The Impact of Digital Platforms and AI on Trip Planning

by Lacey Pfalz
Last updated: 7:00 AM ET, Sun November 1, 2026

Editor’s Note: This year, Northstar Travel Group celebrates its 25th anniversary. To mark the milestone, Northstar’s brands are looking back at how the travel industry has evolved since 2001, where it stands today and what the next quarter century might bring. This article is part of the Northstar 25 project.

Northstar 25th anniversary logo. (Photo Credit: Northstar Travel Group)

The travel industry—and the wider world—has changed a lot over the past twenty-five years, and so has planning travel.

From the emergence of the Internet and online travel agencies and booking sites, to the plethora of influence from social media and the proliferation of artificial intelligence, the digitalization of the travel industry has been a momentous and continuous change, transforming the ways we search and plan for our next trips.

This change continues even today, as new technologies transform the Internet as we know it, from search functions to how we connect with others.

As TravelPulse’s parent company, Northstar Travel Group, celebrates 25 years of travel industry leadership, let’s take a look at how digital platforms and AI have transformed the travel industry, and how people around the world plan their travel.

How Has Travel Planning Changed Over the Past 25 Years?

With the popularity of the computer, the shift from physical travel agencies to online travel agencies and independent travel advisors began...And that's just one example of the many changes we have witnessed in travel planning.

A lot of this shift from the physical to the online arose due to convenience: with the world, often literally, at people’s fingertips, the Internet opened an entirely new way for would-be travelers to research their destination of choice, read blogs written by fellow travelers, ex-pats or locals, and discover new places, attractions, hotels and more.

With this new online travel presence came the rise in OTAs, or online travel agencies, which include big booking sites like Expedia or Booking.com. In 2023, this surge in OTA popularity in the U.S. led them to pass the $100 billion mark for the first time, with gross bookings reaching over $101 billion.

OTAs have also introduced new competition for travel advisors. Prior to the Internet, advisors had to compete with other advisors and direct suppliers for bookings, but the democratizing force of the Internet and the emergence of OTAs have become both a major boon to advisors and a major threat.

Travel Planning Today: Challenges and Opportunities

While advisors now have more reach for finding clients through personalized websites, lead generation and social media marketing, they now also compete with the convenience of OTAs and the simplicity of booking directly with suppliers.

Yet that doesn’t mean travel advisors became obsolete—in fact, they remain a critical part of the travel planning and travel booking system.

According to Northstar’s travel data arm, Phocuswright, OTAs made up 20% of gross U.S. bookings in dollars in 2025. Supplier-direct online bookings made up 44% of gross bookings, and offline bookings made up 36% of the share.

Social media has also transformed the way that travelers discover and learn about a new destination, with influencers literally influencing scores of travelers to visit new places, photogenic spots and viral attractions—for better and for worse.

A Phocuswright report from 2024 found that one in five travelers used social media for travel, with 25% of trip planners consulting an influencer when planning a trip for themselves.

These numbers are higher for Gen Z travelers, with higher-spending, frequent travelers consulting them more.

Forty-one percent of these travelers who follow content creators for travel do so for the travel inspiration, with 67% of travelers ranking influencers as the third most helpful for travel advice, behind friends and family and OTAs.

Social media isn’t solely about influence, though: brand partnerships, discount codes for followers and sites like TikTok offering in-app booking capabilities all demonstrate the pure purchasing power that social media has on users—for retail and for travel.

Today, though, we’re experiencing a more rapid shift towards new opportunities and unexpected new challenges.

In a transformation that will rival the emergence of social media in influencing travelers’ desires and decisions, the proliferation of AI is already changing the way people research, plan and book their trips.

Yet it’s not a technology that only has a future impact: we’re seeing this shift in real time.

Phocuswright calls the adoption of AI in travel planning “travel’s fastest behavioral shift in a decade.”

In November, 2025, 58% of travelers were using AI in any aspect of their lives, with 39% using it for travel planning or research. The majority of these travelers were Millennials, with Gen Z following closely behind.

Fast forward to September, 2026, and seven in ten travelers have now used AI in some capacity for trip planning for at least one trip in the past year. Forty-four percent of travelers using AI used it to research hotels and things to do, while 32% trusted it to book their hotels, airfare or other trip components.

The demographics of AI travelers lean more towards higher-income, higher-educated and male users, which is a notable shift, because a long-held travel industry statistic has been that women make the vast majority of travel planning decisions.

The way that different generations are using AI for trip planning might also help inform how it will be used for travel planning in the future.

Seventy-four percent of Millennials and 72% of Gen Z travelers have used AI in some capacity for travel planning, compared to 50% of Gen X and 27% of Baby Boomers.

Gen Z and Millennials more often used AI as a conversational back-and-forth tool that ultimately helped them shape their travel decision making, while Gen X and Baby Boomers more often used it to ask a single question, such as they would previously use a search engine.

The emergence of AI poses critical questions of how the travel industry will respond to the new technology, especially with its possibility of replacing travel advisors as increasingly tech-savvy generations become the major travel consumers and the environmental impact of AI's proliferation becomes a major political issue.

Trust in AI isn’t as widespread as its use, which is a good sign.

Friends and family remain the most trusted source of travel information, at 64%, followed by travel reviews and travel advisors, at 49% and 46%, respectively. AI-generated results earn “significant trust” from 36% of travelers, aligned with advertising and social media as the lowest category.

Approximately 40% of AI travelers also reported that the technology was unable to provide the right information for their budget and for the specific type of trip they want to take, signaling that while AI has the benefit of the entire Internet at its proverbial fingertips, it can’t replace the expertise and firsthand experience that travel advisors possess.

Today, countless suppliers and OTAs, from cruise lines to hotel brands to big booking sites like Expedia have launched or partnered with AI systems to provide their own spin on the technology, from offering more advanced chatbots and booking assistants to enabling bookings to be made through AI agents.

Looking Ahead to the Next 25 Years of Travel

As we turn our attention to the next 25 years of travel here at Northstar, we also look ahead to what changes and transformations the industry might encounter.

The travel industry is one that has been shaped by unpredictability: a truly global industry, it can be battered by wars and climate disasters, buoyed by global events and celebrations and transformed by new technologies, from the first airplane to the personal computer.

It appears the entire industry is considering this strange balance this year.

In late September, the United Nations World Tourism Organization celebrated World Tourism Day 2026. Created in 1980 to celebrate and highlight the truly global force for good the tourism industry can be, its annual themes often suggest what the world has been thinking about the most, from accessibility to sustainability and more.

This year, World Tourism Day’s theme was all about AI: specifically, how the travel industry should adopt and implement it.

“Technology must serve humanity,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “Tourism workers, local communities and emerging destinations must help shape what comes next. This requires investing in digital skills, widening access to technology, and ensuring innovation benefits the people and places that make tourism possible. Let us build a digital future for tourism that is open, inclusive and human – and harness these new tools to drive sustainable development for all.”

The travel industry is poised on a new tipping point, as if we’re all aware and waiting for some big, unknowable transformation.

Like sailors tossed about by the waves of change, having left behind our comfortable, familiar shores long ago, we have yet to see the other side of that great ocean that is the future.

Yet we are not wholly without our own power to determine where we go: with diligence, hard work, wisdom and the same indomitable spirit for travel we have always had, we still command the rigging, the rudder, the wheel.

Perhaps we will steer ourselves towards more dangerous waters, or perhaps we shall reach a kinder shore. Either way, we will make it there together, by the effort of our own collective work.

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