AI Travel Agents Pack a Threat for Travel Aggregators

Agentic AI is moving into tourism faster than most of the industry expected. Agents can now query availability, compare prices across carriers and hotels, apply traveler preferences, and in some cases complete a booking without a human clicking a single button. For an industry built on search, discovery and conversion, that shift changes nearly everything.

A Harvard Business Review article argues that generative and agentic AI are threatening to do to Expedia and Booking.com what those companies once did to traditional travel agents. The article says that more than two decades ago, aggregators reshaped travel by connecting fragmented supply with mass demand through digital marketplaces. Now AI tools are threatening to make those marketplaces unnecessary by answering traveler questions directly and bypassing the platforms entirely.

The article says that as conversational AI tools handle discovery and comparison, traditional platforms risk losing their gateway role. A traveler who once started a trip search on Expedia may now ask an AI agent to handle the entire process. The agent evaluates options, applies preferences and either books directly with a supplier or routes around the aggregator entirely.

The article argues that incumbents must shift from functional efficiency to emotional engagement to survive. The data advantage platforms built over decades, vast inventories and behavioral signals still matters. But the article says that advantage is only useful if platforms can deliver personalized, inspiring experiences that keep travelers engaged throughout their journey. Platforms that treat agentic AI as an incremental feature rather than a structural threat, the article argues, are making a strategic mistake that the next wave of AI-native entrants will exploit.

The Consumer Has Not Caught Up With the Industry

A Skift investigation found that travel brands are spending billions building agentic tools for a consumer that does not yet exist. The article says only 2% of leisure travelers are willing to let AI book a trip on their behalf, while the industry is moving fast in the opposite direction.

The article profiles Gareth Williams, founder and former CEO of Skyscanner, who told Skift he has been struck by how negative the public is toward AI compared to people inside the industry. The article says consumer wariness may be harder to shake than the industry expects, particularly because trust erodes quickly when something goes wrong and accountability is unclear.

Business travel is leading agentic adoption, the article says, because corporate environments come with built-in guardrails: travel policies, approval workflows and expense systems that give agents defined parameters to operate within. Leisure travel lacks those structures. The article points to the absence of clear consumer protection and accountability standards for AI-driven bookings as the central barrier to mainstream adoption. Its main unresolved question is one the industry has not answered: when an AI agent books the wrong hotel, misses a connection, or applies the wrong fare class, who is responsible? Until that question has a clear answer, the gap between industry investment and consumer willingness will remain wide.

The Infrastructure Underneath Has to Change First

IDC argues that the shift to agentic AI requires a complete rethinking of how travel brands manage data, personalization and discoverability. The post predicts that by 2030, 30% of all travel bookings will be executed by AI agents, and that 50% of AI budgets in hospitality and travel will be allocated to personalization efforts.

The first interaction in an agentic booking journey may never involve a human browsing a website. Instead, an AI agent will query multiple sources, assess availability and pricing, weigh preferences and complete a booking autonomously. For hotels, airlines and restaurants, the post says that means one thing: if your data is incomplete, outdated or fragmented, you effectively disappear from the agent’s decision set.

IDC argues that achieving real personalization at agent scale requires a unified, real-time view of both the organization and the guest. For hotels, that means connecting property management systems, loyalty programs, guest profiles and on-property interactions into a single data layer. For airlines, it means aligning inventory, pricing, operations and customer history. The post says brands that treat data as a back-office asset rather than the foundation of trust and growth in an agent-driven economy will be the ones agents stop surfacing entirely.

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