After a year packed with travel tech developments and headlines, 2026 is set to become another history-maker for the travel technology industry.
As artificial intelligence (AI) developments and discussions have remained a consistent newsmaker, PhocusWire asked ChatGPT about what it anticipates unfolding in travel technology this year.
The tool's two biggest predictions are that "the front door" of travel will shift from search to agents—which it said will force a new distribution playbook—and that retailing and servicing modernization will cause a bottleneck. According to ChatGPT, the winners will solve post-booking at scale.
PhocusWire turned to human sources as well, asking a selection of travel technology leaders what they anticipate for 2026. Read their predictions below.
Editor's note: Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Brett Keller, former CEO, Priceline
- AI is really ripping at breakneck speed here, and so I think that in 2026 you'll see a number of companies putting forward more compelling and more exciting agents that can do real work for you as a consumer, including Booking Holdings and Priceline.
Judith Eyck, COO, HolidayPirates
- In 2025, most people started their travel inspiration while scrolling, not searching. Short videos don’t sell destinations; they make you feel a strong sense of awe, calmness or excitement that makes you want to pack your bags. In 2026, I believe the next step is making those emotions instantly bookable. AI will turn social inspiration into action.
- After more than a year of using conversational tools like ChatGPT, people will expect travel platforms in 2026 to feel smarter and more human, too. They’ll want to ask, refine and decide in a few natural steps. The online travel agencies (OTAs) that survive will be the ones that make discovery feel effortless again.
Kei Shibata, co-founder and CEO, Venture Republic and Trip101
- 2026 will be the year loyalty games intensify globally. We’ll see major programs forming new partnerships, consolidating into larger ecosystems or even evolving into entirely new loyalty-point “brands.” OTAs and suppliers will inevitably be pulled into these ecosystems as loyalty becomes a core battleground.
Japan offers a preview of what’s coming. There, points are not marketing tools—they are a currency. Over 90% of consumers actively manage multiple programs such as Rakuten, V-Point, PayPay and Ponta—large point ecosystems built by e-commerce giants, financial institutions, fintech/payment players and telcos. Travel is deeply woven into these schemes, and spending is now fully gamified. Convergence across industries is accelerating cross-vertical monetization.
Rakuten Travel’s rise as the country’s top OTA is largely driven by the strength of the Rakuten ecosystem—a loyalty platform spanning e-commerce, travel, telecom, banking, credit cards and more. Loyalty is their primary growth engine, powering long-term retention.
My prediction: The “mega-loyalty ecosystem” model that transformed Japan will begin taking shape in other major markets in 2026.
Adam Harris, co-founder and CEO, Cloudbeds
- AI is everywhere now. That’s table stakes. The real winners will be the platforms that anchor their agentic AI in a revolutionarily accurate forecasting engine. Large language models (LLMs) are great at communicating and coordinating, but they cannot reliably analyze the signals and decide what to do. Without a foundation model that predicts demand with extreme precision, agentic AI will confidently make the wrong calls—mispricing rooms, misallocating staff, overspending on marketing. Hyper-accurate forecasting, combined with the explainability layer of an LLM, is what turns AI from a system of record into a true system of action. Without it, you’re just putting a friendly AI front-end on top of costly blind spots.
Mia Morisset, principal, Inovia Capital
- Horizontal AI tools remain the easy entry point for operators, but we expect the momentum to gradually shift toward vertical, hospitality-specific AI that can tackle high-stakes guest interactions, complex property workflows and revenue-critical moments.
- Hospitality platforms are primed for accelerated consolidation, building end-to-end ecosystems that seamlessly integrate bookings, operations and monetization.
- Corporate travel is gearing up for a reinvention, propelled by business events, flexible work mobility and the rise of frictionless “bleisure” planning tools.
- Booking platforms are evolving into full-fledged profit engines, arming operators with smarter pricing, targeted upsells and maximized ancillary revenue.
Mario Gavira, CMO, Travelier.com
- Despite agentic e-commerce grabbing all the headlines this year, the harsh reality is that the travel shopping funnel is complex—and OTAs and suppliers are not willing to give up the direct relation with the end customer to become mere travel fulfillers for the AI engines. Mini-apps solve the equation: AI engines offer travel brands to run embedded mini-apps while keeping the user in their ecosystem collecting data, while travel companies control the shopping experiences and the relation with the end customer. What superapps in Asia spearheaded with their mini-programs more than 10 years ago will finally become popular in the west driven by the AI gatekeepers.
- The key metasearch players made it to the top more than 20 years ago, fulfilling the core user need for comparison in travel. AI answer engines are poised to replace them by offering a fundamentally superior comparison experience, understanding user intent with higher granularity, synthesizing information from multiple sources and generating comprehensive summaries. Booking’s write-down of the Kayak brand and Tripadvisor’s refocus on selling activities via Viator are early indicators of this structural shift. However, the strongest metasearch players, having spent decades building brand equity, possess a level of end-customer trust that provides a runway for a potential strategic pivot: evolving from purely consumer-facing destinations into the aggregator layer that powers the major AI engines.
Rod Cuthbert, founder, Viator
- Uncertainty over the role that agentic AI will play in online travel will continue throughout 2026, as various players form alliances, launch initiatives, report initial successes ... then hurriedly announce that they're "shutting down that business unit to concentrate on other projects.” Competitors, unsure of what to do—so they do nothing—will smirk at these failures until one of them hits paydirt, leaving the smirkers red-faced, watching their market share drop faster than airfares in a price war.
Johannes Reck, CEO, GetYourGuide
- Guided experiences will move from niche to front and center. On our platform, 84% of reviews are for guided experiences, with 98% overwhelmingly positive. The number one delighter across all our reviews? The guide. As technology becomes more powerful, this human element becomes more valuable. AI won't replace guides—it will help millions of travelers discover the perfect local expert who brings a destination to life. We're building the infrastructure that turns local guides into global entrepreneurs, and travelers are already shifting from collecting destinations to crafting their identity through experiences.
Shahar Goldboim, founder and CEO, Boom
- In 2026, AI will take on a much deeper role in short-term rental operations, moving from task automation to managing entire workflows. One of the biggest shifts will be how guests search and book. Instead of clicking through filters and comparing listings manually, travelers will simply describe what they want, and AI will pull the best options, check availability and even handle booking.
- In daily operations, AI tools will begin to act more like team members than tools. Up to 90% of day-to-day interactions, including guest communication, owner updates, reviews and scheduling, will be handled by agentic AI systems that operate consistently and in line with brand voice. Cleaning, maintenance and task coordination will be triggered automatically based on booking data and staff availability. On the backend, accounting and reconciliation will be fully automated, improving accuracy and freeing up hours of manual work. Many operators will start to replace their patchwork of tools with all-in-one systems designed to run the business from end to end. The result will be leaner teams, fewer errors and more time to focus on growth.
Betsy Mulé, principal, F-Prime Capital
- We will see more AI adoption across both backend operations and customer-facing use cases. The innovations coming out of startups are really exciting and high quality—hospitality operators will become more comfortable deploying automation across modalities, most notably voice. The tech has finally gotten good enough to provide a really positive customer experience while still keeping costs low and enabling 24/7 service.
Alexander Lyakhotskiy, CEO and founder, Pass the Keys
- As we head into 2026, short-term rentals are facing uncertainty all around the world, from tightening regulations, rising costs and changing traveler behavior. But decision paralysis in 2025 will give way to stronger decisions in 2026. If you’re going to stay in short-term rentals, you’ve got to really want it. That means professionalizing and making intentional investments in operations, technology and teams.
- Using AI for guest messaging and simple marketing tasks is already widespread, so in 2026, it’ll be about not just using AI but implementing it well across operations, improving productivity and cutting costs.
Christian Watts, CEO, Magpie Travel
- We'll start to see widespread panic as website traffic plummets. Nobody will be out there shouting about it, but we'll start hearing of cases where disrupted businesses experience drops of 50%-80% from 2023 traffic volume. To make matters worse, there won't be any clear and obvious paths out of that decline.
- We'll increasingly speak about Google (Gemini) and ChatGPT as a duopoly. Between the two, they'll surpass 3 billion weekly users, and it'll be increasingly difficult to see any kind of traffic that doesn't start at one of those platforms. And the bigger they get, the bigger they'll get.
Tye Radcliffe, chief customer success officer, Accelya
- Airlines will be under increased pressure in 2026 to deliver the experiences passengers now expect: quick help, clear options and consistent directions in the event of disruption. I predict the most visible change next year will be smarter automated servicing: apps and websites handling disruptions and re-accommodation automatically, rather than driving customers to call center agents for help.
- 2026 will also be when AI starts unblocking the data that airlines already have but can’t easily use because it’s trapped across different systems. With real-time insight across those silos, airlines will be able to answer simple operational questions instantly instead of hunting through tools, and that will lead to better decisions on pricing, fulfillment and customer management. As confidence grows, agentic AI will move from cautious trials into real deployment, taking on routine analysis and actions—showing up for customers as quicker, more consistent service.
- Commercially, the big shift will be airlines moving from talking about offer and order to planning for it as core infrastructure. Our research reveals 44% of airlines expect to transition to full modern retailing platforms by 2028, making 2026 a key stepping stone in the transformation. 2026 won’t be the finish line, but it’s the year airlines will finally start running the race.