AI in Travel

The U.S. is holding up for the company better than the mood music suggests, but the Middle East is a deepening drag that goes beyond the region.

In his first earnings call as CEO, Josh D’Amaro laid out a vision for Disney theme parks that leans more heavily on emerging technologies like AI.

The great AI upskilling of the travel workforce has begun, but even among the industry’s largest companies, the gap between who is preparing their employees for AI and who is just cutting with it is widening fast.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Sabre has spent a year selling agentic AI as its comeback story. Mindtrip Flights is the first product that has to prove it. 

Khosrowshahi said there's the usual tension with partners about Uber's travel ambitions, and he obliquely cited Expedia's shortcomings post-booking. If Uber gains traction in travel, you can expect Khosrowshahi to one day step away from the Expedia board, and all of those conflicts to get exacerbated.

Luxury brands have spent two decades optimizing for the human eye. A meaningful share of their traffic will soon belong to something else entirely.

Google built the AI search surfaces displacing travel’s organic traffic. Now it’s bringing travel advertisers into the system that powers them — and the price is the keyword control paid search has run on for decades.

Wyndham believes AI tools will eventually bring relief to franchisee P&Ls, though not immediately across the board for all hotels.

Grab's consumer super app is becoming mapping infrastructure for Big Tech in Southeast Asia. Travel brands may not compete with it — but they may increasingly depend on it.

The biggest win for the hospitality sector will be the elimination of manual licensing and compliance checks that quietly drain operator time and margin.