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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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Google reshapes EEA search for DMA compliance
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Google reshapes EEA search for DMA compliance

  • Google has rolled out redesigned Search results across the European Economic Area, giving comparison services and direct suppliers dedicated placements for hotel, flight, transport and product searches.
  • Eligible aggregators now appear in a dedicated unit, with the top-ranked provider expanded by default. Aggregators need Google approval and must supply data via feeds or real-time APIs.
  • Direct suppliers such as hotels and airlines get a separate unit, but it only appears alongside the aggregator unit. For marketers, this creates a distinctly different search experience and visibility landscape in EEA markets.
  • SEO teams should expect EEA rank tracking and Search Console data to diverge from markets such as the UK and US, making country-level performance monitoring increasingly important.
  • Local search could be next, with Google indicating similar changes are being developed for dining, services and things-to-do searches, although no launch date has been announced.
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Travel Marketers Shift From SEO to AI Visibility
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Travel Marketers Shift From SEO to AI Visibility

  • AI is reshaping how travellers discover and book trips, forcing marketers to rethink their strategies. At The Travel Marketing AI Summit in London, industry leaders discussed how brands can improve their visibility inside AI platforms now, while preparing for a future where AI agents increasingly handle bookings on travellers’ behalf.
  • GEO is emerging as the next search battleground. Unlike traditional SEO, generative engine optimisation (GEO) requires brands to make the shortlist of sources and brands an LLM considers, with third-party content playing an important role in shaping AI recommendations.
  • Optimising prompts like keywords won’t cut it. AI can break a single travel prompt into multiple sub-queries through “query fanout”, making visibility more complex and harder to engineer than conventional search rankings.
  • Brand investment could become even more important. Skyscanner’s Piero Sierra says AI visibility reflects a brand’s reputation across its wider digital footprint, arguing that “the biggest driver of AI visibility is your general brand spend.”
  • Agentic booking is coming, but trust remains a barrier. Phocuswright research cited in the article says 40% of US travellers and 28% of UK travellers would let AI book flights and hotels, while Sierra expects autonomous booking to gain traction first with simpler itineraries.
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Two giants now dominate Europe’s OTA market
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Two giants now dominate Europe’s OTA market

  • Booking Holdings and Expedia Group now control 85.4% of European OTA bookings, with Booking Holdings alone taking 68.8%, signalling an increasingly concentrated distribution market.
  • OTAs account for 29.9% of hotel bookings, up from 19.7% in 2013, while direct bookings have fallen six percentage points but still represent a resilient 51.3% of bookings.
  • Pricing control is becoming a bigger issue for hotels. 51% report OTA price undercutting, up from 43% in 2023, and 80% of affected hotels say they hadn’t agreed to the lower price.
  • 44% of hotels report OTA multi-sourcing, which can create inconsistent pricing and information, guest confusion and less control over inventory.
  • HOTREC is using the findings to push for stronger enforcement of the EU’s Digital Markets Act and continued platform transparency protections, arguing they’re critical for competition and hotel SMEs.
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OTAs Ramp Up Marketing as AI Channels Grow
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OTAs Ramp Up Marketing as AI Channels Grow

  • Airbnb, Expedia Group and Booking Holdings spent a combined US$5.37 billion on marketing in Q2 2026, showing that heavy marketing investment remains central even as OTAs highlight strong direct traffic.
  • Booking Holdings led spending at US$2.37 billion, up 11% year on year, driven by traffic mix changes, additional paid marketing and a shift towards performance marketing. Direct traffic remained in the mid-60% range.
  • Expedia increased marketing spend 10% to US$2.12 billion, while redirecting inefficient spend into more productive channels. Social media and answer engine optimisation (AEO) are among its fastest-growing channels as it experiments with AI agents and paid ChatGPT advertising.
  • Airbnb spent around US$875 million, up from US$691 million a year earlier, with marketing positioned as a key driver of international growth alongside supply and localisation. Local campaigns are being used to strengthen relevance in priority growth markets.
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AI Takes the Stress Out of Travel Planning
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AI Takes the Stress Out of Travel Planning

  • University of Surrey research found generative AI can act as a “cognitive scaffold”, reducing the mental workload involved in planning trips while leaving final decisions with travellers.
  • AI helps by handling tedious tracking and coordination, structuring information so travellers can compare options more easily, and giving them a clearer starting point for planning.
  • For travel marketers, reducing this cognitive overload could help tackle abandoned baskets, particularly when consumers feel overwhelmed by choices across transport, accommodation, budgets and activities.
  • The research also points to an accessibility opportunity, with AI potentially making travel planning more inclusive for people with organisational or cognitive difficulties. However, trust remains a hurdle, with separate research cited in the article finding confidence in AI can fall at the payment stage.
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AI Is Becoming a New Travel Gatekeeper
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AI Is Becoming a New Travel Gatekeeper

  • Heidelberg and Rome topped MEININGER Hotels’ AI-generated travel rankings, both scoring 94.4/100 after averaging recommendations from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity.
  • The analysis suggests AI has a clear preference for established cultural destinations. Paris, Barcelona, Florence and Mallorca joined Rome in Europe’s top five, while southern Germany dominated the German rankings.
  • For marketers, the bigger takeaway is how AI discovery could influence travel consideration. MEININGER argues that appearing in AI-generated recommendations is becoming an increasingly important way for destinations to reach potential visitors.
  • Events also emerged as a discovery opportunity, with Venice Carnival ranked Europe’s top event and Germany’s Bayreuth Festival beating the much larger Oktoberfest.
  • The results are directional rather than definitive. Rankings were generated by asking five AI models to score 100 German cities and 100 European regions, and recommendations can vary significantly by model and individual prompt.
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Google Says EU Search Shake-Up Will Hurt Quality
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Google Says EU Search Shake-Up Will Hurt Quality

  • Google is overhauling Search results across the EU to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), calling the changes the largest reduction in search quality in its 29-year history.
  • The new results give greater prominence to vertical search and comparison services such as Expedia and Booking.com, potentially reducing direct visibility for hotels, airlines, restaurants and other businesses.
  • Google says previous DMA-driven changes caused a 30% drop in free, direct booking traffic to European businesses, and expects the latest overhaul to have a further impact. That could make organic visibility and customer acquisition more expensive for affected brands.
  • Searchers will also lose some useful functionality, including real-time pricing in certain result carousels. Google says testing with millions of European users showed high dissatisfaction, with people needing to repeat searches to find what they wanted.
  • The changes follow a €460 million EU fine for Google favouring its own services in areas including shopping, hotels, transport and sports. The overhaul applies to EU users, while users outside the EU will not be affected.
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Meta’s Muse Could Reshape the Travel Booking Journey
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Meta’s Muse Could Reshape the Travel Booking Journey

  • Meta’s new Muse AI agent can search, compare and book flights, bringing agentic AI directly into the travel transaction. Through its integration with travel tech platform Duffel, Muse accesses live flight inventory, completes bookings and can support travellers after purchase.
  • Crucially, Muse doesn’t just recommend and redirect. It can complete bookings via Duffel or navigate airline websites itself, with travellers stepping in when logins, approvals or payments are required.
  • For travel marketers, this points to a significant shift in how brands get discovered and converted. If AI agents increasingly compare live inventory and transact for travellers, visibility within agent-accessible distribution systems could become as important as winning the traditional search click.
  • Payments are helping make agentic travel commerce viable. Duffel bookings use Stripe Link and one-time virtual cards, while direct airline bookings can support options including Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal, with users retaining approval over transactions.
  • The model still has gaps, particularly accommodation inventory and consumer trust, but Duffel plans to add accommodation booking in future. Industry commentators expect other major AI players to pursue similar agentic travel capabilities, making this an important space for travel brands to watch.
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News Australia bets on editorial authority in AI travel
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News Australia bets on editorial authority in AI travel

  • News Australia has revamped its Travel Network around a major shift in discovery, arguing that as AI compresses the traditional booking journey, trusted editorial authority increasingly influences which travel brands get surfaced and recommended.
  • The expanded network reaches more than 6 million Australians monthly across Escape, news.com.au, Travel + Luxury and The Australian, giving advertisers a unified way to reach travellers from early inspiration through to booking.
  • New products span digital, AI, video and print, including Escape integration within news.com.au, an upgraded visual itinerary planner called Ask Skye, a refreshed Travel + Luxury offering and the new quarterly Platinum Escape magazine.
  • For marketers, News Australia is pitching a shift from competing primarily for bottom-of-funnel search traffic to building brand authority earlier. It claims AI tools reference trusted publishers three times more often than brand websites when generating answers.
  • The network also expands international opportunities through a Global Private Marketplace, giving advertisers access to high-net-worth audiences across publications including The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and The Sun.
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Google Pulls Vacation Rentals From EEA Search
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Google Pulls Vacation Rentals From EEA Search

  • Google has removed its vacation rentals unit from Search across the European Economic Area (EEA) as part of changes designed to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).
  • The impact for vacation rental marketers is significant: EEA-based hosts will no longer receive impressions, clicks or bookings through Google Vacation Rentals on Google Search, reducing a key direct-distribution opportunity.
  • Vacation rental feeds aren’t disappearing entirely. They can still surface across Google Maps and google.com/hotels, while listings remain active for traffic originating outside the EEA.
  • Google argues the DMA-driven changes benefit online intermediaries at the expense of local businesses and direct suppliers, while HomeToGo CEO Patrick Andrae described the removal as a positive step for fairer competition.
  • Google says it hopes to bring a vacation rental experience back to the EEA in future, meaning travel marketers should watch for further changes to Google’s direct-booking and search visibility products.
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Trust Is Travel’s New Competitive Advantage
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Trust Is Travel’s New Competitive Advantage

  • New Phocuswright research shows trust is becoming a key battleground in European travel. The study explores how travellers across the UK, France and Germany decide which information sources, AI tools and data-sharing experiences they trust, highlighting major implications for travel marketers.
  • Friends and family are the most trusted source for travel planning and booking. Around 55% of UK travellers and just over 50% of Germans completely or mostly trust personal recommendations, compared with roughly 40% in France.
  • Retail travel agents and agencies remain surprisingly influential. Roughly a third of UK and French travellers trust them, rising to around 40% in Germany, putting agents ahead of traveller reviews and in-depth YouTube videos across all three markets.
  • AI adoption is rising faster than AI trust. Only around 17–20% trust AI-generated results, with travellers often using AI for inspiration before verifying recommendations elsewhere, reinforcing the need for brands to build transparency into AI experiences.
  • Trust varies significantly by market and channel. UK travellers show comparatively strong trust in personal recommendations and reviews, while the research suggests marketers should localise their trust signals rather than applying the same strategy across Europe.
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Expedia Bets on AI to Reshape Travel Booking
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Expedia Bets on AI to Reshape Travel Booking

  • AI discovery is becoming a serious acquisition channel for Expedia. CEO Ariane Gorin called answer engine optimisation (AEO) its “fastest growing channel”, with the company actively experimenting across organic AI results, agentic browsers and paid ads in ChatGPT.
  • Expedia wants to own the customer relationship, not surrender it to AI agents. With two-thirds of consumer business coming direct, Gorin says Expedia needs “incredible personalized experiences” across its brands and apps to keep travellers engaged and making decisions within its ecosystem.
  • Conversational search is giving Expedia richer first-party intent signals. Natural-language searches provide Expedia with 60% more information about travellers and their intent, creating significant potential for more personalised recommendations and marketing.
  • Pure text chat may not be enough to sell travel. Expedia found engagement improved when AI experiences incorporated “photos”, “content”, “descriptions” and multiple properties, suggesting visual and choice-rich interfaces will remain critical even as conversational commerce grows.
  • AI is already delivering operational gains behind the scenes. Expedia says AI has helped its technology and product teams achieve 40% faster cycle times, while 10% of Vrbo partner queries are now resolved through its agentic voice solution.
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Australia’s Privacy Reforms Put Ad Targeting on Notice
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Australia’s Privacy Reforms Put Ad Targeting on Notice

  • The Attorney-General's Department released an exposure draft of the next round of privacy reform last week, which reaches into digital marketing operations directly rather than sitting with your compliance team.
  • While none of it is law yet, you should plan on the basis that most of it arrives in some form. As drafted, cookie and device identifiers and hashed email addresses count as personal information where they let you single out an individual. Sending them to an advertising platform is a disclosure, and a disclosure for marketing purposes requires consent.
  • In practice that points at: uploading customer lists to build Custom Audiences in Meta or Customer Match in Google Ads, firing advertising pixels and tags on your site before a consent decision has been made, conversion and remarketing signals passing back into ad platforms.
  • Two things worth doing now. Make your legal or compliance counsel aware it exists, so they are across it on the same timeline you are. And make sure the executives who own customer data, technology and risk know it is coming, because this lands across several functions.
  • In Marketing We Trust’s CEO, Paul Hewett, sits on the privacy council of the merged AANA and ADMA, now the Marketing Association of Australia. This is a priority for the council and we are meeting to review the draft and discuss the implications for the industry. Its members include the privacy, legal and data leads of Qantas, Suncorp, Telstra, NAB, Optus, Woolworths, Wesfarmers, Amazon, Google and Meta. In Marketing We Trust will be part of that response.
  • We will keep you across this as it moves through consultation, with submissions closing September 18. More to come.
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Travel emerges as a major ChatGPT shopping category
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Travel emerges as a major ChatGPT shopping category

  • Travel & Hospitality has the second-highest commercial intent on ChatGPT at 56.1%, behind only Automotive at 59.1%. This suggests more than half of travel-related conversations are focused on making or narrowing a purchase decision.
  • Travel sits well ahead of E-commerce & Retail, where commercial intent is 37.6%. The research suggests travellers often come to ChatGPT knowing what they need, such as a flight, and use the conversation to decide which option to choose.
  • This matters as commercial behaviour across ChatGPT accelerates, with estimated commercial conversations increasing 119% year-on-year to 533 million per week. Users are also starting 41% more commercial conversations per week than a year earlier.
  • Commercial conversations are also the least likely to end after one prompt, giving travel brands multiple opportunities to be surfaced, compared or omitted while travellers narrow their choices.
  • For travel marketers, the implication is significant: AI visibility is becoming part of the travel purchase journey, and brands that appear in these high-intent conversations could capture a growing share of customer decisions.
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AI Is Now Shaping Real Travel Decisions
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AI Is Now Shaping Real Travel Decisions

  • AI is influencing actual travel choices, not just research. Close to nine in 10 AI-using travellers across the UK, France and Germany say AI has shaped a trip decision, reaching 92% in France.
  • Travel marketers need a multi-channel AI strategy. Standalone AI platforms lead usage, but travellers also engage with AI through search engines, OTAs, metasearch and social platforms, with the channel mix varying significantly by country.
  • AI now plays a role throughout the planning journey. Travellers are using it for hotel, flight, activity and destination research, showing its influence extends well beyond early-stage inspiration.
  • In-destination AI is currently more about discovery than logistics. Real-time recommendations are the leading use case across all three markets, hitting 53% in the UK, while reservation management and disruption handling lag behind.
  • A one-size-fits-all European marketing approach could miss the mark. UK travellers are more likely to let AI influence destinations and brands, while French travellers show stronger AI influence over booking platform choices.
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APAC rail goes digital as online bookings hit 72%
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APAC rail goes digital as online bookings hit 72%

  • Online rail bookings now dominate APAC, accounting for 72% of gross bookings in 2025. State-owned rail operators are retaining much of this traffic through their own apps rather than handing bookings to OTAs.
  • Car rental is well behind rail at 47% online penetration, but digital adoption is accelerating and online bookings are expected to overtake offline bookings by 2027.
  • OTAs are strengthening their ground transport offering, with Trip.com, Klook, KKday and Traveloka building direct rail API integrations across major Asian markets to make digital ticketing easier.
  • Bundling is becoming a bigger growth strategy, with platforms using transport bookings to cross-sell hotels, SIM cards, ferries and airport transfers, while Grab expands into a broader AI-powered travel ecosystem.
  • AI and specialist startups could further shake up the category, with tools ranging from AI-assisted car rental and signage recognition to split-ticketing, peer-to-peer car sharing and dynamic bus routing.
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Skyscanner’s AI Push Moves Travel From Search to Action
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Skyscanner’s AI Push Moves Travel From Search to Action

  • In Marketing We Trust client, Skyscanner, says AI’s biggest impact is speed, helping it turn traveller problems into products and test them faster. Its Explore with AI tool lets people describe trips naturally, with around 61% of users going on to view flight options.
  • AI investment is growing across three areas: customer-facing AI products, internal productivity and partnerships with AI platforms that can use Skyscanner’s live travel intelligence. The guiding principle is to invest where AI creates meaningful traveller value while making the business more effective.
  • The future of travel AI is moving “from search, to answers, to actions”. Piero Sierra, Skyscanner’s chief AI officer, expects AI to increasingly help travellers make decisions and eventually act on their behalf, while keeping people in control of high-stakes actions such as booking.
  • For destination marketers, AI could connect inspiration directly to demand. With “around half of travelers” arriving at Skyscanner undecided on where or when to travel, Explore with AI can combine live prices and travel insights with relevant paid destination content matched to individual requests.
  • Agentic AI is the next step: with permission, AI could apply traveller preferences and help complete bookings. As Sierra puts it, “This connects discovery to demand.”
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Hotel tech needs a generational marketing playbook
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Hotel tech needs a generational marketing playbook

  • One digital guest journey won’t work for every generation. While more than 80% of guests surveyed have used digital check-in, the barriers to adoption vary sharply by age, making audience segmentation critical for hotel marketers.
  • For Gen Z and younger travellers, optimise for frictionless mobile experiences. Among 18 to 35-year-olds, 68% fear tech failures, while seamless web-based experiences without forced app downloads could help reduce drop-off.
  • For Millennials and middle-aged audiences, trust can drive conversion. Data privacy and security concern 67% of 36 to 53-year-olds, yet they’re also the most open to pre-arrival digital upsells, creating an opportunity for transparent messaging alongside personalised offers.
  • For older audiences, don’t market automation as a replacement for people. With 90% of guests aged 54+ concerned about losing human contact, digital journeys should clearly communicate that staff support remains available.
  • The marketing takeaway is personalisation by generation, not digital for digital’s sake. Hotels can use technology to streamline low-value tasks while tailoring UX, messaging and upsell strategies around what different age groups actually value.
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Google AI Mode Adds Flight Tracking and Hotel Bookings
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Google AI Mode Adds Flight Tracking and Hotel Bookings

  • Google is bringing flight price tracking directly into AI Mode, letting travellers set alerts conversationally and receive email notifications when fares change. The feature is now available across more than 180 countries and territories.
  • AI Mode can now display flight and hotel prices in loyalty points or miles, using current partner data. Initial partners include American Airlines, Hilton and Wyndham, with Hyatt, Accor, Lufthansa Group and others coming soon.
  • Google is starting to enable hotel bookings without leaving the AI Mode experience. Users can discover hotels, compare reviews and key details, then complete eligible bookings through Google Pay, with the hotel or booking platform remaining the merchant of record.
  • Hotel booking is initially rolling out in the US in English, with partners including Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Hilton, Marriott, Priceline and Trip.com.
  • Search is moving further from discovery towards transaction, with AI Mode increasingly connecting research, comparison, price monitoring and booking within one conversational journey.
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Google Demand Gen Gets More Travel-Relevant
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Google Demand Gen Gets More Travel-Relevant

  • Google is making Demand Gen ads more useful for travel marketers by surfacing local activities, events and real-time offers, helping travellers discover relevant experiences as they plan.
  • Hotel ads are becoming more personalised, with Google aiming to show relevant properties to the audiences most likely to be interested.
  • Demand Gen is also testing direct messaging from YouTube ads, giving high-intent travellers a faster way to start conversations with brands and move closer to booking or purchase.
  • Google says Demand Gen improvements introduced in the second half of 2025 delivered an average 30% lift in conversions or conversion value, signalling stronger performance potential for travel advertisers adopting the newer tools.
  • Multimodal Video Creation in Asset Studio is now generally available, letting travel brands create horizontal and vertical video assets in one workflow for use across Demand Gen inventory.
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Google Trends Maps Where Travellers Want to Go
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Google Trends Maps Where Travellers Want to Go

  • Google Trends is rolling out new Explore maps and regional breakdowns, making it easier to see where search interest is happening and how trends differ geographically.
  • The update is designed to improve data storytelling, with interactive maps that help marketers quickly turn regional search behaviour into clearer visual insights.
  • For marketers, the geographic layer could sharpen local SEO and regional campaign planning, helping identify where demand is emerging rather than relying solely on national-level trends.
  • The new experience is being rolled out gradually, so availability may vary while Google expands access.
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Travel’s AI Shift Is Leaving Brands Behind
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Travel’s AI Shift Is Leaving Brands Behind

  • AI is already mainstream in travel planning: More than half of travellers surveyed use AI to plan trips, while 75% intend to use it for future travel. Among Millennials and Gen Z, AI assistants are now used about as often as social media for trip planning.
  • Travel marketers are struggling to keep pace: Only 22% of destination marketing organisations (DMOs) offer AI trip-planning capabilities, while just 26% have a documented AI strategy. The research estimates the industry is roughly two years behind travellers in AI adoption.
  • Discovery is shifting beyond websites and traditional search: With 70% of destinations reporting declining organic search traffic, marketers may need to measure influence beyond site visits as travellers increasingly get recommendations and itineraries directly within AI interfaces.
  • Utility and trustworthy content could become major competitive advantages: Travellers are using AI for high-intent activities including researching attractions and transport, comparing prices and building itineraries. 55% said they would trust AI on a destination website more than general AI tools, giving brands an opportunity to compete through accurate, authoritative local information.
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We’ve updated our Future of Search white paper (Aug 2026) with new travel insights
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We’ve updated our Future of Search white paper (Aug 2026) with new travel insights

  • Travel discovery is increasingly happening on social, with 40% of the analysed travel searches sitting in the dreaming phase. Queries such as “best places to travel”, “travel inspiration” and “hidden gem destinations” show how early social can influence where people decide to go.
  • Booking intent is also strong, with 37% of travel searches focused on flights, hotels, packages and deals. For travel marketers, social is not just an inspiration channel, it can reach people much closer to purchase.
  • Only 14% of searches fall into the planning phase, covering things like itineraries, weather, travel tips and which destination to choose. This suggests brands need content that spans the full journey rather than concentrating only on traditional planning keywords.
  • Search behaviour continues after booking too, with travellers looking for restaurants, attractions, tours and transport while they are in destination. That gives travel brands another opportunity to stay visible and useful throughout the trip, not just before it.
  • The broader takeaway is that travel discovery is now spread across search, social, maps, reviews and AI. Marketers need to optimise for visibility across these different surfaces rather than treating Google rankings as the whole travel search strategy.
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Travellers Are Two Years Ahead of DMOs on AI
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Travellers Are Two Years Ahead of DMOs on AI

  • New research highlights a two-year AI adoption gap: The study from Mindtrip, Sabre, Sojern and MMGY Travel Intelligence found travellers are adopting AI faster than the travel industry, with DMO leaders warning organisations that fail to adopt within the next two years risk becoming irrelevant.
  • AI adoption is already mainstream in travel: 54% of travellers have used AI to plan trips, while 75% expect to use it for future travel. By comparison, just 22% of destination marketing organisations (DMOs) currently offer AI trip-planning tools.
  • Younger travellers are making AI a core discovery channel: 69% of Millennials and 63% of Gen Z use AI assistants as often as social media for trip planning, while 40% of all travellers have discovered a destination through AI.
  • AI is influencing real travel decisions, not just inspiration: 29% of travellers have changed plans based on an AI recommendation, with common uses including researching attractions and transport, comparing prices and building itineraries.
  • Destination websites risk losing relevance without AI: 63% of travellers say they would use an AI trip planner on a destination website, while 25% are less likely to use a site without AI features.
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Online Travel Gains Ground as ANZ Market Shrinks
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Online Travel Gains Ground as ANZ Market Shrinks

  • Online penetration continues to climb despite the travel downturn, reaching 59.5% in 2025 and forecast to hit 62% by 2029. Growth should accelerate in 2026 as travellers shift towards domestic trips, which are typically easier to book online.
  • Hotels remain the biggest opportunity for OTAs, although Booking.com’s dominance over Expedia and Agoda is expected to soften as direct hotel bookings gain ground. OTA share is forecast to slip to 30% by 2029.
  • The findings come from Phocuswright’s Australia-New Zealand Travel Market Brief 2026, which analyses key trends, segment performance and market sizing across the ANZ travel sector.
  • Digital growth contrasts with a shrinking overall market, with ANZ travel revenue forecast to fall nearly 5% to $37.4 billion in 2026 before recovering to $43.3 billion by 2029.
  • Hotels are expected to feel the downturn most sharply, with revenue forecast to fall 9% in 2026, while airlines decline 1% and car rental holds steady.
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Google’s Spirit Data Deal Signals Bigger AI Ambitions
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Google’s Spirit Data Deal Signals Bigger AI Ambitions

  • Google has bid US$10 million for a huge dataset from the now-defunct Spirit Airlines, spanning internal communications, finance, operations, revenue, website analytics and loyalty data. Google says the information “can be helpful in improving our products and AI models”.
  • The data could give Google’s AI an unusually detailed view of how an airline operates, including what happens during periods of disruption and financial distress. This kind of proprietary operational data is typically unavailable to large language models.
  • The acquisition could strengthen Google’s shift from travel search towards AI-powered booking. Detailed sales and operational data could help it build more capable AI agents as Google expands its agentic booking capabilities from hotels into flights.
  • The dataset could help Google better understand the entire traveller journey, including pricing, bookings, refunds, vouchers and disruptions. That could eventually help its AI assess factors such as whether a particular airfare represents good value.
  • Privacy remains a concern despite Google’s plans to deidentify the dataset. Google says, “We will not receive any personal information from this dataset”, although questions remain about whether interconnected records could potentially allow individuals to be reidentified.
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Google Reviews Are Winning the AI Search Game
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Google Reviews Are Winning the AI Search Game

  • The research analysed 27,360 AI-generated travel answers across 40 Barcelona hotel-related search queries, testing prompts in English, Spanish and Catalan to identify which factors correlated with hotels being recommended by AI.
  • Google review volume is the strongest driver of hotel visibility in AI search, outperforming technical factors, website authority and even review scores. Backlinks, existing Google rankings and readable, relevant website content are the next biggest factors.
  • Traditional GEO tactics appear to have little impact. The study found no measurable visibility benefit from llms.txt, AI crawler settings, FAQ/schema markup, content freshness or page-speed optimisation once other factors were accounted for.
  • Third-party content has major influence over AI recommendations. Around 68% of AI answers were assembled from guides and listicles, compared with just 7% from hotel websites, while Reddit was the most likely source to be cited when it appeared in a search.
  • AI visibility is highly concentrated, and visibility doesn’t guarantee direct bookings. The top 20% of hotels captured more than 80% of mentions, while AI linked directly to hotel websites only around 7% of the time.
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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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