AI in Travel: Our Trends to Watch in 2026
Here at Mobi, we don’t just dabble in the travel space. Most of us have spent the larger part of our careers in travel and are avid travelers ourselves. Collectively, we helped launch five airlines, worked at top travel tech companies, and built industry-leading solutions at organizations like Google, Amadeus, Hopper, IATA, Sabre, and KAYAK. And we don’t dabble in AI either. Our team includes top AI scientists and engineers from MIT’s CSAIL program, bringing deep expertise in autonomous systems and AI-driven decisioning. So, you can be sure at the intersection of travel and AI, we’re plugged in and paying close attention to the trends.
As we surveyed the many 2025 end-of-year reports and 2026 outlooks, one theme was unmistakable: travelers are adopting AI faster than brands are deploying it. In 2026, the gap between traveler expectations and the industry’s digital capabilities will widen unless airlines and hotels take decisive action.
Below are eight trends that stood out to us and will shape the year ahead, along with what digital, eCommerce, and loyalty leaders can do today to stay ahead of the shift toward agentic commerce, conversational booking, and intent-driven travel experiences.
1. Trip planning becomes AI-native, and discovery becomes the new battleground
More and more travelers are beginning their journeys with AI tools rather than traditional search methods, and many start without a destination in mind, focusing more on experience characteristics. They describe trips in natural language (“I want a mountain weekend with hot springs and great nearby restaurants,” “Where can we find a quiet farm stay in wine country where they allow dogs,” “Any ideas on an eco-friendly trip for two using just loyalty points?”), and expect systems to interpret intent, compare options, and surface bookable choices instantly. Travelers increasingly want fewer steps, fewer decisions, and more precise answers, all outcomes enabled by AI-powered discovery.
What this means for airlines & hotels
Discovery, not booking, is now the first competitive moment. If your digital properties don’t feature an intent-driven search capability or fail to appear in the natural-language phase of trip planning (for example, with a ChatGPT App), the direct booking window that once opened with a simple search may begin to close in 2026.
2. AI agents that shop, compare, and book (agentic commerce) arrive
The next wave of AI is not just generative, it’s agentic. In this wave, systems don’t simply suggest ideas; they take action, searching for routes, comparing fares, checking and redeeming loyalty points, and even rebooking during disruptions. This shift accelerated in late 2025 with OpenAI’s announcement of ACP (AI-based purchasing right inside ChatGPT), which enables users and AI agents on their behalf to complete transactions directly through the conversational interface.
What this means for airlines & hotels
As AI agents become decision-makers on behalf of travelers, direct channels must be machine-readable, accurate, optimized, and trustworthy. Brands must ensure their inventory, rules, and loyalty value propositions are accessible to AI systems, not intermediated by OTAs. Agentic systems can run thousands of micro-evaluations, alternative airports, flexible dates, loyalty scenarios, and environmental trade-offs in seconds. Ensuring the right APIs, LLM Apps, and underlying components, such as MCP (Model Context Protocol), are in place will be critical.
3. Offer/Order becomes the foundation for AI-driven travel experiences
Airlines are moving away from older PNR and ticket-based systems toward modern Offer and Order models. This shift isn’t just a technical upgrade; it’s a structural rewrite of how products are created, priced, bundled, serviced, and delivered. As more airlines advance along this roadmap, they’ll enter a world where every shopping request can be dynamically priced, custom-built, and instantly serviceable within a single order record. For travelers, this unlocks more straightforward servicing, cleaner communications, and clearer value. For providers leveraging AI, it unlocks machine-readable offers, consistent rules, and orders that can be created, updated, and serviced conversationally.
What this means for airlines
Airlines have made significant investments in Offer and Order transformation, but until now, very few channels have been able to fully leverage what these systems enable, especially for personalization and dynamically constructed offers. AI channels finally change that. Conversational interfaces and agentic systems can interpret richer product definitions, evaluate rules, and assemble tailored offers in ways that legacy PNRs and tickets were never designed to support. As airlines modernize their Offer and Order systems, they’ll open the door to:
- Personalized bundles and dynamically generated offers that AI can interpret and explain.
- Unified order records that simplify servicing across air, hotels, ground transport, and other ancillaries.
- More trustworthy, machine-readable rules that AI agents can follow safely.
- Conversational booking flows where orders can be created and modified through natural language.
- Easier integration into AI systems such as ChatGPT Apps and MCP-based agent orchestration.
The shift to Offers and Orders provides airlines with the retail infrastructure required for AI-native commerce. It ensures that when AI agents evaluate thousands of possible outcomes, rebook itineraries, or assemble tailored offers, the underlying structure supports accuracy, trust, and personalization. Airlines that modernize early will be the ones AI can interpret and surface, and the ones travelers choose in an increasingly agent-driven booking landscape.
4. Gen Z and first-time travelers reset expectations for digital simplicity
A growing share of travelers entering the market in 2026 are younger, more digitally fluent, and heavily influenced by social platforms and AI-assisted decision-making. A new generation shaping technology expectations is nothing new. What’s different now is not who is traveling, buthowthey ask for what they want. Google reports a sharp shift away from short, keyword-driven queries toward longer, detailed prompts¹. In a single search, travelers describe companions, budgets, moods, desired scenery, interests, and constraints. This shift is being accelerated by younger users, 74% of whom now use AI tools for information search, a rate significantly higher than that of older age groups.² And the timing matters. For the first time in two decades, the dominant search pattern itself is changing. Industry forecasts indicate that 2026 will be the first year LLM-based search meaningfully erodes traditional organic search, with LLM-driven discovery expected to reach parity by 2027 and greatly surpass organic search by 2028.³
What this means for airlines & hospitality brands
Younger travelers want simplified, intuitive, mobile-first, AI-assisted tools. Brands will need to continue elevating UX standards, modernizing search and booking experiences, and adopting more conversational, guided interfaces that help travelers make confident decisions. Being present in AI-native ecosystems and ensuring your data, rules, and offerings are interpretable by them becomes essential for maintaining relevance in this fast-growing segment.
5. Wellness, and “self-care” travel redefine demand
Travel motivations are becoming deeply personal and emotionally driven. Travelers in 2026 are prioritizing rest, nature, silence, and wellness-focused escapes, often building trips around thefeelingthey want to achieve rather than the location itself. A recent trends report by Hilton highlighted a rising desire for “deeper rest and recharge,”⁴ with travelers seeking quiet environments, immersive nature, and unique stays such as farm properties and converted historic spaces. This shift reflects a broader movement toward intentional, experience-led travel, where the trip's purpose is just as important as the destination. AI systems are already shaping how these motivations are interpreted. As more travelers articulate their preferences in natural language (“a quiet nature retreat,” “a restorative weekend with great food and spa options”), the tools they use will need to increasingly understand values, mood, and desired outcomes, not just keywords, filters, and dates.
What this means for airlines & hospitality brands
Traditional booking funnels that rely solely on destination-first search will increasingly miss early traveler intent and opportunities to grow loyalty. Airlines and hotels will need digital experiences that recognize the traveler’s “why” and translate experience-led queries into relevant routes, products, ancillaries, and stays. Brands that can interpret these emotional and wellness-driven signals will have a strategic advantage as AI-powered discovery tools become the default starting point.
6. Value-seeking behaviors intensify as AI becomes the traveler’s deal engine
With rising costs and continued economic uncertainty, travelers are using AI to find creative ways to stretch their budgets while still making great travel memories. They delegate tasks like remixing dates, comparing alternative airports, identifying shoulder-season opportunities, evaluating intermodal combinations, and optimizing loyalty redemptions. Transparency and control are top drivers of purchase decisions, especially when price sensitivity is high. AI agents can already evaluate thousands of itinerary permutations in seconds, exploring trade-offs in timing, routing, savings, and even emissions. This empowers travelers to seek maximum value with minimal effort.
What this means for airlines & hospitality brands
If travelers rely on AI to uncover value, then your ability to provide accurate, real-time data becomes critical. Airlines and hotels must ensure that fares, room types, bundles, loyalty opportunities, and rules exposed through APIs are reliable and interpretable by AI systems. Equally important is ensuring loyalty members can clearly see when and how they can redeem points or miles, and that the process is friction-free. Brands that surface strong value propositions and make them easily understood by both travelers and AI will be far better positioned to defend and grow direct bookings as deal-seeking behaviors intensify.
7. Operational AI quietly becomes a significant driver of customer satisfaction
While generative and agentic AI tend to dominate the conversation these days, much of the industry’s transformation still comes from the quieter foundations of AI; the systems built for pattern detection, optimization algorithms, and the ability to correlate vast amounts of structured and unstructured data with amazing speed. These technologies have powered operational intelligence for years, and they remain essential.
Behind the scenes, airlines are increasingly using AI to optimize fleet assignment, crew scheduling, tail rotations, irregular operations management, and overall network reliability. Using AI to streamline flows across aircraft, crew, airports, and passenger journeys will significantly improve the traveler experience before they even reach the airport. As predictive models help airlines anticipate disruptions, rebalance capacity, and reduce misconnects, the downstream effect is significant. It leads to more consistent journeys, fewer surprises, and better alignment between target and actual performance.
What this means for airlines
Operational excellence becomes a competitive differentiator. Travelers feel the impact of these behind-the-scenes optimizations through more reliable itineraries, smoother connections, and clearer communication during irregular operations, and they talk about these experiences, both positive and negative, with peers and on social channels. Brands that can leverage AI and integrate operational signals into their digital experiences, especially during search, booking, and day-of-travel, will build stronger trust and loyalty.
8. Seamless intermodal journeys shift from novelty to expectation
Modern travelers increasingly view trips as a connected chain of experiences rather than isolated segments. According to SITA, nearly half of travelers say a single ticket that spans air, rail, and ground is among their top travel wishes, second only to shorter airport wait times, and as many as 70% expect to take at least one intermodal trip this year.⁵ As a result, coordinated, end-to-end journeys are becoming a key driver of satisfaction, especially when supported by unified itineraries, real-time updates, and end-to-end baggage visibility. As AI tools map routes across providers and optimize door-to-door journeys, travelers will increasingly expect digital experiences that reflect this holistic view, with integrated planning, coherent notifications, and itineraries that automatically adapt in real time to disruptions and changes.
What this means for airlines & hospitality brands
The shift toward AI-assisted intermodal travel planning creates a significant opportunity for suppliers. Airlines and hotels already have extensive partnerships across rail, ground transport, and lodging. AI-native channels can finally bring these relationships to the forefront by presenting travelers with connected, door-to-door options inside a single, intuitive experience. Brands that can surface their broad partner ecosystem via agentic journeys will not only guide more of the trip but also strengthen their position in the traveler’s decision-making process.
Delivering seamless intermodal experiences requires a unified data strategy and the ability to exchange real-time information with partners. Airlines and hospitality brands must prepare their digital systems to support connected journeys, ensuring that itineraries, updates, and policies can flow smoothly across modes. AI-driven orchestration and more flexible integration frameworks will be essential to meeting traveler expectations for fluid, end-to-end journeys. Those who embrace AI early will see:
- Real-time data access: APIs that expose real-time schedules, inventory, and fees to direct channels and approved AI assistants.
- Natural-language booking flows: Booking and service paths that accept experience-based queries, not just origin, destination, and date inputs.
- Unified trip records: A single itinerary structure that links air, ground, and stay segments with live status and disruption data.
- Machine-readable policies: Standardized rules for delays, rebooking, and compensation that digital channels and AI agents can apply consistently.
- Visible loyalty value: Loyalty balances, perks, and usage and earning options surfaced at the point of search and checkout.
Those who wait will struggle as OTAs and intermediaries capture a greater share of the traveler relationship.
Looking forward
AI is quickly becoming the interface through which travelers decide where to go, how to get there, and who to book with. To stay visible in that future, airlines and hospitality brands need systems that are understood by AI, not just displayed to humans. MCP provides the structure that lets LLMs accurately interpret schedules, rules, and loyalty value, while ChatGPT Apps and other conversational channels ensure brands show up where users are and where intent now begins. As travelers shift from short keyword searches to more descriptive, granular natural-language requests, direct channels built for intent-driven discovery will be essential for protecting loyalty and direct booking share. In 2026, brands that prepare their data and digital experiences for an AI-first world will own the customer relationship. The ones that don’t will hand it over to whoever their customers’ AI assistants trust more.