Remember the last time your flight was delayed, and you were under pressure to make your hotel check-in or your dinner reservation? Think about how stressful it was making all those changes to your travel plans. What if AI could take care of all those problems for you, so that you can sit back and relax?
Agentic AI is a transformative technology that is helping organizations make decisions and streamline complex tasks with little or no human intervention. Bringing together large language models, machine learning and enterprise-grade automation, AI agents have the capability to set their own objectives, analyze data, and then reach those goals entirely on their own.
By learning as it goes, AI agents' abilities continuously improve, making the technology increasingly practical for travel and hospitality businesses. In this fast-changing and highly competitive industry, agentic AI shifts organizations from reactive AI approaches like chatbots toward proactive, insight-led strategies that transform customer experiences.
In this blog, we’ll explore the role of agentic AI in the future of travel and hospitality, including how the technology is evolving, the business benefits, and the key practicalities around adoption.
It wasn’t so long ago that planning a getaway involved visiting a travel agent, or a lengthy process of planning out individual elements and booking them online, one by one. But now, it’s never been easier or faster for travelers to research, book and pay for their trips, with integration across platforms meaning several elements (such as flights, accommodation and transfers) can often be booked in a single transaction.
But now, AI is transforming things once again - and it’s no surprise that, according to Accenture, 84% of travel executives feel that AI is key to helping them reach their growth objectives.
Agentic AI is particularly helpful in this regard as it can operate independently, without the need for human oversight. That means it can handle and arrange complex travel arrangements across multiple services, and proactively anticipate customer needs and resolve their issues. While traditional AI-powered chatbots have functioned merely as reactive tools, agentic AI can act as a true assistant and address issues before they have any impact on the traveler at all.
Travel organizations embracing agentic AI are experiencing substantial operational benefits across several critical areas. Collectively, these capabilities enable travel businesses to optimize human resource allocation while delivering enhanced customer service:
Agentic AI tools can analyze the behaviors, preferences and booking histories of individual customers, and use the insights generated to develop personalized recommendations tailored to the traveler. These can even be organized and compiled into detailed, seamless itineraries covering transport, accommodation, dining and activities.
Agentic AI can take care of many processes that previously required human intervention, such as check-ins, amendments to bookings, and customer support. The fact that it can do so much faster and at a much greater scale, increases response times and therefore improves customer satisfaction rates.
Connected to the previous point, when disruption occurs, agentic AI can swing into action immediately and autonomously take care of rebookings, resending notifications, and even sourcing viable alternative routes if required.
More and more travelers want to reduce the carbon footprints of their trips and prioritize transport providers and accommodation that minimize their emissions and energy consumption. Agentic AI can optimize travel itineraries with sustainability in mind, which benefits the environment not only from the perspective of the traveler, but for the wider travel industry, too.
Understanding customer sentiment through detailed, AI-driven analytics can help travel businesses make the right decisions for revenue at the right time. This can include dynamically adjusting pricing, predicting customer demand, and offering targeted promotions.
Travelers are gradually becoming more switched on to the benefits that AI in general, and agentic AI in particular, can give them. Research in the United States has found that as many as 40% of adults there are now interested in using AI-powered virtual travel agents. Furthermore, the gradual entry of Generation Z into the economy has led to greater demand for frictionless, tech-supported travel opportunities.
For example, an agentic AI model can power an AI travel concierge, which not only books flights and accommodation, but also makes dynamic changes as required, delivers real-time recommendations, and even negotiates compensation or upgrades in cases of disruption. Expedia has already deployed an AI travel concierge called Romie that can handle all these duties on travelers’ behalf.
This means travelers don't have to deal with any of the stress of research and planning. They're free to relax and enjoy their journey from start to finish, confident that agentic AI is proactively managing everything behind the scenes, including potentially stressful disruptions.
Beyond delivering personalized travel plans, an AI travel concierge can be particularly helpful in unfamiliar destinations or where language barriers exist. For example, a solo traveler that is visiting Japan for the first time may find the language and culture barriers challenging, but agentic AI models can curate hotels and restaurants where a particular language is widely spoken and understood. This allows travelers to get more from their experience while avoiding unnecessary stress along the way.
Of course, AI technology is evolving and improving at a rapid rate, which means that further agentic AI capabilities will come on stream in the months and years ahead. Before too long, we can expect the emergence of new functions such as:
Increased integration of different data streams, such as audio, video and location, will allow travel assistance to be put into even more precise context. For example, AI systems will be able to use smartphone images to understand exactly where the traveler is, adjust its recommendations to the local area, and even translate signs in real time.
Multiple agentic AI tools will be able to work together and interact with different companies simultaneously. A traveler could have their own personal AI agent which can then work with the AI tools of airlines, hotels and local experiences, enabling seamless, tailored travel itineraries while keeping the traveler’s data privacy protected.
At the same time, these innovations will have to be balanced with the ethical and responsible use of AI, and the need to keep customers’ personal data private and secure. Many customers are also still wary of AI, and the consequent loss of human interaction, which means that any move towards AI-centric travel support needs to be gradual and well-planned.
The proactive travel experience that agentic AI enables will help define the future of the sector. Intelligent systems that can handle all planning and logistical challenges dynamically and in real-time, without any need for human intervention, will fundamentally change the level of experience and service that travelers can expect. As a result, it will change what travel providers are expected to deliver, in order to stay competitive.
However, many travel organizations won’t have the skilled, up-to-date agentic AI expertise in-house to make the most of these opportunities, which is where partnering with a third-party becomes so invaluable.
At Ciklum, we've already built a proven track record in implementing agentic AI solutions for businesses just like yours. Our approach is based on experience engineering, focusing on hyper personalization that creates exceptional experiences for both your customers and employees. This not only enhances satisfaction but directly drives revenue growth.
We know that understanding and stakeholder buy-in are also important, which is why we start by giving you visibility of what you can do with the technology, and how that can translate to your specific use cases.
Find out more on the Ciklum approach to agentic AI, and get in touch with our team today to discuss your specifics.