In the upcoming A Market Rewired: Ten Structural Shifts Redefining Asia Pacific Travel report, Phocuswright dubbed travel in the region as “digital-first.”
And in the Asia Pacific Travel Market Report 2025 report, Phocuswright data revealed that offline dominance is anticipated to slip as travelers move online and suppliers, apps and online travel agencies (OTAs) improve their marketing and delivery.
“The transition will likely accelerate as AI-powered personalization, predictive search and automated trip-planning tools become more embedded in online platforms, reshaping how travelers discover and purchase travel,” the report reads.
When it comes to AI use in travel, Gary Bowerman, Asia Pacific (APAC) research analyst for Phocuswright, said that it is “more of a natural progression” than in Western regions.
“We had the machine algorithms and the AI-enhanced superapps a decade ago, and so what's happening now is almost a logical progression, whereas in the West, it's just a bit more of a jump,” he said.
“What we're seeing in the travel industry is that there's a bit of reluctance at the moment to jump a little bit too high because everybody knows that there'll be new iterations of everything.”
There also hasn't been as much progression in agentic, according to Bowerman.
“Where we are seeing some movement is in physical AI, where it’s been moved into automation and into robotics and that kind of thing. But that really isn’t mass-scale yet.”
Kei Shibata, co-founder and CEO of Venture Republic and Trip101, agreed that AI is “fast moving” and “chaotic” but flagged China-based Trip.com as a frontrunner in the agentic race, largely thanks to its AI travel assistant, TripGenie.
“It is not perfect yet, but it is actually getting closer to where this agentic commerce is actually supposed to be for the consumers,” Shibata said. “I don't think Booking.com or Expedia actually are there yet to offer that kind of agentic commerce service.”
Still, Bowerman said we’ve yet to see “the killer AI app that’s going to change everything,” even in China where they build their own customized systems and better leverage user-generated content.
“[The Chinese] are using AI to basically turn their platforms into massive, massive search engines, not just of the products and the inventory, but also the experiences, the social media recommendations, the videos, the recommendations, the tips and advice and all that kind of stuff,” Bowerman said.
“It means that companies like Trip.com or Tongcheng or Fliggy, they're really advanced because they're just massive consumer platforms. They're not just pure OTAs anymore ... and also, they have their own payment platforms as well, which gives them a big advantage.”
Experiences
Experiences have further evolved in the digital-first world, and travelers are eager to spend on these tours and activities.
Per Klook’s recent research, APAC travelers are almost twice as likely as those from the U.S. and Europe to increase their spend on experiences.
“The travel industry obviously talks much more about everybody wanting experiences, everybody's buying experiences, but experiences are easier to access now,” Bowerman said.
“Ten years ago, you didn't have access to experiences on OTAs. You couldn’t find them; you had to look for them. But now they’re just so easy to find, and it just makes it easier for solo travelers to plan and enjoy what they want to do.”
Bowerman pointed to Klook, stating that the tours and activities platform “revolutionized how Asian people think about experiences” when it was founded in 2014. Last year, Klook filed a form F-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, marking its first step toward a U.S. initial public offering (IPO). In December, the company said it would be delaying IPO plans until early 2026.
Tours and activities are polarized across APAC, focusing on either learning experiences, which are more popular among Chinese travelers, or the “human-engineered side of tourism” with things like theme parks, museums, drone shows and Wi-Fi enabled bridges.
While the more traditional and engineered experiences coexist right now, it presents a challenge for experiences providers when trends shift.
“When you start to chase trends, they just outpace you,” Bowerman said. “So, you’re always trying to anticipate a little bit.”
Loyalty
When asked about traveler loyalty across APAC, Bowerman stated that it “doesn’t exist” outside of national airlines and luxury brands.
“Loyalty is to your pocket, loyalty is to yourself, loyalty is your own experiences, and that’s a big challenge,” he said.
What the region is seeing is more collaboration between travel brands and payment providers, retail brands and event organizers.
“[They’re] trying to cross-sell, trying to crosscut and tap into each other’s customer bases and drive some kind of loyalty going forward,” Bowerman said, highlighting this as a long-term play.
“There was more optimism that you can drive loyalty in the future, but you can’t do it on your own. You have to do it in collaboration ... Loyalty isn’t going to be to a single brand anymore. It’s going to be to the experience.”
Shibata also spoke on loyalty, arguing that it is more ecosystem driven across APAC.
“This seems to be the trend, across Asia, people are actually paying more attention to the loyalty points, and when they think about loyalty points, they no longer think about their own programs, but they start thinking, ‘How can I be part of a bigger ecosystem and then I can benefit from that?’”
With travel purchases happening less frequently, Shibata also said that it makes sense for travel players to join a larger ecosystem, allowing loyalty members to leverage points how and when they want. In his predictions for the travel market in 2026, Shibata said that Rakuten Travel, the OTA arm of Japan-based Rakuten, has seen success thanks to its loyalty ecosystem, which spans e-commerce, banking, telecom and more.
Superapp strength
Superapps, or platforms that offer multiple services for daily use, including e-commerce, food delivery, messaging, etc., have also expanded into travel.
Across APAC, these players capitalize on frequency of use to reinforce loyalty, Shibata said.
“My definition of super apps is the app everyone uses every day for everything. This is kind of the ‘dream come true’ for the superapp players. It’s easy to say, but it’s so hard to actually get there.”
However, since the pandemic, some have pulled back from travel, which is costly and less frequent, focusing on their core verticals instead. But Chinese superapps are the exception, Shibata said, pointing to WeChat, Meituan and Alibaba's Fliggy as travel-active examples.
When asked about distribution momentum, Simeon Shi, chief strategy officer and head of corporate development for China-based Fliggy, said superapps are an area of technological innovation.
“With mobile user growth slowing and customer acquisition costs climbing, platforms that can drive higher engagement and operational efficiency are increasingly valuable,” he said.
“Superapps address this by bringing together multiple capabilities—content, commerce and lifestyle—into one seamless experience. In categories like travel, where decisions are complex and infrequent, consumers are showing fatigue with having to jump between different apps. The appetite for simplicity and convenience is accelerating the move toward integrated platforms.”
This story is part 2 of a two-part series. Read part 1 here.
PhocusWire's APAC Theme Month
In March, PhocusWire will cover key trends, funding activity and more in the APAC travel sector. Check back throughout the month for the latest reporting and analysis.
Editor’s note: This series looks at travel trends and developments across the wider APAC region. We’ve largely excluded India from our coverage. As one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing travel markets, India warrants deeper, standalone reporting.