FULL RECORDINGS AVAILABLE BELOW
Presented by
What we Learned at skift DATA + AI SUMMIT 2026
400+ travel leaders gathered in New York City at the City Winery on Pier 57 on June 3 to learn about the next wave of AI applications and data strategies reshaping travel. Read more about the tensions we’re exploring today.
Event attendees and Skift Pro subscribers get access to Skift Takeaways, our summaries of every session, as well as a video library of every conversation.
Which of These Five Tensions Is Your Organization Actually Stuck On?
Seth Borko, Head of Research, Skift
WATCH FULL VIDEO BELOW
QUICK READ
Seth Borko presents Skift’s latest research on the five tensions defining AI execution in travel — and asks the room to weigh in live.
Editorial Coverage
Skift Data + AI Summit Pre-Read: Five Tensions in the Room Today
The Stack You Have Won’t Scale What You’re Building
Michael Leidinger, SVP and CIO, Hilton
Firas Al Osman, Chief Digital Officer, Air Canada
Moderated by Sean O’Neill
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
Hilton’s SVP & CIO and Air Canada’s Chief Digital Officer share what it actually takes to rebuild a company’s tech infrastructure for AI at scale — the decisions made, and the ones they’d revisit.
How Hotels Stay Visible and Drive Bookings in an AI-First World
Nick Slavin, CEO and Co-Founder, Curacity
Moderated by Carolyn Kremins
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
As AI search cuts out the middleman, booking attribution is at even more of a premium. Last-click models hand the credit to OTAs, yet decisions form weeks upstream, where no one — not even the LLMs — can yet prove influence.
Ask Me Anything: How Are Leaders Using AI to Solve Real-World Problems?
Colin Coleman, SVP Enterprise Data, Analytics, and AI, Marriott International
Joff Romoff, Global Head – Travel & Hospitality, Google Cloud
Moderated by Seth Borko
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
Marriott and Google Cloud go beyond strategy to show what production-grade AI infrastructure actually looks like — with live audience polling throughout.
Debate: Should AI Agents Control the Customer Journey?
Adam Harris, Co-Founder and CEO, Cloudbeds
Seth Borko, Head of Research, Skift
Moderated by Sarah Kopit
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
A structured debate on where to draw the line between AI autonomy and human oversight — with audience votes at the start and close to see if the room changes its mind.
How Agentic AI Is Solving The Billion-Dollar Hold Queue
Nirmal Mukhi, Chief Architect, ASAPP
Moderated by Jeremy Kressman
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
The question in AI-enabled customer support is no longer whether to automate — it’s where to draw the line.
What Startups Are Solving That Others Won’t
Andrew Gasparovic, Founder and CEO, Flight Science
Josh Ellis, Co-Founder & CEO, Abra
Tom Romary, Founder and CEO, BizTrip AI
Moderated by Sean O’Neill
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
Three founders building in the gaps incumbents won’t touch, presenting live products and facing real questions from investors and the audience.
What to Scale, What to Stop, and Who Decides?
Shilpa Ranganathan, Chief Product Officer, Expedia Group
Moderated by Sarah Kopit
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
Expedia’s Chief Product Officer shares the framework her team uses to decide which AI bets get funded, which get killed, and who in the organization makes that call.
Editorial Coverage
Expedia Tech Exec on Build Versus Buy: Keep Customer Data Close
The Scaling Decision Nobody Warned You About
Wei Manfredi, SVP of AI and Architecture, IHG Hotels & Resorts
Arun Nagarajan, Chief Product & Technology Officer, Evolve
Moderated by Adriana Lee
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
IHG and Evolve share the specific failures and instrumentation gaps that only revealed themselves after AI moved from pilot to operating function.
Editorial Coverage
Why These Operators Are Skipping the Pilot Phase
Building the Booking Layer for an AI-Native Travel World
Fahim Khan, SVP of Product, Travelport
Moderated by Jeremy Kressman
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
If you are betting your AI travel strategy on the inspiration layer, this session argued the unsolved problem is execution.
Should You Be Deploying Agents Now or Are You Already Late?
Pol Peiffer, Head of Product & Agent Development, Sierra
Gaëlle Bristiel, SVP Engineering, Amadeus
Moderated by Vivek Bhogaraju, Executive in Residence, Private Equity
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
Sierra and Amadeus share the signals they watch to know when an AI system is performing, drifting, or about to fail — before it costs them customers.
The AI Ownership Problem Nobody Has Solved Yet
John Sturino, SVP Products and Engineering, American Express Global Business Travel
Jie Zheng, Technology Team Lead, TUI Group
Moderated by Sean O’Neill
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
TUI examines what happens to accountability when responsibility for AI is distributed across every function in the organization.
Are You Operating AI or Just Deploying It?
Vipul Hingne, Interim CTO, Booking.com
Moderated by Seth Borko
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
Booking.com’s Interim CTO explores what it takes to move AI from project to the system the business actually runs on.
Editorial Coverage
Booking.com CTO: The New Bottleneck Is Teamwork
Does AI Know Your Hotel Exists?
Anil Aggarwal, CEO, Milestone, Inc.
Moderated by Alison McCarthy
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
Content alone will not get a hotel into AI search results. The underlying technical architecture must be in order first. That is a harder fix than rewriting a webpage, and most hotel brands have not started yet.
What Investors Are Actually Funding in Travel AI
Gilad Berenstein, Founder, Brook Bay Capital
Mia Morisset, Principal Growth Equity, Inovia
Kurien Jacob, Partner, Highgate Technology Ventures
Moderated by Seth Borko
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
Three active investors score the AI bets they believe in — and the ones they’ve walked away from — using a live scorecard format.
Data Lessons from Deploying Consumer-Facing AI
Sejal Amin, CTO, Priceline
Moderated by Sean O’Neill
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
Breaking down what a large-scale consumer AI deployment actually taught her about data, trust, and what it means to have a defensible edge.
AI + Revenue: Why Architecture Is Essential
Richard Valtr, CEO, Mews
Moderated by Rafat Ali
CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIDEO
QUICK READ
Rafat Ali sits down with Mews CEO Richard Valtr for a candid conversation on what Mews has built, where operators are falling behind, and why the biggest AI opportunities in travel are still wide open.