What does the modern traveler look like? Here's four ways AI takes them new places.

The travel and hospitality industry is in a period of unprecedented transformation, fueled by AI and changing consumer and employee needs and expectations. In a sector that's always on the go, things are moving faster than ever. 

For those leaders looking to keep up, here are four trends that matter in travel right now.

1. The traveler has changed — both in demographics and behavior 

As we exit the post-Covid travel boom, the generations driving travel have shifted from Gen X and Baby Boomers to digital natives — Gen Z and Millennials. Consumers who grew up with smartphones, search, and social media exhibit significantly different behavior in their commerce and travel activities. 

They expect to be understood, to have comprehensive self-service, and to enjoy a frictionless, end-to-end experience. They expect personalized, context-aware interactions and self-service options that remain consistent. Starting from the moment they are inspired by a photo or video to when they check out of their hotel, disembark their cruise ship, or take their flight home. This is more than a preference — 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions instead of navigating a website. 

This shift demands that travel brands move from a one-size-fits-many approach to highly contextual, friction-free experiences that remember prior engagement, cut across direct and third-party channel boundaries, and recognize that travel includes multiple segments in a single trip, such as hotel, cruise, air, and car. This focus on individualization has a clear impact on the bottom line, as 76% of consumers get frustrated when they don't find personalized experiences .

Recognizing individual context requires using structured and unstructured data together in real-time, whether it’s through ingesting a video as a travel shopping input, servicing a search query in natural language, or ensuring you respond consistently regardless of the channel the traveler chooses to engage in. Loyalty is driven by trust, and trust is built by brands who simplify the process and engage consistently with the traveler across channels. 

Google Cloud travel and hospitality customers are already seeing success in delivering unique, personalized experiences with AI:

• Virgin Voyages created a new kind of performance campaign powered by our Gemini , Imagen, and Veo models, to turn behavioral signals into personalized travel postcards.

• Agoda createdan AI-powered Vacation Planner exclusively for Indian travelers in a recent campaign , using Google Gemini and Imagen AI models. This tool generated personalized itineraries based on user preferences, features bollywood actor Ayushmann Khurrana as “Mr Vacaywala.” 

2. The employee has changed — both in demographics and behavior 

By the end of 2025, it’s estimated that around 2/3rds of U.S. workers will be digital natives. Just like the travel consumer, these are employees who mostly grew up using Gmail , Sheets , Docs , and other cloud-based work and productivity tools. 

This technology continues to evolve, freeing up employees to focus on what matters most. For instance, managers in complex environments like airports and hotels can use real-time work-schedule optimization. Contact center agents can use AI assistance to refocus on consumer engagement. Aircraft mechanics are getting AI-powered workflow support and validation.

This shift is empowering employees with the right tools on any device, any time, anywhere to do their jobs more safely, more effectively, and to deliver exceptional service.

Google tools such as Gemini Enterprise and Google Workspace are reshaping how employees work, offering new ways to collaborate, improve productivity and fuel employee outcomes: 

• AirAsia is deploying Gemini Enterprise as a shared tool, putting intelligent, ready-to-use AI agents into the hands of employees everywhere. Teams are able to build the agents they need for their role’s unique task, shifting from tedious work to strategic impact.

• AirAsia also leveraged BigQuery and Vertex AI to improve operational efficiency , accelerating data processing for complex problems to foster business agility and revenue growth.

• Virgin Voyages is partnering with Google Cloud to launch a fleet of more than 50 AI agents on Gemini Enterprise — including "Email Ellie," the first specialized AI agent deployed from the partnership, which boosts content production speed by 40% and contributed to the company's record-breaking July sales.

3. Google is often where discovery begins and decisions happen

Research has shown that 61% of time, the end-to-end travel journey is spent by the traveler seeking inspiration, searching and planning — before the traveler ever gets to the traditional travel ecosystem and travel shopping. This is heavily influenced by online content, as social media is a major planning channel for travel and tourism; a high percentage of consumers ranks platforms like YouTube (41%), Facebook (38%), and Instagram (37%) as their premiere source for travel inspiration.

The modern traveler's journey no longer starts with a destination, but with a question. It begins in the initial moments of inspiration, where conversational, natural language is used to discover and shape ideas. More than 15% of daily travel searches with Google have never been seen before , with travelers utilizing Search more than any other channel to discover travel. This early exploration is a dynamic and personal space where decisions are made long before a booking occurs. 

For travel brands, the key is to meet customers at their point of interest in this critical discovery phase. By tapping into the real-time signals from text, speech, videos, and photos, companies can respond with meaningful content that drives conversion, yield, attach rate and ultimate customer satisfaction. This entire ecosystem, from the traveler's first spark of an idea to a brand's ability to respond, is powered by Google's suite of tools — including consumer-facing products like Search, Maps , YouTube, Photos, and Flights, and the enterprise platforms that connect it all, such as the Gemini app and Gemini Enterprise, Vertex AI , BigQuery , and the Google Ads Platform .

• Hilton is among the leading brands working across Google offerings, such as AI-powered Search and YouTube , to connect with zillennial travelers.

4. AI is blurring the boundaries between channels

How and where a traveler engages with a travel brand has become significantly more complex. The path to making a travel decision is no longer a straight line, it's a dynamic web of touchpoints. 

Today's traveler expects a seamless, multi-channel journey and moves fluidly between devices and platforms. Their discovery might start with a YouTube video on their TV, shift to a flight search on their phone, and then to Google Gemini for hotel recommendations. This flexibility is expected for every action, whether they are browsing offers on a brand website or an OTA, rebooking a flight via an app or text, or finding and connecting with customer service directly from a Google search. 

This interplay between channels is a powerful opportunity for travel brands, and running Google Search and YouTube campaigns together can drive a 21% higher return on ad spend that all other media combined . What used to be the domain of a single channel has now spread to meet the traveler where they are. This means that if you aren’t answering in real time, with the context of the question that was asked, you are at risk of responding with multiple answers that do not match. 

The ability to make it easy for a traveler to make a well-informed decision and the ability to respond consistently is increasingly critical to driving loyalty. This is where Google AI becomes your most valuable tool — new features in Google Search like AI Overviews help people quickly understand complex topics, with 60% of potential customers claiming it makes their decision making process faster and easier . This blurring is powered by Google’s Gemini models, as the only AI foundation models that are perpetually native to Google’s knowledge base and modalities of human engagement (natural language, speech, text, photos, videos).

The urgency to embrace this shift is clear. By 2027, nearly 87% of industry leaders will have AI assistants integrated throughout the customer journey. Companies that embrace this change will offer effortless experiences to gain a competitive edge. To get there, they need a data platform like BigQuery, uniquely native to both structured and unstructured data, and a powerful AI platform like Vertex AI to drive real-time decision making at scale.

• BrushBuck Wildlife Tours uses Gemini in Google Sheets to analyze data and identify animal sighting patterns , enabling guides to improve the customer experience on their wildlife tours. This AI-powered tool helps the team analyze past data to identify patterns in animal sightings throughout the year. By leveraging these insights, guides can make more informed decisions about where to go, ultimately improving the quality of their tours.

• Google's AI-powered flight search tool - What makes Flight Deals unique is that it uses Google’s advanced AI to understand the nuances of what you’re looking for and identify matching destinations. Then, it taps into real-time Google Flights data to quickly show you relevant, up-to-date options from hundreds of airlines and booking sites - integrating powerful features across Google's product ecosystem.

The trends we've explored point to one fundamental truth: the travel and hospitality industry is at a crossroads. Travel brands need to move beyond fragmented systems and siloed data to create real-time, context-aware, individualized experiences for their guests and employees.

Ready to get started? Explore our 101+ gen AI use cases with technical blueprints , including several tailored for the travel and hospitality industry. These resources provide a glimpse into what’s possible now and a roadmap for turning innovative ideas into reality.