What role will AI play in travel and hospitality?

You know how some families have the one person who handles all the trip planning? In Sam Bishop-Hanna’s family, she is that person. “Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to be a travel agent. I thought that was, like, truly my calling,” she said.

Now, Bishop-Hanna works in data analytics just outside Boston, and she’s passed off those travel planning responsibilities to ChatGPT and Claude. For big trips, it’s useful for mapping out itineraries. For a quick weekend in New York, she tells it some hypothetical destinations, and uses it to recommend hotels.

This is what the the travel industry calls “discovery.” The use of artificial intelligence tools in discovery is already changing how people decide where to stay.

The hotel company Marriott, which owns brands including Aloft Hotels, the Sheraton, and the Ritz Carlton, reported that last quarter. Its revenue per available room went up 6.5% globally year-over-year. But at its Monday earnings call, executives got a question with an eye to the future: What impact is agentic AI having on the travel business?

”What AI is doing is it will give you a personalized shortlist from everything what you said, and potentially an option for you to complete the booking itself,” said Ajay Aluri, a professor of hospitality and tourism at West Virginia University.

Handing over a booking to an AI agent does involve a fair amount of trust, but Bank of America analyst Shaun Kelley thinks we’ll get there.

“Twenty-five years ago, 20 years ago, everybody thought it was crazy to put your credit card number into the internet. And here we are today. Nobody could imagine life without it. You will see that adoption curve like the internet but dramatically faster,” he said.

Some hotels are also using AI to field calls for the front desk, Kelley said.

Let’s say the woman in Room 237 says she needs extra towels. The AI agent on the phone can let housekeeping know.

“The fact is that 80 to 90% of those inquiries are going to be highly repetitive things,” Kelley said.

That frees up the actual person at the front desk from being on the phone, and can give their full attention to the guest in front of them.