Developments in artificial intelligence have been fast and furious in recent weeks. One of the latest, OpenAI’s “Operator,” has made headlines in travel with the support of big industry partners including Tripadvisor, Uber, Hipcamp, Priceline and Booking.com.
The tool, which is currently in a research preview and only available to Pro subscribers, raises questions about the future of digital travel marketing. After all, if search is being disrupted, won't that also change strategies and spending for travel marketers?
“Does everybody understand that Google search is fundamentally dead within the next seven years? That everyone is going to AI?” said Gary Vaynerchuck, chairman of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia, in a video posted to LinkedIn.
The brands allying with “Operator”
A number of travel giants are already leaning in to the potential success of Operator. Aligning with a company that is regularly making headlines for its cutting-edge technology is bound to boost a brand’s profile. But companies that are working with OpenAI to develop Operator believe there's a longer-term business play, although exactly what that could look like is not defined. In the short term, as they closely monitor OpenAI's audience of some 300 million weekly users, brands are viewing partnership as a way to meet travelers where they are.
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“I might say business opportunity goes very much hand in hand with the evolving traveler preferences,” said Rahul Todkar, head of data and AI at Tripadvisor. “And so in that sense, what I would say is we're always looking for more traffic acquisition sources.” Tripadvisor has been working with OpenAI since early 2023, with the first product an itinerary generator that came out in July of that year. The company also recently partnered with AI-answer engine Perplexity to improve trip planning.
Priceline, which has also partnered with OpenAI before to improve its own AI chatbot, is also working with the company on Operator. But chief product officer Kevin Heery said while it would be speculative at this stage to say the world is moving to agent-to-agent connection, he is paying attention to predictions of increased adoption of AI agents in e-commerce driven in part by growing consumer interest.
“We’ve historically aimed to anticipate the ways consumers will want to engage with us and then deliver that experience, whether it’s the web, apps, social commerce or agentive AI technologies like Operator,” Heery said.
It isn’t clear what OpenAI's Operator partnerships will mean from a financial perspective. At some point though, Todkar said he expects an element of monetization to evolve.
“If that means we become their go-to source for this information without necessarily spending any search media or search dollars against that, that becomes quite appealing,” Todkar said, adding it’s too early to tell what will happen. “If the traffic that's coming through this particular product feature is higher intent, then likely that might convert better.”
The future of websites
The internet — and websites, user experience, etc. — largely has been built for use by humans.
Does everybody understand that Google search is fundamentally dead within the next seven years? That everyone is going to AI?
Gary Vaynerchuck - VaynerMedia
But agent-to-website or agent-to-agent interaction, like what Operator can initiate, could require major changes for websites in the future.
Marina Petrova, CEO of Intentful, said websites will need to be updated thanks to the technological advances that allow agent-to-agent interaction.
Content will need to focus on more than just marketing messages to prioritize clear information that autonomous agents can use to perform tasks, said Marina Petrova, CEO of Intentful, a generative AI solution company.
“In SEO, the goal was to rank as high as possible,” she said. “In the agent-driven decision process, which starts with search, we’ve seen repeatedly in the early experiments that the agent doesn’t just go with the first result, even if it’s the official brand/business website.”
Accuracy will become paramount with agents making decisions based on perceived truthful information on websites. But Todkar doesn't see the current form of websites disappearing.
“The role of a website does become a really authentic, trusted source of data, insights and recommendations,” Todkar said. “That's not going to go away, because … There's got to be a source that these agents will consume information from and that becomes the next evolution of [the] website.”
Heery said that while a website’s reputation, relevance and content will still be important, it may also become a priority for websites to reconsider how they structure their data for agentic consumption.
Websites are likely to have four target audiences going forward, Petrova said: Humans, their AI agents, website’s AI assistants and an SEO or generative engine optimization crawler.
And Mario Gavira, vice president of growth and brand on Kiwi.com, who recently wrote about why he believes AI agents could supercharge online travel agencies, said websites could become less transactionally focused.
“If in the future, websites become the end point for both human and agentic traffic, current [user experience] practices might need to be reviewed to find a balance between optimising the flow for two very different use cases,” he said.
Agent-to-agent exchanges will be driven by API connections, which will be more scalable and more reliable than traditional website interactions, Gavira said.
How might marketing change?
Marketing strategies will have to stay flexible. In the same way brands have to consider shifts with the rise of influencer marketing and subsequent changes like a potential TikTok ban, they will need to consider agentic AI going forward. Spend will likely evolve, too.
“Fundamentals don’t change – it is how we activate those that is evolving,” Petrova said. “Many companies and organizations globally have heavily relied on just the performance marketing because of the immediate ‘validation’ nature of it. But this is not a healthy long-term strategy. … Because of these new couple of audience segments [such as AI agents or AI assistants], the whole marketing strategy requires a holistic refresh, not just a website.”
Petrova believes there will be a larger focus on brand building, including the cleanup of owned media channels to make brands more discoverable.
Heery agreed that branding could become even more of a priority given an agent is less likely to click on an advertisement, plus customers may be instructing agents to use their preferred websites.
And Gavira said he thinks marketing dollars may shift from cost-per-click to cost-per-agentic-search.
How fast will the search and marketing landscape change?
There is a lot of noise around Operator. But how quickly it will be implemented is up in the air, and only time will tell whether consumers will want to hand the full booking process off to an AI agent.
On a grand scale, Vaynerchuck believes a transition to AI-oriented search will take a while.
“But let there be no confusion - this is like when I saw web crawler in 1994, it was clear that it would be an issue for the yellow pages eventually, the yellow pages started to really feel the effects of this in 2001/2/3, so almost 10 years later,” Vaynerchuck said in the video. “Things move faster now and there is more adoption of new tools, apps and technology overall.”
Petrova believes adoption is coming quickly. And she believes now is the time for brands to begin positioning themselves for a big change.
“Early movers will have a significant advantage in navigating this shift effectively,” she said. “I think we are looking at 12-24 months for wider adoption of agents, but all things generative search are already live and the share of AI discovery is growing.”
Gavira isn’t convinced.
“Even if AI capabilities are progressing at an exponential rate, we humans are just getting started to learn what to do with it,” he said. “Google, with their products deeply woven into our daily lives, might make a much bigger impact with ‘Marine,’ or whatever the final name of their AI Agent will be.”
Bottom line, though, like with everything, human interest matters, according to Heery.
“Consumer behavior and preferences will dictate the pace,” he said.