There is a lot of noise about AI booking whole holidays on its own. It is worth cutting through it, because the reality of how travellers use these tools is both clearer and more useful to a travel brand than the headlines suggest.
The short version: travellers are not really using AI to book. They are using it to decide. And deciding is the part that determines whether your brand gets the booking at all.
What the data actually shows
When travellers are asked what they use AI for when planning a trip, a clear pattern appears. In one 2026 survey of over a thousand travellers, among those likely to use AI, the most common uses were seeking recommendations (75%), planning itineraries (70%), discovering new ideas (69%), and making comparisons (55%). Booking came last, at just 13%.
Read that order again, because it is the whole story. The tasks travellers hand to AI are the ones at the top of the journey: getting ideas, finding options, narrowing down, comparing. The task they mostly keep for themselves is the booking. AI has become the tool for deciding where to go and who to consider, while the traditional channels, your website, the OTAs, direct contact, still handle the transaction.
For a travel brand, that is the important message. The competition to be chosen has moved earlier, into the AI conversation, even though the booking has not. If you are only visible at the booking stage, you are arriving after the decision has been made.
The journey, stage by stage
Here is what that looks like in practice, following a traveller through a single trip.
Inspiration. The traveller has not chosen a destination yet. They ask something open: "where's good in Europe in October for food and warm weather", or "somewhere for a relaxed week with good hiking". The assistant suggests places, and increasingly names specific operators, hotels and experiences that fit. This used to be the work of travel magazines, social media and browsing. The brands mentioned here get into the traveller's thinking before a destination is even fixed.
Idea and itinerary building. Once a destination is chosen, the traveller uses AI to shape the trip: "plan four days in this city", "what should we not miss", "build a route for a week in this region". Your brand can be woven into these itineraries, named as the operator for a day tour or the place to stay in a particular area. Importantly, travellers treat these AI itineraries as a starting point, not a final plan. They keep exploring afterwards, which means there is a validation stage where you can still appear.
Comparison. This is where AI is quietly most powerful, because comparison is the task travellers used to find hardest. "Compare these three hotels for a quiet trip", "which of these operators is better for a family", "is this area or that one better for what we want". Many travellers who use AI lean on it for exactly this. How your brand is described at this stage, accurately, and in a way that matches what the traveller is looking for, decides whether you come out of the comparison as the right choice.
Validation. Now the traveller leaves the assistant to check for themselves. They read your reviews, look at Google Maps, visit your website, check your social media. This is where the reputation you have built does its work, and it is the reassurance step before any money is spent.
Booking. Usually direct, or through the channels you already use. Only a small share of travellers currently let AI complete the booking itself.
Why this is good news, not bad
It would be easy to read all this as a threat. It is closer to the opposite. The booking still belongs to you and the channels you trust. What has changed is that there is now a powerful new stage, the AI conversation, where travellers decide who is even worth considering, and most travel brands are not paying attention to it yet.
That means the discovery, shortlisting and comparison stages are open ground. The travellers are there. Your competitors, mostly, are not thinking about how to show up well in those moments. Being the brand that does is how you get chosen earlier and more often, then let your existing reputation close the sale as it always has.
What it takes to be chosen at these stages
The brands that win in the AI conversation are the ones the assistants can clearly understand and confidently recommend. Research into traveller attitudes makes the stakes plain: in one 2026 study, 78% of travellers said it was very or extremely important that hotels appear in AI-generated recommendations, and 84% said a trusted AI recommendation would make them more likely to book a specific property.
The same research put the practical point simply: if AI cannot confidently understand your business, it will not confidently recommend it. Being chosen at the inspiration, itinerary and comparison stages comes down to being legible to these systems, clear about who you are and who you are right for, accurate in the information they can find about you, and present in the places they draw on. That is learnable, and it is the work that decides whether you are in the conversation where travellers now make up their minds.
If you want to see how the assistants currently describe and recommend your brand across those stages, the free AI Visibility Check will show you.
Run your free AI Visibility Check →
Sources
- Hotel News Resource / survey of 1,000+ travellers, "Travelers Plan More Trips in 2026, AI Use in Planning Rises" (March 2026): AI use breakdown by task. hotelnewsresource.com
- TakeUp, The Rise of AI-Planned Travel in 2026, survey of 300 US leisure travellers: importance of AI recommendations to booking. takeup.ai
- McKinsey, via The Traveler, on AI use for inspiration, local discovery and comparison (March 2026). thetraveler.org
