Visa Destinations, announced Thursday (June 25), is live now in Paris, London, Dubai, Milan, Rome, Mexico City, New York City, Miami, San Francisco and Thailand.
“Travel is expected to grow 10% annually over the coming years. It consistently shows resilience to the world’s events and consumers protect it,” Katya Petelina, head of global cross-border and global sales and commercial operations at Visa, said in a news release.
She also cited company research showing that customers will cut back everyday spending to save up for travel.
“With Visa Destinations, we are accompanying travelers throughout their journey and helping them discover the moments that make a destination memorable, while giving our issuers and merchant partners a meaningful way to participate in the economic growth that travel creates.”
Available to Visa customers via a mobile first platform, Visa Destinations provides “tastemaker recommendations, city guides, and curated experiences” in keeping with what Visa calls its pivot from “being the way to pay for travel to becoming a travel companion.”
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows the increasing importance of digital tools for travelers and travel companies.
The data shows that 93% of those companies now offer at least one embedded finance capability, with digital wallets the most common. The research also indicates that companies tie these tools to higher conversion rates and fewer abandoned bookings, as well as gains in efficiency and quicker product rollout.
“The shift reflects how travel platforms are being built,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year. “Search, booking, payments and loyalty are being woven into a single flow. Keeping the customer inside that flow reduces friction and creates more opportunities to capture spend.”
In other travel news, PYMNTS wrote recently about the resurrection of global business travel, with spending in that sphere projected between $1.62 trillion and $1.69 trillion for the calendar year, according to estimates cited by the Global Business Travel Association industry group, an all-time high that surpasses the record set before the pandemic.
“What makes business travel particularly significant in 2026 is not the volume of trips being taken. It is the nature of those trips,” PYMNTS wrote.
“Organizations are traveling with greater intention, focusing on activities that create measurable business value. Those journeys increasingly revolve around supplier relationships, customer acquisition, market expansion and strategic partnerships—the very activities that generate future trade and payment flows.”
