AI transformation in travel: Andrew Jordan of Travelport

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.

For our latest installment, we sat down with Travelport CTO Andrew Jordan, getting his thoughts on how the global distribution specialist is leveraging AI.

In March, Travelport shareholders committed $50 million to help the company grow, with AI cited as a key area for expansion. Earlier this summer, the global distribution system also launched its TripServices API to curate travel content across air, hotel and ancillary services.

Jordan also shared insight on the future of agentic AI in airline distribution, other areas of innovation and more.

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

What's the biggest impact AI has had on your organization so far? Please provide a concrete example of AI in action.

The biggest impact has been on how we work, not just what we build. The clearest example is in our own engineering organization. Through our collaboration with Cognizant and Anthropic we are using Claude to write and test code and to reason across large, complex legacy codebases.

That is already beginning to accelerate the journey from development to clean, accurate builds in customers’ hands. Our target is to more than halve the time from development to delivery by the end of this year. Importantly, we’re not measuring success through productivity alone. We use an AI-balanced scorecard that keeps adoption, engineering quality and customer impact visible alongside speed.

The same capability now sits inside the platform itself. That is what makes intelligent, agentic-led travel workflows something our customers can build on, rather than demonstrate.

Trivago recently said it increased its investment in internal AI tools more than fivefold in the first seven months of 2026. How does your AI investment compare?

We don't disclose absolute AI spend, but the direction of travel is public. Earlier this year we announced $50 million investment to accelerate our next phase of growth, which included expanding AI-enabled capabilities. A key element is Travelport TripServices, the platform through which our AI work reaches customers.
 
We are also leaning into partnership rather than building everything ourselves. Our collaboration with Cognizant and Anthropic gives us specialist expertise and capability that would have taken significantly longer to develop in-house, which lets us move faster on the things only we can do.
 
The spend is not concentrated in a handful of pilots—it runs across engineering, product and our business functions, and we hold it to account through that scorecard. AI is not a future consideration for us; it is operational now.

How do you see AI evolving?

There will be a generational shift in how people research and book travel away from forms, filters and rigid searches toward conversational and voice-driven commerce, where travelers describe the outcome they want. The constraint today is trust, and it is measurable. Our June research with Dynata found that among U.S. consumers using AI for travel, 32% use it to research prices and options while only 8% use it to book the final trip. Around 72% say AI-powered booking causes them stress or anxiety.

That gap closes when the infrastructure behind the answer is accurate, bookable and serviceable, not when the model becomes more fluent. Human expertise becomes more valuable, not less.

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

Significant—but not as a replacement for intermediaries. An agent can interpret intent; it cannot own the consequences.

When a booking is wrong, someone has to make the exchange, fund the refund and carry the liability. That accountability does not come from a foundation model, and it is why I don't expect travelers or corporates to hand over full authority any time soon.

So, the opportunity in airline distribution is a machine-to-machine layer where agents transact against real inventory, fares, ticketing rules and servicing under clear commercial ownership. It is also why NDC and offer-and-order retailing matter here. Agentic demand only helps an airline if the offer acted on is genuine, correctly priced and serviceable afterwards.

How has AI changed Travelport's recruitment process?

AI is helping our talent acquisition team work smarter by analyzing recruitment data and trends, generating market and salary insights, strengthening job descriptions, informing sourcing strategies and producing more tailored, role-specific content such as interview preparation materials.

What has not changed is that recruitment is a people-led process. AI supports rather than replaces human judgement, and it frees our teams for the conversations, decisions and relationships that determine whether a hire works out.

What other technological innovations are you exploring beyond AI?

Our biggest non-AI investment is in modern retailing. We are advancing NDC and offer-based retailing so airlines and travel sellers can merchandise personalized, bundled products instead of relying on static fare filters—a change in commercial model as much as in technology. Our partnership with United is a good example.

Underneath that sits less glamorous work: rebuilding on cloud-native architecture. TripServices replaces rigid, legacy integrations with flexible, real-time APIs, so partners can build and iterate faster whether a human or a machine is driving the request.

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. Catch up on previous conversations with Piero Sierra of Skyscanner, Ante Dagelić of Travelier, Velit Dundar of Radisson and Javier Cabrerizo of HBX Group.