AI transformation in travel: Velit Dundar of Radisson

Rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) is already changing the travel industry and how companies operate both externally and internally.

Over the coming weeks, PhocusWire is checking in with executives about where AI is making the biggest difference in their businesses.

Velit Dundar, VP of global e-commerce for Radisson Hotel Group, spoke on the company's latest innovations with AI, including the launch of a new price matching feature in July. The feature detects lower rates for Radisson Hotel Group properties on online travel agencies, verifies them and matches them on Radisson's website.

"Traditionally, best-rate guarantees have placed the effort on the guest," Dundar said. "They had to find a lower rate, take screenshots, submit a claim and wait for approval. We saw an opportunity to turn that into a productive, real-time experience."

In conversation with PhocusWire, Dundar also shared his thought on agentic AI's role in the hotel industry, areas for innovation and more.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for style, clarity and length.

What is your view on the term "AI native"?

For me, “AI native” is not about adding AI as a layer on top of existing processes. It is about rethinking the guest journey, the commercial model and the way teams work from the ground up, with intelligence, automation and data embedded into the experience.

In hospitality, this has to be done thoughtfully. We are a people business, and AI should never make hospitality feel less human. Its role is to remove friction, simplify decisions and take repetitive work away from our teams, so they can focus on what matters most: delivering warm, personal and memorable experiences.

What's the biggest impact AI has had on your organization so far?

The biggest impact has been moving from manual intervention to proactive intelligence at scale.

For instance, with Price Match, we have taken a process that was historically reactive, fragmented and administratively heavy and transformed it into a real-time capability that gives guests more confidence when booking direct.

The impact is both commercial and operational. For guests, it builds trust at the moment of booking. For hotels, it reduces avoidable administration and gives teams more time to focus on service. For our commercial teams, it provides better visibility into pricing behavior, conversion opportunities and the points where customers may otherwise hesitate or leave the direct channel.

Since launch, the feature has delivered a +19% uplift in direct-channel conversion. We have also seen a meaningful impact on marketing. In our collaboration with Google Cloud and Accenture, we used generative AI to automate ad creation, localization and translation, enabling personalized content across more than 30 languages in hours rather than weeks. The case study showed a +22% increase in ad-driven revenue, a +35% increase in return on ad spend and a +50% productivity improvement for global media teams.

For me, that is the real value of AI: better customer relevance, stronger business outcomes and more capacity for teams to focus on strategic work.

How do you see AI evolving?

I believe AI is moving from isolated use cases to becoming a new operating layer for travel. The first phase was about efficiency: automating content, improving workflows, speeding up analysis. The next phase will be about intelligence across the full journey, from inspiration and search to booking, stay experience, loyalty and post-stay engagement.

For hospitality, this evolution is especially important because the way people discover, compare and book travel is changing rapidly. Search is becoming more conversational. Customers increasingly expect recommendations that are relevant, contextual and easy to act on. AI assistants and agentic experiences will start to influence not only what a customer sees but also which brands are recommended, trusted and ultimately booked.

That is why our focus at Radisson Hotel Group is not limited to one AI launch. Price Match is an important milestone, but it sits within a broader transformation. We are strengthening our data foundations, improving personalization, testing AI-powered media and content generation, preparing for AI search visibility and building the capabilities required for the next evolution of digital commerce.

The winners will not be the companies that use the most AI. They will be the companies that apply AI responsibly, clearly and with purpose, where it improves trust, relevance and ease for the customer. That is the mindset we are building at Radisson.

What role do you see agentic AI playing in the hotel industry?

Agentic AI has the potential to be one of the most significant shifts our industry has seen in online distribution.

Today, most digital journeys still require the guest to do the work: search across platforms, compare options, check prices, read conditions and decide where to book. In an agentic world, AI assistants will increasingly perform parts of that journey on behalf of the traveler. They may recommend hotels, compare value, check availability, apply preferences and eventually complete transactions.

For hotel brands, this changes the basis of competition. It will no longer be enough to be visible in traditional search results. Hotels will need to be understandable, trustworthy and bookable by AI systems. That means having the right content, structured data, pricing accuracy, availability, policies, loyalty value and technical connectivity in place.

At Radisson Hotel Group, we see this as both a challenge and a major opportunity. We are already building agentic readiness into our thinking: making our properties easier for AI systems to interpret, strengthening our direct booking capabilities, improving rate transparency and exploring how future booking journeys may work when the customer is assisted by intelligent agents rather than navigating every step manually.

Agentic AI will not replace the human side of hospitality; it will transform the path that leads to it. The genuine welcome a guest feels on arrival cannot be automated, and that is exactly why it matters more than ever. What becomes more intelligent and more competitive is everything before that moment: how guests discover, compare and choose where to book. Our role is to make sure Radisson Hotel Group is the brand they are guided to.

How has AI changed Radisson's recruitment process?

In recruitment, AI has helped us make the process faster and more efficient, almost halving time to hire. In hospitality, speed matters because finding and onboarding the right talent quickly has a direct impact on service quality, hotel operations and team stability. Candidates have also responded positively to a more streamlined process.

What is important is that AI supports human judgment; it does not replace it. Recruitment is about people, potential, culture and values. AI can help remove friction from routine steps, improve consistency and allow teams to focus more time on meaningful human interaction. That balance is critical. We want technology to make the process better, fairer and more efficient while keeping people at the center of the final decisions.

This is consistent with our broader approach to AI across Radisson Hotel Group: use technology where it improves the experience, removes complexity and creates more time for human connection.

What other technological innovations are you exploring beyond AI?

For us, AI is only powerful when it sits on strong foundations. So, the innovation we are proudest of is often less visible to the guest but essential to everything else: the modern, unified technology ecosystem underneath the experience.

We are also rethinking discoverability itself. Search is shifting from traditional SEO toward what many now call GEO (generative engine optimization) where the goal is not only to rank on a results page but to be understood, trusted and recommended by AI-driven and conversational search. That requires structured content, accurate data, clear pricing and strong technical foundations. It is a fundamental change in how travelers will find hotels, and we are preparing for it now rather than reacting to it later.

Alongside this, we continue to invest in the building blocks of a modern direct platform: richer merchandising, modern and more flexible payment experiences, stronger direct booking and loyalty value through Radisson Rewards and the connectivity required for the next generation of booking journeys. Individually these may seem incremental; together they create a platform that is more resilient, more flexible and ready for what comes next.

But the most important innovation is cultural. We have deliberately built a test-and-learn mindset across the team; we experiment quickly, measure honestly, scale what works and stop what does not. That culture is what allows us to move at pace without losing discipline, and it is what will keep Radisson Hotel Group at the forefront as the industry changes.

Stay tuned for additional interviews with chief AI officers, e-commerce execs and CTOs as part of PhocusWire's ongoing AI Transformation in Travel series.