Agentic AI in travel: why the trust gap decides who wins

We are currently witnessing a quiet but significant land-grab in the travel sector. Technology giants, online travel agencies (OTAs), and ambitious startups are all racing to build what they see as the ultimate travel companion: an autonomous AI agent.

Unlike the basic chatbots of the past, agentic AI in travel refers to systems that don't merely answer questions or act as the first point of call for customer service. In this brave new world, they plan, decide, negotiate, and execute actions on a user's behalf.

But as the technology seeks to race ahead, it is running headfirst into a wall. Humans. While the software is fully capable of planning and executing complex itineraries, the industry is facing down a vast AI trust gap travel marketers must solve if they want to serve holidaymakers to the best of their capacity.

The agentic AI land-grab: what is actually being built

The travel sector has become a significant testing ground for agentic commerce. Travel is ideal territory for this. It is structurally complex, highly fragmented, and incredibly time-consuming for humans to coordinate.

Right now, major platforms are rolling out sophisticated frameworks designed to act as digital concierges. We are seeing tools like Expedia's "Romie," Priceline's "Penny," and specialised booking agents from companies like Trip.com and Mindtrip. These agents are designed to:

• Interpret highly specific constraints (e.g., "Find a flight with extra legroom, arriving before 4 PM, and a hotel with a gym and free cancellation").
• Monitor price fluctuations in real time.
• Deeply understand user preferences to customise itineraries dynamically.

This shift toward agentic frameworks promises to simplify traveller decision-making. However, the path to fully autonomous agentic AI travel booking is far from clear.

The trust paradox: why the numbers contradict each other

Looking at recent consumer research, the statistics on AI adoption in travel seem wildly contradictory.

On one hand, there is immense consumer enthusiasm. According to global research by Accenture, 71% of consumers want an AI agent that can plan and book a complete trip across airlines, hotels, and activities. This goes beyond a desire for convenience and greater simplicity. Some 74% of respondents claim they would trust a personal AI agent more than their best friend to make purchases on their behalf. Consumer adoption of AI is building a lot of confidence in its ability to make lives seemingly easier, if not effortless.

On the other hand, when it comes to making the booking, the enthusiasm vanishes.

A study by Expedia Group found that 66% of travellers explicitly state they would not trust an AI assistant to actually buy or book anything on their behalf. Only a tiny fraction, around 8%, currently feel comfortable booking directly through an AI platform. Similarly, Skift Research notes that only 2% of leisure travellers are willing to let an AI system book a trip unsupervised.

Why the contradiction?

This is not a data error; it is the story itself. The gap represents a clear division between high-intent discovery and financial risk.

Travellers are perfectly happy to let AI do the tedious legwork of sorting through hundreds of options. But when real money, non-refundable tickets, and hard-earned personal leave days are on the line, the fear of "hallucinated" data, loss of control, and poor customer support causes them to retreat to familiar brands. There may also be additional factors in this decision. Holidays are a non-negotiable for people, something which is keenly anticipated often for months ahead of time. Buying these trips as if you're restocking the kitchen cupboard doesn't feel right.

Settled discovery vs unsettled booking

This trust dynamic is potentially splitting the booking funnel in two:

1. AI-led travel discovery: This trend is already settled — people are already using AI to research destinations, compare hotels, and map out daily schedules is rapidly becoming standard consumer behaviour.
2. Travel booking: Click to buy through AI alone is not yet settled for people. Consumers still overwhelmingly prefer to complete their transactions directly with a trusted travel brand (68%) rather than inside an AI chat interface.

For travel brands, this means your next customer may never visit your website to research. They will ask an agent to find the best option, but they will expect to land on your secure, trusted platform to enter their credit card details.

What agent-led decisions do to brand loyalty

When consumers start delegating their decision-making to machines, traditional brand loyalty faces a structural threat.

If an AI agent is tasked with finding the absolute best value based on real-time parameters, it does not care about emotional brand affinity or years-long company trust. It evaluates hard data. According to Accenture, 37% of behaviourally loyal consumers would allow their AI agent to switch brands instantly if the agent sourced a better fit, price, or availability. Convenience risks making the booking process highly commoditised.

To succeed through these digital gatekeepers, travel brands must focus on how agents choose travel brands. The answer lies in offering verified, highly structured, and friction-free data that an AI agent can instantly crawl and validate.

To understand the scale and scope of what's possible here, see what a travel media network is and how it works.

The data foundation: machine-readability and intent

At the heart of the trust gap is a data problem. AI agents cannot recommend or book what they cannot read or verify. If your room availability, pricing, flight schedules, or amenities are buried in unstructured PDFs or inconsistent legacy systems, the AI will simply bypass your brand in favour of a competitor with cleaner data.

This requires travel brands to transition to machine-readable travel data if they want to set themselves up in the best way for AI-led travel discovery. This means formatting your inventory, policies, and offers into structured schemas that search engines and AI models can digest effortlessly.

Furthermore, to capture travellers at the very start of this new funnel, brands must leverage first-party data for AI discovery. High-intent travel data, such as real-time booking research, loyalty status, and past travel experiences or preferences, all allow brands to feed precise, personalised advice or deals directly into the ecosystems where these AI agents operate.

What travel marketers must do now

To bridge the trust gap and prepare for an agentic future, travel marketers should focus on three strategic areas:

• Structure your assets for machines: Transition your content into highly structured, machine-readable formats. Ensure live pricing, inventory, and cancellation policies are seamlessly integrated and verifiable. Our Essential Guides go deeper on structuring your digital assets.
• Leverage high-intent commerce data: Do not rely on generic search signals. Utilise rich, privacy-compliant first-party data to identify travellers showing active intent to book. Learn more about how to unlock this value from over 2 billion data points across the Navigator platform.
• Build clear hand-off points: Since consumers still hesitate to book entirely through AI, make the transition from an AI discovery tool to your booking engine completely seamless. Provide clear reassurances, transparent pricing, and robust customer support paths at the point of purchase.

It's important to realise that these changes to how we travel aren't science fiction. The steps are already being taken by consumers and by brands to make agentic AI in travel booking a viable reality. Marketers need to ensure that they understand how this path will impact their objectives, and act accordingly. Explore how to capture those consumers in their changing discovery phases. Reinforce existing brand equity and keep those customer contacts regularly fed. Expand that universe of prospects by trialling different ways of tapping into the travel ecosystem to inspire other people planning their next trip. For more on how to activate this information to suit the current digital landscape, check out our essential guide to travel media networks in 2026.