expands Demand Gen for Travel Advertisers

  • Google has added business data feeds to Demand Gen campaigns, allowing travel brands to create dynamic ads without needing a Google Merchant Center feed. Instead, advertisers can use structured business data such as destinations, packages or availability.
  • The update is designed for travel, real estate and automotive advertisers, opening up dynamic ad capabilities that were previously focused on ecommerce.
  • For travel marketers, this means campaigns can automatically tailor creative based on audience interests and available inventory, reducing the need for manual ad updates while improving relevance.
  • There is one catch. Business data feeds currently only work on the Google Display Network within Demand Gen campaigns, rather than across all Demand Gen inventory.
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Tours Lead the Race for AI Search Visibility
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Tours Lead the Race for AI Search Visibility

  • Tour operators came out on top according to a recent study on AI search readiness, scoring an average of 52 out of 100, ahead of online travel agencies (43), destination marketing organisations (38), hotels (31) and airlines (27).
  • Only 23% of the 100 travel brands audited met the threshold to be considered "AI-ready". The highest-performing brands consistently published rich destination content, updated pages regularly, used multiple schema types and linked to credible third-party sources.
  • Europe is leading AI search preparedness, with 35% of brands classified as AI-ready, compared to 21% in Asia-Pacific and just 12% in the Americas. The Americas also recorded the lowest average score, despite being home to many of the world's largest technology companies.
  • Technical SEO remains a major weakness. Eighty-five percent of brands had at least one significant issue, with missing FAQ schema the most common problem, followed by structured data, sitemap and page speed issues.
  • The research suggests brands can improve AI visibility through relatively simple fixes, including implementing FAQ schema and structured data, adding visible content update dates, and investing in more destination-focused content.
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AI Hospitality Alliance Unveils Industry AI Roadmap Teams
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AI Hospitality Alliance Unveils Industry AI Roadmap Teams

  • The AI Hospitality Alliance has launched eight specialist workstream committees, bringing together 54 contributors from 32 companies to develop practical AI standards, frameworks and technical blueprints for the hospitality industry.
  • The committees will focus on key priorities including agentic AI protocols, middleware orchestration, scalable AI architecture, AI-ready data standards, visibility KPIs, AI readiness and AI governance. The goal is to create shared resources the industry can build on.
  • All outputs will be reviewed by the Alliance's Advisory Board before being released as open source resources, giving hospitality businesses and technology providers free access to implementation guidance and best practice.
  • The Alliance says additional committees will be formed as its roadmap evolves, and is inviting hospitality and technology professionals to propose new workstreams or join future committees.
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Mindtrip Wants to Make Destinations AI-Visible
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Mindtrip Wants to Make Destinations AI-Visible

  • AI travel platform Mindtrip has launched Answer Intelligence, a tool designed to help destination marketing organisations (DMOs) understand the questions travellers are asking AI assistants and optimise their content to appear in AI-generated answers.
  • The platform is powered by millions of traveller conversations across Mindtrip and its DMO partners, giving destinations insights into emerging travel interests, regional trends and content gaps that could be limiting AI visibility.
  • Mindtrip says unpublished research with MMGY Travel Intelligence, Sabre and Sojern found 70% of DMOs have experienced declines in organic search traffic linked to AI, highlighting the growing need to optimise for AI discovery rather than traditional search.
  • Beyond identifying content gaps, the tool generates AI-assisted content recommendations and benchmarking insights, helping destinations improve their chances of being cited and recommended by AI search experiences.
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DFAT Warns Against Blind Trust in AI Travel Planning
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DFAT Warns Against Blind Trust in AI Travel Planning

  • Australia's Smartraveller has published new guidance urging travellers to treat AI as a starting point for trip planning, not a replacement for trusted research. The advice comes as AI becomes increasingly popular for planning overseas holidays, with 30% of Gen Z Australians already using it.
  • While AI can quickly generate personalised itineraries, recommend accommodation and help with budgeting or translation, it can also produce inaccurate, outdated or incomplete information because it doesn't verify its sources.
  • DFAT warns that relying on AI for visa requirements, local laws or safety advice can have serious consequences. Its research found 28% of Gen Z travellers use AI for visa information, 27% for safety advice and 19% for local laws and customs.
  • Common AI mistakes include recommending closed hotels, outdated flight schedules, incorrect visa rules, unavailable attractions and inaccurate costs. It may also miss important safety warnings or fail to flag destinations with changing risks.
  • DFAT's warning is another sign that AI-generated content is increasingly being scrutinised by trusted institutions. As consumers rely more on AI for recommendations, brands need to ensure accurate, up-to-date information is easily accessible across official channels, as that content is more likely to influence what AI surfaces.
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AI Won’t Kill OTAs, But It Will Cut Margins
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AI Won’t Kill OTAs, But It Will Cut Margins

  • The biggest AI threat to online travel agencies (OTAs) isn't disintermediation. Instead, analysts believe AI will squeeze profit margins by increasing customer acquisition costs and forcing OTAs to compete more aggressively on value.
  • Consumer appetite for AI travel planning is growing quickly. BTIG found more than 60% of travellers have already experimented with AI, with strong willingness to use it for inspiration, research and itinerary building. Around 40% would also trust AI to book flights or accommodation.
  • Despite the hype, today's AI tools still fall short. Platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are good at destination ideas and itinerary planning, but lack meaningful personalisation, live pricing and end-to-end booking capabilities.
  • BTIG argues OTAs remain well positioned because of their deep behavioural data, supplier relationships and massive marketing budgets. Rather than replacing OTAs, AI is more likely to become another customer acquisition channel, with partnerships bridging the gap between AI planning and booking.
  • AI currently drives only around 0.4% of OTA traffic, making traditional search a much bigger competitive battleground for now. The bigger long-term question is whether AI assistants will gradually chip away at the roughly 40% of OTA traffic that still comes from paid search.
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Hospitality Industry Launches Open AI Use Case Hub
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Hospitality Industry Launches Open AI Use Case Hub

  • The AI Hospitality Alliance, in partnership with HEDNA, has launched the hospitality industry's first comprehensive, crowdsourced catalogue of AI use cases, designed to build a shared knowledge base for the sector.
  • Hoteliers, technology providers, consultants and other hospitality professionals are encouraged to contribute real-world or pilot AI use cases by selecting a system on the interactive map and submitting their experience.
  • Contributors are asked to explain the problem AI solves, how it improves hotel operations, the benefits achieved and, optionally, which AI tools were used.
  • The submission process takes around 60 seconds, making it quick and easy for the industry to share practical AI applications and learn from one another.
  • The initiative aims to make proven AI use cases more accessible across the hospitality industry, helping businesses identify practical opportunities to adopt AI with greater confidence.
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Study Shows AI Is Reshaping Hotel Discovery
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Study Shows AI Is Reshaping Hotel Discovery

  • The latest J.D. Power North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index found AI is beginning to influence how travellers research and evaluate hotels. While still in its early stages, the shift signals a new competitive battleground for hotel brands.
  • AI adoption is strongest among younger travellers. Nearly half of guests using AI during the hotel research process are Millennials, while almost a quarter are Gen Z, highlighting where behaviour is changing first.
  • The study suggests discoverability is evolving beyond traditional search. As travellers increasingly turn to conversational AI for personalised recommendations, hotels will need to ensure their information is accurate, structured and easy for AI systems to interpret.
  • Strong guest experiences remain critical in an AI-driven landscape. J.D. Power notes that positive reviews, operational excellence and consistently high satisfaction are likely to become even more influential as AI tools recommend accommodation.
  • While guest satisfaction reached a multi-year high, the research points to AI as the industry's next major challenge. Hotels will need to continue investing in service while adapting their digital presence for AI-powered discovery.
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Travel AI Visibility Is Shifting to Research
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Travel AI Visibility Is Shifting to Research

  • Travel has one of the strongest AI Overview footprints of any industry. 48% of commercial travel keywords now trigger AI Overviews, the second-highest share across all industries behind Internet & Telecom, while 14% of transactional travel keywords trigger AI Overviews, ranking third overall.
  • Between November 2025 and April 2026, the share of commercial travel SERPs featuring AI Overviews increased 38.64%. Google is increasingly surfacing AI-generated answers while travellers research destinations, accommodation and experiences.
  • At the same time, the share of transactional travel SERPs with AI Overviews fell 26.26% over the same period. This suggests Google is placing greater emphasis on AI during the consideration phase, while leaving booking-focused searches more open to traditional results.
  • The broader trend aligns with Semrush's finding that AI Overviews are expanding fastest across commercial intent searches. For travel brands, influencing travellers early in their planning journey is becoming just as important as capturing them when they're ready to book.
  • For travel marketers, the priority is clear: optimise content for high-value research queries where AI Overviews are growing, while continuing to invest in SEO and paid search for booking-focused keywords that still rely more heavily on traditional search results.
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APAC Hotel Bookings Enter a New Competitive Phase
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APAC Hotel Bookings Enter a New Competitive Phase

  • APAC hotel booking growth is slowing as the post-pandemic rebound fades, with D-EDGE reporting growth has cooled to just 2.7%. Hotels can no longer rely on rising demand alone and need to be more deliberate about how they manage their distribution mix.
  • Agoda has overtaken Booking.com as the region's leading OTA, growing its share from 16.4% in 2022 to 20.9% in 2025. It was also the only major OTA still growing in Q1 2026, while Booking.com and Expedia both recorded declines.
  • Direct bookings are losing ground despite being the highest quality channel. Direct share slipped from 11.8% to 11.2% between 2022 and 2025, with an even sharper decline in early 2026, suggesting many hotels are underinvesting in SEO, metasearch and booking experience.
  • AI is changing how travellers discover hotels rather than where they book, with its impact currently strongest in search and content discovery. D-EDGE recommends hotels focus on strengthening their digital presence and organic visibility now, ahead of AI-driven booking behaviour becoming more significant.
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What New Search Data Reveals About Travel Discovery
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What New Search Data Reveals About Travel Discovery

  • Travel discovery is shifting from Google-style links to AI-generated answers and social video search. According to SocialSeal data presented at WiT Japan, travellers are using contextual searches on TikTok, Reels and Shorts, with 3.08 billion short-form video views showing growing interest in Japan's secondary destinations.
  • Secondary destinations need to reduce uncertainty, not just inspire. Travellers are more likely to book when content clearly shows the atmosphere, transport routes and logistics, with a "see the vibe, verify the route" mindset replacing traditional travel research.
  • Regional destinations like Fukuoka, Nagoya and Hiroshima are attracting attention by pairing inspiring visuals with practical travel guidance. Content that explains transport connections, day-trip routes and how to navigate the region is outperforming generic destination marketing.
  • Different Southeast Asian markets search differently. Singaporean travellers prioritise efficient transport, Malaysians look for food-first itineraries, Thai travellers seek exclusive experiences, Indonesians focus on scenic group-friendly locations, while travellers from Vietnam and the Philippines prefer clear, easy-to-follow travel loops.
  • The report's key takeaway for marketers is simple: great visuals generate interest, but practical information drives bookings. Content should answer specific traveller questions around transport, timing, dining and accessibility at the moment search intent is highest.
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How KAYAK Is Reinventing Search With AI
AI in travel Platforms in travel

How KAYAK Is Reinventing Search With AI

  • KAYAK is shifting travel search from keyword and filter-based queries to intent-led discovery, allowing users to describe what they want in natural language while AI translates that intent into relevant, bookable results.
  • The company is using AI to improve search performance, not replace it. Ask AI works alongside the traditional results page, combining conversational refinement with real-time comparison to help users make faster, more confident decisions.
  • Search quality depends on trust. By surfacing live pricing and availability from hundreds of travel partners, KAYAK ensures AI-generated recommendations remain accurate, relevant and actionable.
  • KAYAK's approach highlights a broader shift for marketers: AI search experiences will succeed when they reduce friction and improve relevance, rather than simply adding another chatbot interface.
  • As AI-powered search grows, brands will need to optimise for visibility beyond traditional search engines while continuing to create useful, trustworthy content that performs across AI-driven discovery platforms.
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