A traveller planning their next big trip this morning did not start on Google. They opened ChatGPT, described the kind of holiday they wanted, and got back a short list of operators and hotels with a line on why each one fits. They will spend the rest of their research checking those names, not looking for new ones.
If your brand was on that list, you just won a customer at the very start of their journey, before they compared a single price. If you were not, you were not beaten on price or on reviews. You were simply not part of the conversation.
That contrast is the whole opportunity. A search engine gives you ten links and a map, and being fifth or eighth still puts you in front of anyone willing to scroll down. An AI assistant works differently. It returns a few names, written as a recommendation, and the traveller treats them as the shortlist rather than a starting point. There is no second page to appear on. You are named, or you are not, and right now most of your competitors have not thought about how to be named at all. That is what makes this the right moment.
This is already happening, not something coming later
Phocuswright, the travel industry's main research authority, published a report in early 2026 titled The AI Surge: Travel's Fastest Behavioral Shift in a Decade. It found that 56% of US leisure travellers used AI for planning, booking or in-destination help in the past 12 months (Phocuswright, The AI Surge, 1H 2026), up from 43% six months earlier and 33% the half-year before that. Among travellers who use AI at all, 94% have used it for travel. Phocuswright called it the fastest change in traveller behaviour it had measured in more than a decade of tracking.
So the audience is already here and growing quickly, while the number of travel brands actively working to appear in these answers is still small. A large, growing audience and very little competition for it is a rare combination, and it does not usually last long.
What the new trip-planning journey looks like
The best way to see the opportunity is to follow how a traveller now uses these tools across a single trip. It is not one question, it is a sequence, and each step is both a place you can be left out and a place you can win.
1. Inspiration, before the destination is decided. "We want a week somewhere warm in October, good food, not too busy, flying from Manchester." The assistant suggests regions, and often specific operators and hotels that fit. This used to be the job of travel magazines, blog round-ups and simply browsing. Now it happens in one conversation, and the brands named here shape everything that follows. Be one of them and you are in the traveller's mind before they have even chosen where to go.
2. Making a shortlist, once the destination is set. "Best small hotels in the old town with a pool," or "who runs small-group food tours there." The assistant gives back a named set of options. This is the moment that used to belong to Google, TripAdvisor and directory listings. Appear here and you are on the shortlist for a booking, sitting alongside a handful of names rather than lost on page three of a search.
3. Comparing the options, the deciding part. "Compare these three operators for a couple in their 50s," or "which of these hotels is better for a quiet trip." Travellers increasingly use AI for exactly the comparisons that used to slow them down. The way you are described here decides whether you look like the right choice, and when the assistant has accurate, well-presented information about you, this is where you can be framed as the one that fits best.
4. Checking for themselves, the human step. Now they leave the assistant. They read your reviews, look at Google Maps, visit your website, perhaps check your social media. Most bookings still happen through a brand the traveller has come to trust, not through the AI. Phocuswright found that only 8% of AI users felt the AI's answer on its own was enough, and about half still clicked through to source websites after seeing an AI answer. This is the good news: the AI opens the door, and the trust and reviews you have already built still close the sale.
5. Booking. Usually direct, or through the channels you already know.
Read the sequence as a whole and the shape of it is clear. The first three steps, the discovery, the shortlist and the comparison, are moving into AI, and each one is a chance to be chosen earlier than your competitors are used to being chosen. The last two, where your reviews and reputation win the sale, still work the way they always have. The brands that win are the ones that get onto the shortlist in the first three steps, then let their existing reputation do the rest. Being recommended by the AI is what earns you the chance to compete for the booking.
Ranking well is not the same as being recommended
It is worth knowing why this is a fresh opportunity rather than something your current SEO already covers. You can rank on the first page of Google, have clean structured data and years of solid SEO behind you, and still be absent when someone asks an assistant for the exact thing you offer. These systems do not simply read your website and rank it. They build an answer from everything they can find and confirm about you across the whole web, and they lean heavily on what other people say about you, not only on your own pages. Being strong in traditional search does not carry across on its own, which is exactly why the field is still open. I have seen small operators with ordinary websites get named again and again because the right signals happened to line up. It is a different task, with its own rules, and those rules can be learned and used.
The transaction is settling on "discover in AI, buy on your own site"
You may have read that AI would soon book entire trips on its own. The reality that has settled in 2026 is more useful to understand, and more encouraging for your brand.
The technology to book inside a chat exists. Sabre, PayPal and Mindtrip built exactly that, launching Mindtrip Flights in May 2026, a system that lets a traveller find, compare and book flights inside one conversation, with payment built in. So the capability is real.
What has become clear, though, is where travellers actually want to buy. In late 2025 OpenAI added the ability to complete purchases directly inside ChatGPT. By March 2026 it pulled that back and refocused ChatGPT on discovery, leaving the transaction to others. The reason was simple: people used ChatGPT happily to research and compare, then left to buy somewhere they already trusted. Walmart reported that checkout completed inside ChatGPT converted at roughly a third of the rate of sending the same shoppers to its own website. Today, Expedia and Booking.com run as apps inside ChatGPT and handle the booking there, while the assistant does the discovery.
For a travel brand, this is the pattern worth planning around. AI is becoming the place where travellers discover and choose. Your own website, and the platforms you already work with, remain the place where they book. The discovery layer is exactly the part that decides whether you are chosen, and it is the part you can influence. One practical warning follows directly from it: if a traveller or an assistant cannot get a price or an availability from you without sending a manual enquiry, you will be passed over in favour of a brand that can be booked straight away. Being easy to find, and easy to book, is now the same task.
The brands that check now are the ones who win here
Most travel brands have never checked whether AI recommends them. That is the risk if you are one of them, but it is also the opportunity, because it means the field is wide open. The travellers are already here. The competition for their attention in these answers is not, yet. The brands that look at this now, understand where they stand, and act on it, become the recommended names in their market before that becomes expensive and crowded, the way ranking on Google eventually did.
You can start in ten minutes yourself. Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and ask each one the questions a real customer would use to find a brand like yours, rather than searching your own name. See whether you appear, who appears instead, and whether what is said about you is even correct. It is a revealing exercise, and worth doing.
If you would rather see the full picture across every assistant that matters, including the Google AI answers that are hard to check by hand, that is what the free AI Visibility Check does. It runs your brand through the major assistants against the questions that drive bookings in your market, and shows you where you are visible, where you are not, and where the opportunity is. There is no cost, and no commitment beyond finding out.
The travellers have already changed how they decide. The brands that see what they see, and act on it first, are the ones who will be booked.
Run your free AI Visibility Check →
Sources
- Phocuswright, The AI Surge: Travel's Fastest Behavioral Shift in a Decade (2026). Survey of 1,570 US leisure travellers, 8–17 February 2026. phocuswright.com
- Phocuswright, The AI Surge, 1H 2026: "The fastest shift in travel behavior just became the default". US data. phocuswright.com
- Phocuswright / PhocusWire, "The fastest shift in travel behavior just became the default" (adoption and click-through figures). phocuswire.com
- Sabre, PayPal and Mindtrip, "Mindtrip launches travel's first all-in-one agentic AI flight booking experience" (6 May 2026). sabre.com
- Skift, "ChatGPT Bails on Transactions - Good News for Expedia and Booking" (5 March 2026). skift.com
- Walmart checkout conversion figure, reported via CNBC and Search Engine Land (March 2026).
- Forrester, "What It Means That The Leader In 'Agentic Commerce' Just Pulled Back" (March 2026). forrester.com
