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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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Skyscanner Reveals 2027 Digital Travel Trends
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Skyscanner Reveals 2027 Digital Travel Trends

  • AI adoption is growing, but trust is declining. Skyscanner's 2027 travel research reveals just 35% of UK travellers feel confident using AI-generated recommendations for planning and booking, down from 46% last year. Accuracy is the biggest concern (61%), highlighting the importance of reliable information and trusted platforms.
  • AI is reshaping travel search and discovery. Travellers are using AI to research destinations (28%), compare flights and accommodation (22%) and find inspiration (21%). Globally, “cheap flights” was the most popular prompt in Skyscanner's Search with AI tool during the first half of 2026.
  • YouTube and Instagram remain influential discovery channels. Word of mouth leads travel inspiration (39%), followed by YouTube (25%) and Instagram (22%). For marketers, authentic storytelling and credible social content remain essential for influencing travel decisions.
  • Gen Z prioritises trusted recommendations over AI and influencers. Despite being digital natives, only 12% of Gen Z travellers trust AI tools the most, while just 9% rely on celebrities or influencers. Friends (50%), family (49%) and online reviews (38%) remain their preferred recommendation sources.
  • Digital booking experiences must deliver transparency and value. Global Skyscanner flight searches increased 17% year on year, while travellers are increasingly comparing prices and options before booking. Brands offering clear pricing, detailed product information and frictionless booking experiences are better positioned to convert demand.
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Australian Travel Apps Dominate Digital Engagement: Ipsos
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Australian Travel Apps Dominate Digital Engagement: Ipsos

  • New data from IAB Australia and Ipsos iris reveals 17.95 million Australians aged 18+ visited a travel website or app in August 2026, spending an average of 61.5 minutes per person engaging with online travel content.
  • Travel apps accounted for 69% of all time spent on online travel, with 11.77 million Australians using a travel app during August. Uber led with 6.2 million app users, followed by Booking.com (3.03 million) and Qantas Airways (2.79 million).
  • Airlines and travel inspiration saw strong monthly growth. Airline audiences increased 5% month-on-month to 9.53 million, while tourist information and cruise audiences each grew 6%.
  • Australians visited an average of six travel brands during August, highlighting the competitive digital landscape. Uber attracted the largest audience (8.27 million), followed by Booking.com (7.01 million) and Qantas Airways (5.68 million).
  • Older travellers remain a significant digital audience, with Australians aged 55+ accounting for 41% of time spent on travel websites and apps. Those aged 55–64 averaged 74.6 minutes per person, above the overall average.
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Expedia Targets $100bn Travel-Adjacent Advertising Market
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Expedia Targets $100bn Travel-Adjacent Advertising Market

  • Expedia Group Advertising is expanding beyond traditional travel advertisers, targeting a potential US$100bn market in travel-adjacent categories including fashion, beauty, electronics, entertainment and insurance.
  • Expedia research suggests travellers spend around 25% of their total trip cost, approximately US$500, on products and services beyond core bookings, creating valuable advertising opportunities before, during and after a trip.
  • First-party travel data is central to the strategy. Expedia generates over one billion search and lifestyle signals monthly across Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo and its B2B network, helping advertisers identify consumers entering new purchasing windows.
  • Non-travel advertising is already Expedia's fastest-growing advertising segment, although from a small base. Its overall advertising business generated US$206m in Q2 2026, up 13% year on year.
  • AI discovery is reshaping Expedia's approach. With AEO traffic now its fastest-growing traffic source, Expedia is expanding its presence across AI platforms including Google AI Mode and Meta's Muse, while prioritising measurable advertising performance.
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Can AI Uncover Millions in Lost Travel Revenue?
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Can AI Uncover Millions in Lost Travel Revenue?

  • Tony Carne has revisited his November 2023 interview with Frederic Chanut, Executive Chairman of In Marketing We Trust, for the Everything AI in Travel podcast, exploring how AI can uncover lost revenue and create new commercial opportunities for travel businesses.
  • The original episode highlighted how In Marketing We Trust was using AI to generate significant financial returns for clients, in some cases worth millions of dollars.
  • The conversation positioned AI as more than a productivity tool, highlighting its potential to solve commercial challenges and deliver measurable business value.
  • Although recorded in 2023, the discussion remains relevant for travel marketers looking to move beyond AI experimentation and identify opportunities to improve revenue and performance.
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Five Key Lessons from WiT Singapore 2026
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Five Key Lessons from WiT Singapore 2026

  • Travel needs its own AI agents. Industry leaders from Agoda, Skyscanner, Klook and Booking.com agreed that travel's complexity creates opportunities for specialist AI agents that go beyond general-purpose assistants.
  • AI is changing how travellers plan. Booking.com research found 64% of APAC travellers already use AI for trip planning. However, with more than 70% enjoying the planning process itself, visual inspiration and discovery remain essential.
  • Travel discovery is becoming increasingly fragmented. Skyscanner highlighted the importance of investing across social media, short-form video, partnerships and brand marketing as travellers move beyond traditional search.
  • Agentic AI is reshaping travel experiences. ixigo has introduced agents to monitor fares, manage check-ins and reconfirm bookings, while Klook is prioritising conversational commerce over traditional app interfaces.
  • Human connection remains travel's competitive advantage. Despite rapid AI adoption, industry leaders stressed that authentic experiences, local communities and human expertise remain essential to delivering meaningful travel experiences.
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Hotels Expect AI Booking Boost, but Visibility Tracking Lags
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Hotels Expect AI Booking Boost, but Visibility Tracking Lags

  • 70% of hotel chains expect AI channels to increase direct bookings over the next one to two years, according to h2c’s global survey of 113 hotel chains. Nearly half anticipate a moderate increase, while 23% expect a significant uplift from platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini.
  • Only 22% systematically track their visibility in AI search and recommendations. Another 48% check occasionally, while 20% do not monitor their presence and 10% are unsure.
  • A third have taken no specific action to improve AI discovery or booking access. Some hotel groups are implementing structured data, real-time availability connections and methods to improve visibility in AI-generated answers.
  • AI adoption is widespread, but strategic readiness trails behind. While 91% already use AI, only 28% have a company-wide strategy led by senior leadership, highlighting a gap between using the technology and preparing for its potential role in bookings.
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99% Expect to Use AI for Travel Planning
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99% Expect to Use AI for Travel Planning

  • AI is already shaping travel research. A Talker Research survey of 4,000 travellers across the US, UK and Australia, commissioned by Aven Hospitality, found 67% had used AI for travel searches and 68% to compare options.
  • Almost everyone surveyed expects to use AI again. For future travel planning, 71% intend to use it for recommendations and 28% for both recommendations and booking assistance.
  • Trust is stronger for recommendations than autonomous bookings. Three-quarters would trust AI to recommend hotels with accurate information on destination perks, property rules and amenities, but only 14% would trust it to book independently.
  • AI-assisted booking is already happening. While 59% had used AI to book at least part of a trip, 49% typically book directly through hotel websites or apps, highlighting the continued importance of hotels’ own digital channels.
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Non-US Travellers Turn to AI for Inspiration
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Non-US Travellers Turn to AI for Inspiration

  • International travellers are embracing AI as a source of travel inspiration. Global Rescue found 31% of non-US travellers use AI for inspiration, almost double the 16% of US travellers.
  • The difference suggests AI is becoming an increasingly important discovery channel outside the US, helping travellers explore destinations and ideas earlier in the planning journey.
  • Overall AI adoption is also rising quickly, with 51% of travellers expecting to use AI for travel planning, up from 36% in March.
  • Trust remains conditional. Nearly 60% verify AI-generated travel information elsewhere, while 27% have encountered incorrect or outdated information.
  • Travellers still want control over the final decision, with 61% unwilling to let AI automatically make travel decisions.
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Hospitality Maps 109 Real-World AI Use Cases
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Hospitality Maps 109 Real-World AI Use Cases

  • The AI Hospitality Alliance and HEDNA have launched a crowdsourced Hospitality AI Use Case Catalogue, consolidating 200 industry submissions into 112 unique AI applications across 39 hotel systems.
  • The catalogue shows where AI is already being applied across five core areas: guest experience, revenue management and BI, operations, distribution and commerce, and marketing and sales.
  • It also maps AI across payments, data and agent infrastructure, and hotel development and investment intelligence, giving hospitality businesses a broader view of how AI can connect across their technology stack.
  • An interactive density map highlights where AI activity is concentrated, while each use case includes information on adoption maturity, supporting evidence, beneficiaries and cross-functional reach.
  • Use cases are ranked with a hotelier evaluation-priority score to help organisations decide which applications to investigate first. Importantly, the score reflects evaluation priority, not proven ROI, vendor quality or market share.
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AI Inspires Travel, But Humans Still Win Trust
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AI Inspires Travel, But Humans Still Win Trust

  • Hilton’s research shows AI is gaining ground as a travel-planning resource, with 63% of travellers trusting AI tools for travel decisions, compared with 70% who trust hotel staff.
  • Trust drops sharply for more nuanced recommendations. Just 22% trust AI to create personalised itineraries, 20% for restaurant and bar recommendations, and 18% for uncovering lesser-known local experiences.
  • Millennials are the most AI-friendly generation, leading all age groups in trusting LLMs for itineraries (26%), restaurant recommendations (23%) and travel inspiration (23%).
  • Chinese travellers are leading AI trip-planning adoption, with 35% planning to use general AI tools and 21% dedicated AI travel planners. Hilton’s own AI Planner has already generated more than 18,000 guest conversations since launching in March 2026.
  • Human influence remains powerful alongside AI. 87% trust family members for travel advice, while loyalty status is emerging as another form of social proof, with 50% more likely to trust recommendations from someone with travel loyalty status.
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APAC Travel Agents Lead AI Adoption
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APAC Travel Agents Lead AI Adoption

  • Amadeus’ latest global travel seller research found more than three in four travel agents now use AI as part of their selling toolkit, including for research, content comparison, recommendations and productivity.
  • APAC agents are leading more advanced AI adoption, with 36% using AI for itinerary suggestions, 32% for CRM recommendations and 21% for fraud or quality tools.
  • Conversational AI tools including ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini are the leading AI use case across regions, while automated fare search and AI itinerary tools are each used by 29% of agents globally.
  • AI isn’t replacing the fundamentals of travel distribution. 94% of agents consider rate parity highly important, while 63% would actively book away from a property if its pricing was inconsistent.
  • For travel marketers, GDS advertising remains influential: around two-thirds of agents say GDS ads shape buying behaviour, and one in four have booked a hotel directly because of an ad. Exclusive offers are the strongest booking trigger.
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Travel Brands Face a Hidden AI Visibility Gap
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Travel Brands Face a Hidden AI Visibility Gap

  • Travel brands can help power AI answers without getting visible credit. Comscore found a significant gap between sites being used as sources and actually appearing as citations in lodging-related AI responses.
  • Tripadvisor showed the biggest presence in the data, appearing as a source in 61% of measured lodging AI responses but receiving a visible citation in only 21%.The pattern extended across major booking platforms.
  • Hotels.com had 50% source presence versus 18% citation presence, Expedia 46% versus 16%, and Booking.com 33% versus just 9%.
  • For travel marketers, the findings suggest AI visibility needs to be measured beyond citations alone. Understanding whether content informs an AI answer, even when the brand isn't visibly linked, is becoming another dimension of search visibility.
  • The lodging analysis covered U.S. PC activity from December 2025 to May 2026, so the findings reflect a specific market, device type and measurement period.
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Ipsos Data Shows Aussies’ Online Travel Interest Rising
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Ipsos Data Shows Aussies’ Online Travel Interest Rising

  • Ipsos Iris data shows Australian travel websites and apps reached almost 18 million people in August, up 2% month-on-month and reaching close to 85% of Australians aged 18+, as cost-of-living pressures encourage earlier holiday research.
  • Tourism information, cruises and airlines all saw audience growth, rising 6.5%, 5.5% and 4.7% respectively, suggesting consumers are actively researching and comparing summer travel options.
  • Booking.com grew its audience 3% to more than 7 million, while Trip.com jumped almost 8% to 2.8 million, highlighting growing engagement with digital booking platforms.
  • Virgin Australia’s digital audience surged 17.9%, with Ipsos attributing the lift most likely to its week-long international sale, demonstrating the potential impact of price-led promotions.
  • Australians remain highly engaged online overall, with 21.27 million adults using the internet and spending 5.14 hours online per day.
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Digital Travel Insights Research Reveals Travel’s Growing Control Gap
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Digital Travel Insights Research Reveals Travel’s Growing Control Gap

  • Travel discovery is rapidly fragmenting beyond brand-owned channels. 85% of APAC travel leaders say discovery and planning have become more fragmented, with social and creator content now influencing 91% of early discovery compared with just 23% for brand-owned websites and apps.
  • Measurement hasn’t kept pace with the new journey. 42% name attribution across fragmented channels as their biggest barrier, while cross-channel attribution and first-party data infrastructure are among the industry’s most underdeveloped capabilities.
  • AI is a major investment priority, but it’s not yet the dominant discovery channel. AI-powered discovery and personalisation is the top capability investment for 29% of respondents, while the report argues brands need accurate, structured and machine-readable product information to compete in AI-mediated discovery.
  • Loyalty is becoming critical to customer ownership, but the value exchange needs work. 59% see losing the direct customer relationship or first-party data as their biggest emerging-platform risk, while 71% say their loyalty programmes are better at tracking customers than creating value for them.
  • Travel leaders say margin matters, but their KPIs still reward volume. While 66% would protect net margin even at the cost of fewer bookings, 42% still define digital success primarily through bookings or conversion, versus just 8% through direct-booking profitability or margin.
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lastminute.com Finds Travellers Are ‘Holiday Maxxing’ With AI
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lastminute.com Finds Travellers Are ‘Holiday Maxxing’ With AI

  • New research from lastminute.com, based on booking data and a survey of 5,000 European travellers, finds AI is moving beyond holiday planning into the trip itself, with 37% using AI while away to help maximise their experience. Top uses include finding restaurants and bars (34%), researching places to visit (33%) and translating languages or menus (28%).
  • 45% have used AI to plan a holiday in the past year, although travellers remain cautious about handing over control, with just 12% willing to let AI actually book their trip. Younger travellers are more receptive, with 19% of 25 to 34-year-olds open to AI booking.
  • AI adoption varies significantly across Europe. 57% of Spanish and 51% of Italian travellers have used AI to plan a holiday, compared with just 30% of Brits, highlighting different levels of consumer readiness across markets.
  • Travellers are also getting more strategic about spending. Nearly 60% of bookings combine a low-cost flight with a four-star-or-higher hotel, while parking package add-ons have jumped 156.6% year on year.
  • Travel habits are shifting alongside AI adoption, with more weekend and shoulder-season trips and growing demand for cooler destinations. Bookings to “coolcation” countries are up 9.3% year on year, while family bookings to cooler destinations have risen 18.9%.
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Expedia brings hotel booking directly into Meta’s Muse
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Expedia brings hotel booking directly into Meta’s Muse

  • Expedia is integrating hotel booking into Meta’s Muse AI assistant, allowing US travellers to describe their dates, destination and preferences, receive suitable hotel options and complete a booking without leaving Muse. Expedia remains the merchant of record, while payment happens through Muse.
  • The partnership signals a shift from AI-powered discovery towards AI-powered transactions. Expedia is also working with Meta on conversational in-feed ads, where travellers can start planning trips and ask questions directly from the platform.
  • Expedia is spreading its bets across the emerging agentic ecosystem, also participating in Google’s agentic booking launch alongside brands including Booking.com and Marriott International. Expedia describes the future of travel AI as a “composed, multi-agent system” capable of supporting discovery, comparison and an end-to-end trip experience.
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OpenAI Chair Urges Travel Brands to Unleash AI Agents
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OpenAI Chair Urges Travel Brands to Unleash AI Agents

  • OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor says travel brands should stop limiting AI agents to rigid customer-service workflows, and instead give them clear goals and guardrails so they can reason, problem-solve and reduce friction across the customer journey. His advice: “let the AI cook a little bit.”
  • Taylor sees agents becoming a brand’s unified digital front door, spanning booking and service rather than mirroring internal departmental silos. He argues their multilingual capabilities, scalability and access to information could make interacting with travel brands significantly more convenient.
  • Major travel brands are already moving in this direction. Airbnb plans to launch an AI agent as its new interface next year, while nearly half its customer-service tickets are already handled by AI across 50 languages.
  • Uber is using Sierra’s AI agents to onboard drivers, while IHG sees agentic booking as a future “scale opportunity”. Expedia has also enabled hotel bookings through Meta’s Muse, and Accor has launched an AI travel companion across its app, website and messaging platforms.
  • The push towards greater AI autonomy comes with unresolved safety concerns. Taylor acknowledged alignment as a key challenge as models become more capable, particularly ensuring agents continue acting according to the intentions of their developers and users.
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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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