Artificial intelligence (AI) has made it easier to imagine new ways to search, compare and sell travel, but the booking step remains a harder test. For all the attention on agentic travel demos, completing a real transaction still depends on live inventory, accurate pricing, supplier connectivity, data security, payment handling and the ability to move across a fragmented travel stack. That gap is putting renewed focus on the infrastructure beneath travel selling.
As more fintechs, loyalty programs, super apps and startups look to add travel as a revenue stream, the question is not only who can inspire demand. It is who can reliably connect that demand to bookable supply without spending years building commercial relationships, aggregation layers and operational logic from scratch.
In a conversation in the PhocusWire studio at Phocuswright Europe 2026, Mike Putman, founder and CEO of Custom Travel Solutions, spoke to Phocuswright SVP of content Mitra Sorrells about direct supplier APIs, the booking challenge for AI agents, travel as a loyalty tool and how distribution shifts may reshape market share.
Watch the full discussion below.
Phocuswright Europe 2026 Innovation Spotlight interview: Custom Travel Solutions