What AI Revealed About Travel

Depending on who you ask, AI is either the most important technological breakthrough of our lifetime or the beginning of the end of every profession currently in existence. Naturally, travel has found itself caught in the conversation too. And if I had a dollar for every time someone finds out I work in travel and asks, “So... how are you going to compete with AI?” I could probably fund my next vacation.

While public perception may be that AI is a direct threat to travel agencies, the reality is far more nuanced in my opinion. And to explain why, I want to briefly step away from travel altogether.

One of the central lessons I learned in business school is that many of the most iconic, enduring companies in the world — think Apple, LEGO, Netflix — have managed to avoid a mistake that quietly kills countless businesses every year: complacency.

Take Netflix.

When Netflix launched in 1997, its business was simple. Customers would order DVDs online, receive them in the mail, watch them, and send them back. At the time, this was a revolutionary improvement over driving to Blockbuster and hoping the movie you wanted was still in stock.

Had Netflix become too attached to that success, it would likely be a case study in business schools for all the wrong reasons. Instead, just ten years later, the company recognized that technology was changing, consumer behavior was changing, and most importantly, the way people wanted to consume entertainment was changing. So in 2007, Netflix launched its streaming service and fundamentally reinvented itself.

Looking back, Netflix’s greatest strength wasn’t DVD rentals or streaming.

It was recognizing that neither of those things were actually the business they were in.

The business wasn’t DVDs.

The business wasn’t streaming.

The business was helping people access entertainment in the easiest and most enjoyable way possible.

The delivery mechanism changed. The underlying value proposition did not.

As I’ve thought about AI and what it means for travel, I find myself coming back to this exact idea.

Because when it comes down to it, the travel industry has already lived through several technological revolutions that, at one point or another, were supposed to make it obsolete.

The internet.

Online booking engines.

Review websites.

Mobile apps.

Even Covid, which brought global travel to a near standstill.

And yet the industry is still here.

Not because it resisted change, but because it adapted to it.

To understand why, we need to go back in time.

The term “travel agent” originally existed for a reason. Travel agents were, quite literally, agents. They acted on behalf of airlines and other travel suppliers. If you wanted to book a flight, you couldn’t simply pull out your phone and compare dozens of options in seconds. Airlines didn’t have websites. Consumers didn’t have direct access to reservation systems. Purchasing a ticket often meant visiting your local travel agency and having an agent access specialized systems that ordinary travelers couldn’t use themselves.

For decades, information was the value.

Access was the value.

Then the internet arrived and changed everything.

Suddenly travelers could search flights themselves. They could compare hotel prices. They could read reviews. They could access information that had once been available only to industry professionals.

The prediction seemed obvious… if travelers could access all of this information themselves, why would they need a travel agent?

And honestly, it wasn’t a bad question.

The industry did change dramatically.

Our own family business, founded by my grandmother in 1974, lived through that transition firsthand. One of the biggest challenges agencies faced was figuring out how to remain relevant when clients no longer needed someone to simply book a flight or reserve a hotel room.

The answer, it turned out, was adaptation.

In many ways, the industry’s evolution can be summarized by a subtle but important change in language. Over time, “travel agent” gradually became “travel advisor.”

Instead of acting primarily as agents on behalf of airlines and hotels, the profession became increasingly advisory in nature. The job shifted from providing access to information toward helping people make sense of information. Advisors learned destinations, suppliers, hotels, cruise lines, travel styles, and logistics so that after just a few conversations, they could match travelers with experiences that fit their personalities, priorities, and budgets.

Information became abundant.

Judgment became valuable.

And while this article is about travel, I don’t think this phenomenon is unique to travel at all.

In many ways, AI is forcing nearly every profession to confront the same question. If information is becoming increasingly accessible to everyone, where does human value come from?

The answer, I suspect, lies in qualities that are much harder to automate: judgment, taste, context, and experience. The ability to take an overwhelming amount of information and determine what is actually relevant. The ability to recognize that the technically correct answer is not always the best answer.

And today, as AI becomes increasingly capable, I think we’re witnessing a very similar moment in travel.

Only this time, instead of asking whether people still need someone to book their flights, we’re asking whether they need someone to help plan their trips at all.

And in my opinion, the answer to that question is a resounding yes.

What we’re seeing isn’t AI replacing the value of travel advisors. If anything, it’s exposing that value more clearly than ever.

Just this week, we had a new client come to us looking to plan her honeymoon in Italy. She arrived with a complete sixteen-day itinerary already prepared. To be fair, it was a good itinerary. It included many of the destinations we would have recommended ourselves, and it was thoughtfully organized enough that it didn’t take long for us to identify its author.

Eventually, she admitted it: ChatGPT.

What struck me wasn’t what the itinerary got wrong. It was what it couldn’t know.

Certain hotels along the Amalfi Coast had minimum stay requirements that didn’t align with the proposed routing. Some destinations had been allocated more time than we felt they warranted, while others would have benefited from a slower pace. None of these issues were obvious on paper. They weren’t questions of information. They were questions of experience.

The more I use AI, the more I realize that it is remarkably good at providing information. What it struggles with is answering a much more difficult question:

What actually makes sense?

That’s a surprisingly difficult question because travel is not an optimization problem. The “best” trip is rarely the one that maximizes the number of destinations, attractions, or experiences. It’s the one that feels right for the person taking it.

But judgment is only part of the story.

Because even if AI eventually became perfect at building personalized itineraries (and I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that reality) it would still be missing something fundamental.

Travel is, and always will be, a people business.

This is something that often gets lost in conversations about technology (regardless of industry). The modern travel experience may feel increasingly digital. We book flights online, check into hotels through apps, and carry our boarding passes on our phones. Yet behind every trip is an enormous network of human beings making the entire industry work.

Tour guides. Drivers. Hotel managers. Cruise directors. Concierges. Restaurant staff. Airline employees. Local destination specialists.

And the real value of those relationships becomes most apparent when things don’t go according to plan.

Recently, we had clients headed to Croatia when their flight was delayed, delayed again, and ultimately canceled altogether (classic). As hundreds of passengers rushed toward airline help desks searching for alternatives, our clients picked up the phone and called their travel advisor.

Within minutes, she had secured a new routing, coordinated a last-minute transfer with one of our trusted local partners, and ensured they arrived in time for the first day of their trip.

Now, could the airline’s AI chatbot have identified another flight?

Probably.

Could it have suggested alternative routes?

Maybe.

Could it have picked up the phone, called a local partner, coordinated the logistics, and become personally invested in the outcome?

Not a chance.

The value in that moment wasn’t information. The value was advocacy.

It was having another human being whose job was to care about the outcome as much as you did.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that this is true of much of what travel advisors do. Most travelers don’t hire us because they are physically incapable of booking a hotel room. They hire us because when they’re spending thousands of dollars and using one of the few precious weeks of vacation they get each year, they want confidence that someone is looking out for them.

And accountability is something no algorithm can provide.

There is one final point worth making.

AI is only as good as the information available for it to train on. By definition, it learns from what has already been written, reviewed, photographed, discussed, and documented online.

But some of the most memorable travel experiences don’t emerge from the internet. One of the most valuable parts of being a travel advisor is spending time in destinations, meeting hoteliers, touring properties, attending industry events, and constantly searching for places that haven’t yet become widely known.

In a world increasingly driven by algorithms, social media trends, and viral recommendations, it often feels like everyone is staying at the same hotels, dining at the same restaurants, and taking photos from the same viewpoints.

The challenge isn’t finding what everyone knows about. The challenge is finding what everyone doesn’t know about yet. And that is often where the most rewarding travel experiences are found.

Ultimately, though, none of this should be mistaken for a rejection of AI. Perhaps this is why I remain optimistic about AI in travel.

The more capable it becomes, the more it highlights the uniquely human qualities that are hardest to replicate. The ones that give information meaning.

And I suspect that will prove true not only in travel, but across countless professions in the years ahead.

The best of us are already using AI to make us more efficient and allow us to spend more time focused on the parts of our job that matter most.

So perhaps the future of travel isn’t AI versus travel advisors at all.

Perhaps it’s AI and travel advisors.

Because when you combine the efficiency of technology with the perspective of someone who has spent years learning destinations, building relationships, and helping travelers navigate the unexpected, you get something far more powerful than either could provide on its own.

And for travelers, that’s probably the best of both worlds.

Author: Adam Essafi