The news: Travelers are growing more comfortable with using AI for trip planning, but the travel industry is lagging behind in readiness.

Fifty-four percent of US adults who traveled for leisure in the past year have used AI to plan trips, and three-quarters plan to do so again, per Mindtrip, Sabre, Sojern, and MMGY Travel Intelligence.

• 63% would use a destination’s AI planner if one was available on their website.
• 30% turn to AI when looking for ideas on where to go—ahead of travel blogs (27%), equal with online communities (30%), and just behind social media (32%).
• 38% are comfortable with booking accommodations and experiences through AI, including 46% of Gen Zers and 63% of millennials.

The challenge: There’s a notable mismatch between what users are interested in and what’s available—only 22% of destination marketing organizations (DMOs) have AI trip-planning features on their websites and 26% have a concrete AI strategy.

Capturing tech-savvy travelers will require investing now in AI trip-planning tools such as activity recommendation engines and automated booking processes: Travelers use AI to research activities (60%), compare prices (56%), and build itineraries (43%).

Competing DMOs who incorporate AI features now to attract those customers could build brand loyalty and make it harder for other DMOs to catch up.

Recommendations for marketers: AI has become an expected utility for many travelers and DMOs need to treat it as a consideration for the future to stay ahead of the competition.

• Gauge the interest of specific audience verticals in multiple AI tools to optimize website offerings.
• Structure content so AI assistants can easily index and summarize information.
• Ensure accommodation features, hours of operation, activity prices, and location are accurate to avoid friction when AI engines surface that data.
• Audit how third-party tools like Booking.com are describing and recommending destinations to evaluate how information is being surfaced.
• Monitor mentions across review sites and other webpages that are commonly scraped by AI, such as YouTube, to make sure information is correct, and address reviewer concerns directly.

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