Artificial intelligence is a net positive for travel, according to a show-of-hands after a lively debate which rounded off the Technology Summit at this year’s WTM London.
The role of AI in
travel was debated by two teams of three. Those agreeing with the proposition –
AI is the enemy of travel – were led by Stephen Joyce from Protect Group, with
the dissenters led by Christian Watts of Magpie Travel.
Reservations about AI
were that it is not accurate and therefore not trustworthy. As Joyce noted,
trips curated by AI “remove the magical human chaos of being somewhere new”.
In contrast, the
advocates of AI pointed out that travellers are already using AI, despite the
well-documented errors. AI liberates people working in the industry from admin
and can help suggest alternative destinations and improve the in-destination
experience for travellers.
The show of hands was
overwhelmingly in favour of AI. Watts joked that it was “a tough day for the
humans” but added that the audience response probably reflected “not where it
is today, but where it’s going to be in the future”.
AI was a recurring
theme across the sessions. James Spalding from Trip.com shared that the OTA has
a global, AI-enabled customer support strategy that is adapted for different
markets. Trip.com allows its AI autonomy to answer basic queries, but the AI is
also trained not only to identify the complexity of the query but also to
engage and respond in the right tone. The AI knows (or has learnt) when to hand
the query over to a human to resolve the issue.
Elsewhere, other takes
on AI’s role in travel were revealed; Qais Amori from Almosafer talked about
AI’s fraud detection capabilities (when the fraudsters themselves are using
AI); Melissa Skluzacek from easyJet said that AI is used across all its commercial
and operational functions and is seen as an extra pair of hands; Sally Bunnell
from NaviSavi explained how it is using AI to help curate, tag and profile its
user generated content, with embedded booking options, to make it usable by
brands who want to license it.
The summit started off
with a bigger picture overview by Dave Goodger from Tourism Economics. He
shared data from the WTM Global Trends Report 2025 which showed that three
in ten travellers think AI will increase their average spend. His introduction
also highlighted that travel’s growth profile is positive, affording AI the
chance to positively impact even more travellers and businesses.
One business
benefitting from travel’s growth is global eSIM provider, Holafly, WTM London’s
official Technology Partner. Its CEO Pablo Gómez Fernandez-Quintanilla noted a
convergence of trends – more international travel, the need to be connected,
hybrid work, seamlessness – were driving the business forward.
Back to AI, Filip
Filipov from OAG identified a potential major headache which resonated with a
travel tech audience. The last of his 30-slides-in-300-seconds presentation
addressed look-to-book ratios. OTAs currently gets one booking for every
thousand views, he suggested. Looking ahead, large language learning models
could return a look-to-book ratio of 60,000 to 1. When agentic AI becomes
mainstream, he warned that this could be one million to one.
While AI was always
likely to dominate proceedings, personalisation was another recurring theme.
Many panellists were keen to point out the difference between personalization
and contextualisation – the idea that it is as important for travel companies to
know why someone is travelling as well as who they are.
The Technology Summit
was organised by Timothy O’Neil Dunne, WTM London’s technology conference
advisor, from consultancy T2Impact. He said: “Travel’s got a lot on its plate –
war, disease, Trump – at the same time as generative AI is shaking up how we search,
plan and experience travel, with agentic AI beavering away at the back.
“The Summit addressed many of these issues head on. The main takeaway from across all the panellists and sessions is that while disruptive change is inevitable, the travel technology industry is committed to making travel better for real people.” -TradeArabia News Service