CONFERENCE Future of Travel Conference 2025: More than 140 industry delegates attend eighth
Tech experts urge industry to experiment more with AI
T
he travel industry is being slower to adopt AI than other sectors, with fewer companies prepared to take risks to test new technology, according to a panel of experts.
Delegates at Travel Weekly’s Future of Travel Conference
urged the industry to give new technology a try and simply “move on” if it doesn’t work. Google UK director of travel Anna Sawbridge said the
company’s latest search enhancements, called AI Max, were already boosting booking levels by about 30% for some OTAs. AI Max helps companies advertise to more-relevant
customers by automatically matching advertisements to search terms and selecting the best landing pages, even without traditional keywords. Sawbridge said: “It looks at a much more tailored
search so the user lands on your website. [But] if I look at the adoption of AI Max in the travel industry, I would say travel is behind. Travel is adopting slower than other industries; that’s a ‘watch out’ for us as an industry.” She added there was “a lot of caution” among travel
companies, but noted: “There doesn’t need to be additional capital to test this. The infrastructure is set up.” Andy Gauld, partner at Deloitte, agreed: “The appetite
in this sector is quite anti [risk]. You tend to take your time in this industry.”
Travel firms should at least
try AI. If it doesn’t deliver, turn it off. Try it, don’t invest too much, and if it doesn’t work, move on
He noted: “Agentic AI gives you the chance to try it
safely – how willing are you to push the boundaries?” He said fears about safety and impacting clients’
holidays were the primary reasons for caution but noted the balance was shifting from firms thinking about “what it means and where to start” to more firms experimenting with AI technology. Simon Powell, chief executive at Inspiretec, described
the travel sector as “afraid” of AI but urged companies to “at least try it”, adding: “If it doesn’t deliver, turn it off. We are in an era of failing fast; try it, don’t invest too much, and if it doesn’t work, move on.” He said Inspiretec had already developed three AI
‘agents’ – Anna, Amber and Alison – to help the trade improve efficiencies in certain areas. “We train these agents with hundreds of thousands of
calls,” he added. “They are trained by the data from human agents and we score them in the same way as human agents – we use the same metrics.”
Economist hails sector’s prospects amid global challenges
The former chief economist of Lloyds Bank’s commercial banking division said the travel industry will perform better than most sectors amid geopolitical and economic challenges. Trevor Williams said geopolitical
risks are the most significant, pointing to the technological revolution, climate change and population change as factors that create “winners and losers”. But he said humans are “hard-
wired to travel”, adding: “I think the travel industry, despite the geopolitical risks and geoeconomic points, will be one that performs better than most sectors.”
12 25 SEPTEMBER 2025
Trevor Williams
Geopolitical shifts had
contributed to the undermining of the post-war settlement, he said, with respected institutions, including the United Nations, becoming less understood. “The creeping of the ‘right of
might’ is coming back,” he said, citing conflicts such as the war in Ukraine. The pace of technological change
has meant there is a risk of “leaving people behind”, which has knock-on effects. Williams added: “If someone loses something, they feel it more
keenly than anything else. And if they feel marginalised and left out, they’ll definitely burn the house down,” he said, citing the potential for social and political issues.
September 11, 2025 September 11, 2025
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Reform of PTRs ‘on track for June 2026’
Reform of the Package Travel Regulations (PTR) is still expected to take place by June 2026, with final proposals tipped to appear by the end of this year. Lawyer Joanna Kolatsis, director at
Themis Advisory, said she had spoken to the government recently and anticipated the proposals would be published in November. “By the end of the year, you’re going to
know what’s happening,” she said, adding: “It’s all got to come to an end in June.” The June deadline applies because the
changes to the UK’s PTRs – regulations based on the EU’s Package Travel Directive
travelweekly.co.uk
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