Online booking reshaped travel years ago, moving flights, hotels and entire holidays away from bricks-and-mortar agents. Since then, artificial intelligence has gone further still, now touching nearly every stage of the travel journey, from research through to customer care during and after a trip.
Research and planning
A meaningful share of travellers are now comfortable letting AI help plan parts of their trip, and travel companies use machine learning to build tailored recommendations from a traveller’s own preferences and booking history. More usage means more data, which lets these recommendation systems keep improving over time.
Booking a trip
AI-driven chatbots and conversational assistants now handle a large share of booking queries directly, on messaging apps, airline websites and voice assistants, letting a traveller find and book a flight or hotel without ever speaking to a human agent.
During the stay
AI-powered voice assistants and in-room technology are now common in a wide range of hotels, using natural language processing to answer guest questions, handle requests, and offer real-time local recommendations that used to require a concierge.
What this means for smaller travel and tourism businesses
A small tourism operator does not need to build its own AI system to benefit from this shift. Using AI-enabled booking and customer service tools that plug into existing platforms lets a small business offer the same responsiveness larger competitors do, without a large technology budget.
Frequently asked questions
Do travellers actually trust AI to help plan their trips?
A meaningful and growing share do, particularly for tailored recommendations built from their own stated preferences and past booking behaviour.
Is AI in travel only relevant to large hotel chains and airlines?
No. Smaller tourism businesses can access AI-enabled booking and customer service tools through existing platforms, without building custom technology themselves.
What part of the travel journey has AI changed the most?
Booking and customer service, where chatbots and voice assistants now handle a large share of queries that once required a human agent or concierge.
AI is now part of the travel experience, not a novelty
From planning through to the stay itself, AI has moved from an experimental feature to a standard part of how travellers research, book and experience a trip, and small tourism businesses have real, accessible ways to benefit from that shift.
Further reading: Burned by Software Developers: Two Entrepreneurs Share Their Stories | Department of Trade, Industry and Competition for official small business support information
Originally published in March 2019. Updated September 2026 to replace dated 2017-era chatbot examples with the current state of AI in travel. The underlying shift the article identified has only accelerated.
