With the development of artificial intelligence, change is once again rippling out into the industry as we all speculate on how to chart a course through the wake of its introduction to our day-to-day lives.
Faster and more accessible than a travel advisor or supplier website, artificial intelligence models are changing the way people approach finding information and leveraging it for travel planning, creating a dim outlook for the future of travel as it continues to develop without much in the way of guardrails or safety regulations.
I recently attended a conference where a senior-ranking and polished executive made two very interesting claims about AI’s applications to travel now and in the future:
His first claim asserted that Google and other AI-based companies have every incentive to answer your question up front, rather than send you to a different website to get that answer.
His second claim was even more provocative: it is unclear how companies will be able to ‘buy’ into the AI “search” results. A sobering claim indeed.
But my personal sense is that he is wrong. Once the AI companies have gotten people used to the idea that AI knows all and will always steer you in the right direction—and they’re investing trillions of dollars to do precisely that—they will earn back that cost of capital by charging travel suppliers to ‘recommend’ their brands. My gut tells me that those recommendations won’t come cheap.
AI models have already turned to relevant in-conversation advertising to their free users in order to boost profit margins; I can only imagine what they’ll turn to once an AI subscription becomes the only way conceivable to get anything done.
Before now, the travel industry has always been rooted in human connection, in relationships and in business networks. Today, travel advisors share their hard-earned expertise, born of human experiences, with their clients. Large, publicly traded supplier companies - airlines, cruise lines, hotels, car rentals, etc. – have the luxury of dictating terms and conditions of selling their product to their travel advisor partners; an uneasy but workable reality we live with every day.
But in one increasingly possible version of the emerging new world, all travel suppliers will be at the mercy of these tech titans. If that world comes about, suppliers will quickly pine for the days when they worked synergistically with the travel advisor partners their rush to invest made obsolete.
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