The Spanish traveller and AI: age, income and family
Who actually uses AI to travel in Spain? If your answer is "twenty-somethings", you are half right and missing the interesting part. Crossing the main available studies produces a portrait with three surprises — and direct consequences for anyone selling travel.
The big picture: Spain, mid-table worldwide
35% of Spanish travellers use AI in their trips, according to the sixth edition of Simon-Kucher's travel trends study (surveys of more than 10,000 travellers in 10 markets, fieldwork mid-2025). With a denominator caveat — "using AI for anything in the trip" is a broad yardstick — the figure places Spain in a peculiar position: ahead of its European neighbours (France 24%, Netherlands 26%) and light years behind Asia (China 81%, India 71%, Saudi Arabia 76%).
With a narrower yardstick, the LLYC and Appinio study (April 2026, 2,000 interviews with Spaniards aged 18-65) measures the use of generative AI specifically for trip planning: 28%. The two figures are compatible — they measure different things — and together they sketch a market on a steep adoption ramp, still short of a majority.
Surprise 1: families lead, not Gen Z
The most counterintuitive figure in the LLYC and Appinio study is the split by household type: couples with children are the segment using generative AI for planning the most (31.3%), ahead of childless couples (25.9%) and solo travellers (17.9%).
The explanation fits the experience of anyone who has sold family trips: complexity matters, not tech enthusiasm. A trip with kids is an optimisation problem with many constraints — schedules, budgets, meals, naps, distances — and that is exactly the kind of problem where an assistant saves the most work. AI is adopted first not by those who admire it most, but by those with the most paperwork to reconcile.
Surprise 2: income discriminates more than age
By age, the gap exists but is moderate: 30.9% usage among 18-29s versus 24.6% among 55-65s. By income, the distance explodes: from 21.6% in households earning under 1,000 euros a month to 44.6% at 4,000 or more — more than double.
This crossing dismantles the "digital native" cliché as the sole explanatory variable. The peak-adoption profile is not the student on TikTok: it is the upper-middle-income household with children and little time. A complementary nuance from the same study reinforces it: 56% of those using AI for travel also used it in their latest purchase in another category (versus a 44% average) — the AI traveller is a cross-category technology user, not a curious tourist.
Surprise 3: using is not trusting
All this adoption coexists with robust scepticism. Only 14.9% of Spaniards use AI for the final booking, and among families aged 30-44 who plan with it, a third manually double-check what it proposes and barely 7% trust it without verifying (LLYC and Appinio, 2026). And in the trust hierarchy, AI fares poorly: only 4.9% rank it as their first source, versus 33.2% who trust their travel agency first (Ávoris Travel Insights, 2026 — a study from an agency group, worth noting).
On young people, a striking figure from eDreams Odigeo (2025) circulates: 96% of Spaniards aged 18-24 would have used AI to plan their trips. Quoted for the record — with the caveat that it is an OTA's own survey and the figure invites the question of what exactly it measured. Sturdier is Amadeus's study with YouGov (2024, 2,211 adults): 58% of Spanish adults had already used generative AI for something — the remaining 42% never had — and among 18-to-24-year-olds the figure rises to 85%.
What I would do with this portrait if I sold travel
After fifteen years selling travel at a tour operator, three practical translations:
- Design for the planning family. The leading segment values exactly what good content can deliver: concrete, combinable data (schedules + ages + prices + logistics). The "travelling with kids" page with pre-digested information is not soft content: it is the landing page of the segment that uses AI the most.
- Don't write off the senior. A quarter of 55-65s already use generative AI for planning; the uses Spanish travellers value most are simultaneous translation (58%) and flight and hotel search (38%) (Amadeus/YouGov, 2024). The design that serves them simplifies rather than dazzles.
- Be the verification. If the national pattern is "plan with AI, verify by hand", the winning business is the one that shows up in the AI phase and is then easy to verify: clear data, a visible phone number, a person who answers. The Spanish traveller's distrust is not your enemy — it is your opening.
