With artificial intelligence (AI) becoming central to travel strategy, "AI-native" has emerged as the sector's favorite new label. The term has become a strategic catch-all, carrying various meanings for companies at different stages.
In a legacy overhaul, Sabre restructured its leadership team, later unveiling a “once-in-a-generation rebuild” of its tech stack with AI compatibility in mind. Airbnb said it is layering AI across its experience to transform service, while Riyadh Air partnered with IBM to make Riyadh an AI-driven airline. All three used the description AI-native when discussing developments.
Currently, the term is more marketing speak than defined deployment, according to Cara Whitehill, venture partner at Thayer Investment Partners. That’s especially true for incumbent travel companies sitting on top of heritage technology stacks.
“It reminds me of the first dot-com era, when everyone thought being an ‘internet’ company meant having ‘.com’ at the end of your name,” Whitehill said.
Mike Coletta, senior manager of research and innovation at Phocuswright, said opportunity exists for companies to harness AI for competitive differentiation. That is not easily done.
“It takes genuine, bold leadership to make the hard decisions, sacrifices and investments now to benefit later,” Coletta said.
While everyone may be talking about becoming AI-native, not everyone will be doing what is required to get there, Coletta said.
Defining AI-native
AI-native leaves room for interpretation.
Coletta uses the term to describe companies “architected from the ground up using AI for everything from building technology to running marketing to servicing customers to automating as many other business processes as possible.”
Jared Alster, chief strategy officer and co-founder of Dune7, said that thanks to the “native” half of the wording it’s not exactly accurate for a well-established tech company to call itself that.
He sees it as a line used in earnings calls to appease investors.
“It's sort of like the term ‘digital native,’” Alster said. “I can try as hard as I want, but as a child of the 80s, I will never be a digital native like my two kids born in the past decade.”
It's sort of like the term ‘digital native.' I can try as hard as I want, but as a child of the 80s, I will never be a digital native like my two kids born in the past decade.
Jared Alster, Dune7
Whitehill said that although AI-native is often used as a buzzword, it should be an operating philosophy.
The designation should not be so much a description of the company as a reflection of workflows and systems designed from scratch with an AI foundation, she said. Getting there requires data orchestration that enables accurate feeding to downstream applications. Becoming AI-native is not as simple as adding a chatbot to a website, Whitehill said.
Despite the insistence on AI prioritization, companies’ actions haven't completely matched rhetoric, even if becoming AI-led is possible, according to Phocuswright.
Generative AI has already been ranked by 28% of travel executives as their top technology investment priority, according to Phocuswright's Budgets, Barriers and the Race to Agentic AI. But only 13% are using more than a fifth of their tech budget to implement AI—and just 18% said data quality or tech infrastructure were top barriers to AI implementation.
Those numbers represent a misalignment that Coletta called “worrisome.” Every AI application, particularly agentic systems, depends on a solid data foundation.
Bottom line, there’s no magic wand that can be waved to become AI-native, Whitehill said. And it’s going to take more than a few months to get there.
Legacy companies vs. startups
Being—and becoming—AI-native means different things for companies at different stages.
Legacy companies have to earn their “AI-nativeness,” which could include rebuilding infrastructure, said Nikita Miller, CPO at Perk, which bills itself as AI-powered.
“Traditional SaaS was built to solve one problem at a time, and that made sense then. But that approach created fragmentation, and fragmentation creates friction,” Miller said.
Tangible examples of both are popping up across the industry.
Sabre, long synonymous with legacy global distribution system architecture, said its recently announced transformation “unshackled” the company. Now, it’s offering a singular, AI-powered platform meant to speed upcoming innovation.
"By unifying our architecture, strengthening our data layer and embedding governance through our IQ Assurance Layer, we've created an environment where innovation can happen faster, and with confidence,” Garry Wiseman, president of product and engineering at Sabre, said in a release.
Airbnb also touted a from-the-ground-up refresh that it doesn’t believe can be replicated.
“We're building an AI-native experience where the app doesn't just search for you,” Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, said in February. “It knows you.”
Conversely, startups can build with AI from the start. Unencumbered by existing layers of technology, they enjoy more freedom and can develop more quickly, Miller said.
For example, Riyadh Air and IBM said the airline was built without the legacy patchwork older companies rely on.
“We had a clear choice—be the last airline built on legacy technology or the first built on the platforms that will define the next decade of aviation,” said Adam Boukadida, CFO of Riyadh Air. “With IBM, we’ve stripped out fifty years of legacy in a single stroke.”
Startups have a leg up, Alster said. “They've always had a nimbleness advantage but it's compounded with AI, as the barrier to building and shipping fully featured products has dropped substantially versus just a few years ago."
Not all companies fall into legacy or startup categories. Those in between are in a different position when it comes to AI implementation, according to Whitehill. Internet-native companies born in the last decade, for example, may have an easier time becoming AI-native due to lower tech debt.
But it’s not all roses for younger players either. Early-stage companies still need to secure distribution, according to Whitehill.
Who wins in the end—incumbents or new entrants—remains to be seen, according to Coletta.
“We are already seeing extremely lean teams running impressive companies with AI doing most or even all the work. But the established businesses who figure out how to harness AI in addition to their existing strengths and entrench their advantages are arguably poised to do best.”
Becoming AI-native
Even if AI-native is primarily a marketing term, the rhetoric is worth noting, Whitehill said.
“If you’re not actively planning, testing and learning how to leverage AI across your business, you will not be competitive in the market."
According to Miller, AI is fundamentally changing what and how travel companies build.
“As these tools become more widely available, they lower the barriers to creating products and unlock value that simply wasn't possible before."
When considering becoming AI-native, Whitehill advised looking at how many critical workflows in your company are built with AI. The higher number of use cases powered by AI, the closer a company comes to successfully creating an AI-native operating system.
At its core, the term AI-native isn’t only a reference to adoption—how teams use AI to drive real progress is what matters, Miller said.
“The basics still matter: Find the problem, build the solution, get it into the hands of users,” Miller said. “AI lets us do that faster and better than ever."