Travel Leaders in Europe Debate AI’s Impact

By Lorraine Sileo
Founder, Phocuswright Research & Senior Analyst

Industry conferences capture the mindset of an industry at a single point in time. Everything leading up to it has been discussed, trialed or tested, while the next few months are up for grabs and anybody's guess. It’s 2-3 days to check-in, measure progress and share theories. Phocuswright Europe 2026 in Barcelona 15-17 June, with the theme “Game On,” was no exception.

In an industry where there are few if any absolutes, there is no bigger pivot point than right now. It's not because of political unrest, economic uncertainty or changing weather patterns; these are all setbacks the industry has dealt with before and will deal with again. It's because a single technology—artificial intelligence, and all its associated acronyms (MCP, A2A, LLM, AGI, etc.)—threatens  to once again disrupt the status quo, if only anyone knew how.

Phocuswright Europe was that point in time when AI was no longer a single topic but instead woven into everything: marketing, operations, payments, investments, digital IDs, distribution, sustainability and more. It was a good time to listen as industry newcomers and veterans alike gave their interpretations of what is happening and how to prepare.

The Only Thing Certain Is Uncertainty

Most speakers agreed that it is still too early to know exactly how AI will reshape the travel landscape. AI platforms, OTAs, suppliers, startups and established tech giants such as Google and Microsoft all have an opportunity to define and own parts of the AI-driven travel journey. While the impact on internal operations is clear (greater efficiencies), and consumer use for travel planning is well documented, it’s too soon to tell how that playing field will shift. A key question is whether AI-first platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude will capture high-intent travelers and become the primary gateway for trip planning and booking. And if that happens, where will OTAs fit in, especially as they perfect their own chatbots? Or perhaps there won’t be much change at all—just more layers in the discoverability process.

“Uncertainty and change are inherently difficult for humans,” admitted James Waters, chief business officer of Booking.com, while on Center Stage. He questioned whether or not we are considering what the consumer wants versus what technology can offer.  “I think the risk when technology expands is suddenly you get super excited about all the stuff you couldn't do before, but you can do now. We don't always stop to have that thought about whether we actually should do those things or whether it's…really meeting a need or whether it's just kind of fun and shiny.”

Trust Is the Buzzword of the Moment

Several speakers discussed the big gap between searching on AI and trusting AI to make decisions for us. Agentic AI—where personal digital agents make transactions on our behalf—is coming soon, but do travelers even want it? Recent Booking.com research found that only a small percentage of survey respondents—about 6%—trust AI to make decisions. “You’ve got an enormous gap between sort of intellectual intrigue and practical trust,” Waters said.

Pablo Laucirica Lopez-Palacios, regional vice president, Microsoft Advertising was more bullish and believes digital agents will be one of several ways travelers search for and book travel. “It’s going to be an agent eventually doing all the steps from the beginning to the end on our behalf,” he said. “So yes, there's going to be a point where we believe everything is going to be all booked [by digital agents].”  

The shift to digital agents changes the architecture of the web. While the web today is built for humans, it will now have to be built for agents. “An agent doesn't get stimulated by an image or by a nice call to action,” noted Lopez-Palacios. They are built for analyzing information, tons of information. They are fast, they are precise, they are rational.”

Perhaps digital agents will be a bit more welcome in the corporate world, where routine bookings often take place. But business travelers still need humans, said Nikita Miller, chief product officer of Perk. “I think we're not as far as we're going to go yet because we do need to build the trust. We do still want a human in the loop or human oversight at certain points in that journey,”

Discoverability and FOMO

Travel companies are forewarned: If they are unable to provide the types of information read by the agent, they will lack visibility and, ultimately, lose out on the agentic economy. For thousands of hotels that rely on SEO and loyalty programs, this has been a big wake-up call. Several speakers discussed how hotels can navigate the new playing field and manage their FOMO—or fear of missing out.

“It starts with the basics,” said Fritz Müller, SVP of enterprise growth EMEA & APAC, Cendyn. “It’s being discoverable.” But first hotels need to take a hard look at operations and “fix the plumbing.” Meanwhile, marketing teams must start thinking about different types of content they have to produce … “because AI consumes different elements than the traditional marketeer would normally push out.” Ksenia Tarasova, CRM & Loyalty Lead, Penta Hotels, agreed that hotels want to be part of the AI economy but need to “build the foundation first.”

The panelists also agreed that independent properties have an opportunity to promote themselves above the fray of cookie-cutter hotel chains. “In the end it’s how unique can you present yourself and by nature independent hotels are unique,” said Müller. Tarasova  added, “It's really not about how large and how much money you invest, it's how agile you are.”

Simon Matthews, group chief technology officer, HomeToGo, agreed that lodging providers have mountains to climb, especially the homeowners in the short-term rental space who face new marketing challenges. “The complexities of getting into OpenAI's marketplace, which we've done, getting into Anthropic’s marketplace, which we've done, to have your own distributed MCP to even get the information discoverable is no joke. And obviously, hosts and homeowners don't want to do that [on their own]. But yeah, eventually we'll get there.”

Wrapping It Up, Thinking Outside the Box, and More…

Conversations turned to the connected trip (AI can bring it closer to reality), to winners and losers (the big OTAs will be challenged but not defeated), to service (who is ultimately responsible?), and digital ID (it’s still coming). Other topics discussed at Phocuswright Europe 2026 were startup funding, consumer behavior, airline merchandising, corporate travel and more.

There is still a lot of expectation around AI, but there is also a sense of impatience. Perhaps AI will make processes more efficient, or allow for faster search results, but it may not be the panacea that increases conversion. There is still no mind-blowing consumer-facing app, according to speakers at the wrap-up session. As we wait for a new consumer interface or platform to emerge, the OTAs and Google just get bigger.

“If I reflect on these last two days, I realize that everything changed but nothing changes,” observed Mario Gavira, chief marketing officer, Travelier. “The infrastructure [for transactions] is being put in place with the MCP protocols, with the payments infrastructure, the connectors, etc.,” added Lisa Katsouraki, independent advisor, NXD, investor, Ennea Capital Partners. “But we still need to see more happening for more adoption.”

Perhaps some new idea or use of AI will come along that is a major game changer—it just hasn’t happened yet. As Gavira pointed out, you can’t just apply old processes to new technology. “We are so used to running the business as we have run it in the last 20 years that we are not yet thinking out of the box enough to connect the dots and find the capabilities that AI gives us to actually completely inverse the user experience or make it somehow 10 times better.” The industry is still waiting for that breakthrough that fundamentally transforms the entire travel lifecycle. Now that would really be something to talk about.

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