Agentic AI Shows Promise — But Isn’t There Yet
Photo Credit: Amex GBT's Marilyn Markham, Amadeus' Rodrigo Acuna Agost, and Skift Head of Research Seth Borko Skift
Skift Take
Agentic AI is inching closer to transforming travel, but even strong advocates of the technology say it’s still more potential than performance.
Agentic AI — autonomous systems that pursue a goal and interact with their environment — just might be the hottest trend in travel technology.
But Marilyn Markham, American Express Global Business Travel’s vice president of AI & Automation Strategy, said at the recent Skift Data + AI Summit that it still has a way to go to reach its full potential.
“When I came last year, I told everyone that AI talks a good talk, but it doesn’t actually get its hands dirty,” Markham said during a discussion with Skift Head of Research Seth Borko and Amadeus’ Head of Research and AI Center of Excellence Rodrigo Acuna Agost.
“My biggest frustration is if it’s supposed to change the world, it’s supposed to do more than just talk. And we are at that stage in time when it’s actually doing things through the agents.”
How exactly is agentic AI doing things?
“My definition (of agentic AI) is if it’s as you gave a toolbox to someone who talks a lot and now, they’re like, ‘Oo, I can do things,'” Markham said. “And it tells them what it can do on what systems, and it goes out there and actually affects the rest of the world.”
When asked to define agentic AI, Acuna Agost said the fundamental elements are a level of autonomy, the ability to interact with other systems, and the capability to take actions. However, Markham acknowledged she doesn’t have a timeline for when agentic AI will fully take off.
“I find that right now we’re still experimenting,” Markham said. “We don’t fully trust AI agents yet.”
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Business Travel’s Holding AI Back
Markham said business travel limits AI’s full potential — unlike leisure travel.
“I think that business travel restricts us in using the full power of AI unless we decide to do more bleisure,” she said. “And the reason for that is, in the leisure world, I find that the preparation of travel is much more collaborative.”
Markham added she wouldn’t say that business travel is the best place to use generative AI.
“I would say that there’s opportunity, but leisure opens up the door much more — even just to the creativity of dreaming about a trip and then envisioning it.”
‘We Still Need Humans’
Although Acuna Agost said that while the cost of using AI is dropping, he believes human agents shouldn’t go by the wayside as many people still crave human interaction.
“Our vision is that we still need humans,” he said. “People like to hear humans. We know about companies that deploy AI agents for calls and people prefer to wait five minutes in order to have humans because they wants to express feelings.”
