AI can help travellers choose but it can’t replace trust

Ask AI where you should go on holiday and it will happily give you an answer. Ask it to find the best options, compare prices, build an itinerary or translate the menu when you get there, and increasingly travellers are happy for it to do that too.

Booking the holiday is different. Our latest Travel Horizons research found that almost half (45%) of the European travellers we surveyed have used AI to plan a holiday in the past 12 months. Yet only 12% would currently be comfortable letting it make the booking.

That gap tells us something important about where travel is heading.

People are not looking for technology to take the holiday out of their hands. They are using it to get more from the holiday they choose: more options, better value, greater flexibility and, ultimately, more confidence that they’re making the right decision.

Despite the wider uncertainty this year, the desire to travel hasn’t gone away, but it has become more deliberate. Our research shows a split: one in five consumers are taking more holidays abroad than five years ago, while a larger share are travelling less. Among those travelling more, nearly one in five say it’s because travel now ranks higher among their priorities, a sign of how carefully people are choosing where to spend their time and money.

So people still want to get away. And AI is quickly becoming one of the tools they use to do it.

AI referrals to lastminute.com are gaining momentum, particularly in Germany, France and the UK. To meet travellers where they are starting their search, we’re making our flight and dynamic package inventory accessible through AI agents in Claude and ChatGPT, helping people move from inspiration to booking.

People are using it to cut through an enormous amount of choice: comparing prices, finding inspiration and researching destinations. Once they arrive, it’s becoming a travel companion too. More than a third (37%) of the Europeans we surveyed are already using AI while away, whether that’s to find somewhere to eat, research what to see or translate a menu.

But travellers are also drawing a line between assistance and autonomy. Consumers appear much more comfortable asking AI to inform a decision than make it for them.

I don’t find that surprising. Holidays matter enormously to people. AI can make navigating choices dramatically easier, but when someone is spending a meaningful amount of money on a trip they have looked forward to for months, trust and accountability matter.

That’s why I don’t see AI replacing travel companies. I see it changing what customers expect from us.

If AI makes research and comparison easier, the bar for the industry gets higher. Customers will expect more relevant choices, faster responses and support when something does not go to plan. At lastminute.com, that means combining automation with human support and remaining accountable for the trip.

For example, we use technology to monitor potential disruptions, such as strikes, across our core markets and identify which customers may be affected. People still make the decisions, but earlier intelligence means we can act sooner and reduce the chance of a customer only finding out when they reach the airport.

And this desire to get more from travel goes beyond AI. We are seeing customers become increasingly deliberate about where they save, where they spend and how they use their time.

Around six in ten of our bookings pair a low-cost flight with a four-star-or-higher hotel. Demand for parking as part of a package has risen 157%, while Friday departures for short breaks are up 10.1% year on year. Value does not simply mean buying the cheapest version of everything. It can mean saving on the flight to stay somewhere better, paying for convenience or making a weekend go further.

That’s why the package model matters more as AI changes travel, not less. AI can help customers choose, but it doesn’t take responsibility for the trip. With a package, the travel provider is accountable for the holiday as a whole – including the flights, hotel and services brought together in one booking. An AI-generated itinerary alone cannot offer that same protection or peace of mind.

I see these behaviours as connected. Travellers have more information and more choice than ever before. They are also becoming more intentional about what they want from a holiday.

We are still at the beginning of what AI will mean for travel. Today, most travellers want it beside them rather than completely in charge. Tomorrow, they may be comfortable asking it to do considerably more.

Our job as an industry is not to decide that pace for them. It’s to make sure that as the technology gets better, the travel experience gets better too.

Get that right, and we’ll have done something more useful than automating a booking: helping people get more from the time they value most.

Based on consumer research completed by Censuswide across five core European markets (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain) – 5,001 respondents surveyed in August 2026.