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Future of tourism

Where the industry is heading: new distribution models, traveller behaviour and the decisions that have to be made today.

Future of tourism

Spanish tourism's first big AI layoff

On 18 June 2026, Lastminute Group announced a layoff plan affecting 163 people at Rumbo, its Spanish brand — 34% of its workforce in Madrid — as part of a worldwide cut of around 25% of staff. The company explicitly links it to its shift toward an AI-supported operation. It is the first Spanish case with a name, a figure and a declared cause. There is also a second cause, mentioned far less often: Lastminute fell into losses in the second quarter of 2026.

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Future of tourism

2026, the year travel AI went into production

Between March and July 2026, travel AI stopped being announced and started being installed: Canary sold the agent builder instead of the agent, Minor unified its data across 63 countries before deploying anything, Oracle put AI free inside the leading PMS, Lighthouse launched a commercial agent with traceability down to the source data, and Amadeus summed it up without decoration: what separates 2026 from 2025 is large-scale production. The challenge is no longer to prove it works; it is to industrialise it without breaking anything.

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Future of tourism

Direct booking in ChatGPT: what options a hotel has

In March 2026, Lighthouse launched The Hotels Network app inside ChatGPT, presented as the first direct booking route for individual hotels in the chat, on a flat subscription and with zero commission per booking. Until then, the only ones there were the big platforms and the odd chain with its own app, such as Accor. It runs on MCP, requires no changes to the website or the PMS, and shifts one specific thing: answers about your hotel stop being built from third-party listings and start using your content and your rates. What it does not shift is who aggregates the demand.

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Future of tourism

AI and travel predictions 2026-2030: who says what

Predictions about AI and travel range from enthusiasm (agents executing 30% of bookings by 2030, per the IDC projection cited across the industry) to scepticism (AI traffic is very small and stable, per Booking's CFO). Both camps publish numbers; the difference lies in distinguishing projections from measurements, checking who speaks and with what incentive. This article lines up the dated predictions — and commits to reviewing them every year.

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Future of tourism

Phase 0 of travel: when it all starts in a conversation

The classic five-phase travel model (dream, plan, book, enjoy, share) has grown a preceding phase: the conversation with an AI or discovery on social media. In the United States, extensive use of AI for planning jumped from 13% to 30% in one year (Skift Research, published by McKinsey in November 2025) and traditional travel search fell from 51% to 36% (Phocuswright, 2026).

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Future of tourism

78% use AI, 6% have a strategy, 22% have the data

The hotel industry is buying AI faster than it prepares to use it: 78% of chains deploy it but only 6% have a corporate strategy and only 22% have a centralised data structure capable of supporting it (h2c, 2025). Meanwhile, 4 out of 5 independent hotels lose 1-2 working days a week consolidating reports across disconnected systems. Hotel AI's brake is not the technology: it is the data.

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Future of tourism

The Spanish traveller and AI: age, income and family

35% of Spanish travellers use AI for travel (Simon-Kucher, 2025) and 28% use generative AI to plan (LLYC and Appinio, 2026). The fine-grained picture surprises: the leading segment is not Gen Z but families with children (31.3%), and income discriminates more than age — from 21.6% in low-income households to 44.6% in high-income ones. Spain runs ahead of France (24%) but far behind China (81%).

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Future of tourism

The Booking paradox: record revenue, falling profit

Booking closed 2025 with record revenue of 22.82 billion euros (+13.4%) and a net profit 8% lower (4.58 billion), according to its official results. The causes: 770 million extra in marketing — mostly Google — and a 388-million write-down of its metasearch engine Kayak, damaged by AI search. The OTA that charges hotels commissions pays, in turn, a structural toll to Google, just as Google starts competing with it.

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Future of tourism

The hotel AI cases with ROI you can actually believe

Hotel AI cases with results verified by independent sources can be counted on one hand: Wyndham (−25% handling time across its AI toolset, quarterly results, 2025), Hyatt (almost +20% group sales productivity, stated in its own 2026 results) and Hotel Tech Report's revenue benchmarks (+15-20% RevPAR, across more than 4,800 hoteliers). Almost everything else is vendor data: quotable, but with a label.

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Future of tourism

Agentic booking timeline: 19 months that changed travel

Between January 2025 and August 2026, AI travel booking went from demo to reality: Booking and Expedia apps inside ChatGPT, the first flight booked entirely in a chat (Mindtrip with Sabre and PayPal, May 2026), OpenAI's checkout retreat and a Google hotel booking test in AI Mode. The lesson of so many twists: the real battle is not who charges for the sale, but who controls discovery — and OpenAI is already monetising it with ads.

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Future of tourism

Will AI destroy tourism jobs? What the data says

Documented AI-driven job cuts in tourism have so far hit corporate and support roles — Accor expects AI to replace up to 40% of its office jobs, Mews laid off 15% of staff — while customer-facing employment holds up: travel agent was Spain's fastest-growing profession according to LinkedIn (2025), though it no longer appears on the 2026 list. There is no single narrative: there are three at once.

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Future of tourism

90% plan their trip with AI. Only 2% let it pay

Around 90% of consumers want to plan trips with AI, but only 2% to 7% would let it book and pay autonomously, as Booking.com, Skift, McKinsey and Accenture all found in 2026. The gap is not technological but one of trust: AI still cannot guarantee verified data or answer for mistakes when something goes wrong.

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