Agentic commerce is accelerating, and travel companies are actively assessing how to adapt their content and capabilities to facilitate conversion.
During a presentation at Phocuswright Europe in Barcelona last month, Pablo Laucirica Lopez Palacios, regional VP of Microsoft Advertising, pointed to projections that anticipate agentic web traffic will actually outpace human traffic by 2030. But with the human web and the large language model web still playing active roles, companies need to optimize across all three areas, Lopez Palacios said.
Phocuswright data also found that an increasing number of travelers in the U.S. and Europe are using artificial intelligence (AI) during the planning process, but fewer willing to allow the tech to book travel on their behalf.
“We are still, obviously, in the early-adopter stage where people do not necessarily let an AI agent book the trip for themselves. However, with a human in the loop, with a human confirmation, I think this is partially what [the] majority of people are using in the form of search, in the form of chatbots,” Stanislav Bondarenko, AI lead for lifestyle at Revolut, said during a subsequent panel.
Additionally, corporate travel may be a more lucrative initial avenue for agents.
“It’s kind of an ideal use case,” said Nikita Miller, chief product officer at Perk.
“We have 10 years of data for individuals and companies, understanding where they travel, what their preferences are,” Miller said.
“We have all of this data in a fairly structured way, so actually, using agents is much easier than when you have unstructured data with millions of travelers on the consumer side, so I think that’s the short of it.”
And when it comes to advertising, Lopez Palacios highlighted the importance of trust.
“You need to do it in a way that it’s neutral, it’s nonbiased,” he said.
The panel also touched on accountability when agents make mistakes, the need for regulation and potential fraud risks.
Watch the full session below, moderated by Phocuswright SVP of content Mitra Sorrells.
Travel in the age of agentic commerce