GLOBAL PULSE – Global Travel Still Runs on Relationships and Trust

Greetings, Travel South Partners, 

When it comes to international travel, I’ve always been one of those overconfident travelers who expect a flawless trip. Last year, on a business trip to Europe, a snowstorm on the East Coast stranded me in Syracuse, New York. I missed an important meeting, and the hotel I had booked in Switzerland charged me for the stay anyway. No refund. No empathy. Just because it’s their policy. Since then, I’ve made sure I’ll never stay at that hotel again. Why? My trust was broken.

That experience reminded me that even in a digital world of endless booking tools, trust still drives travel decisions. And that’s why the role of travel advisors, operators, and trade partners, the people who connect travelers with destinations, is more vital than ever. AI may be changing how consumers plan and book travel, but it can’t replace the relationships and trust that drive the travel trade forward. Here are our latest insights from across the industry.

Use of Advisors Is Rising as Travel Complexity Grows

Despite travelers’ growing digital confidence, the data tells a different story: the more complex the trip, the more likely travelers are to seek expert help.

According to PhoCusWright, fewer than 10% of leisure travelers in the U.S. use a traditional travel agent. Yet custom research from Future Partners shows that among international travelers who find the Travel South Region appealing, that figure is triple (34%), relying on travel agent websites and using offline travel agents (28%) for international trip planning purposes. These figures also align with ASTA’s (American Society of Travel Advisors) research a few years back. Half of consumers are now more likely to use a travel advisor than before, largely because “planning a trip is more complex now.” 

There are too many steps in the planning and booking phase. Skift’s 2025 Megatrends report states, “the death of travel agents is greatly exaggerated.”  In fact, new travel agent jobs are being added at a rate of three percent annually, according to the report. In fact, it is about cost versus value from the consumers’ perspective. The Travel Agent of the Future report, from 2016 but still relevant, goes further: advisors are regaining relevance, especially for multi-destination, high-touch, or aspirational travel. These are the kind of trips that can’t be left to algorithms. As options multiply and technology adds layers of choice, complexity is making travel advisors indispensable.

Travel Advisors Are the Trust Channel

Across international markets, the trust in trade remains strong. The 2025 Travel South USA travel trade analysis with Future Partners revealed that travelers from Australia/New Zealand (27%), Benelux (33%), Brazil (40%), Germany (34%), and India (35%) continue to rely on trade channels for U.S. trip planning.

These travelers typically spend two to three weeks in the U.S., visiting multiple Southern states. In fact, 65–100% of the operators that Travel South works with in Brazil, Australia/New Zealand, Benelux, Germany, France, and Italy feature Southern destinations in their itineraries. For international travelers, travel advisors remain a reliable source of information that drives curiosity and conversion as trip complexity increases.

Relationships Driving Results

The trade sector is showing signs of resilience with performance improving in some markets. Barclays‘ latest UK consumer card data showed a surprising data point. Travel agents experienced the highest transaction growth of any sector in August 2025 – it was up 18% from last year, with total spending increasing by 4%.

Even as a quarter of international travelers now use AI tools to research and plan trips, they still rely on human expertise to finalize and personalize them. That combination, digital discovery powered by human trust, is becoming the new model for how international travel converts.

Technology Amplifies, Not Replaces, Trust

Major players are also balancing authenticity and automation.

Booking.com is now integrating FareHarbor’s tour and activity inventory into its platform with 150,000 new attractions across 5,000 cities in 115 countries. The company describes the rollout as an “incremental” step. It serves as a quiet reminder that, even for global platforms, growth in experiences lies in relationships and curation to entice travelers in the experience economy.

Similarly, Flight Centre Travel Group CEO Graham Turner describes AI as “a significant tool” for its success but insists the human touch won’t vanish altogether in a Forbes article. His philosophy of combining modern systems with relationship-driven growth echoes what the most resilient destinations are doing: innovating without losing human touch.

Agent to Agent: The Next Chapter in Travel

This week’s announcement that Booking.com and Expedia Group are partnering with OpenAI marks a new phase, not just for AI, but for how travel itself will function digitally.

At its core is OpenAI’s new Apps SDK (software development kit) announcement, which enables developers to create and connect apps to ChatGPT users (800 million of them). 

The Apps SDK builds on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) which is an interoperability standard that allows AI systems to talk to one another. For example, users can create a road trip playlist on Spotify, then search for and book their trip through Expedia and Booking.com, all within the ChatGPT interface. Later this year, TripAdvisor, AllTrails, OpenTable, TheFork, and Uber will join the ecosystem, which will become a new agent-enabled economy and position OpenAI as the platform for travel.

For OTAs and travel advisors, it’s both a disruption and an invitation. It disrupts by reimagining the traveler’s path from inspiration to booking, compressing a multi-step conversation into one keyboard conversation.

The opportunity is to rethink how trip planning happens in this new era of agentic commerce. In our recent qualitative research on the use of AI in travel planning, participants mentioned that they use AI due to its ease of use and convenience. However, trust was mentioned as a criterion for consistent use. While the MCP protocol facilitates data sharing, the safety, consent, and positive experiences of users are more important than the technology’s capabilities.

In the age of agentic commerce, global travel still runs on human relationships. Trust drives travel decisions. The differentiator won’t be who automates fastest. It will be who earns digital trust. As agentic commerce evolves, we must reimagine the human art of connection. From AI tooling to the human side aspect of travel, emotion, empathy, and reassurance are non-negotiables in the travel ecosystem.

What Matters:

Trust remains the currency. In every format, human, digital, or hybrid, the destinations and travel advisors who earn trust will own the traveler relationship.

Complexity drives the need for travel advisors. As travel becomes more complicated, especially for international travelers, they increasingly seek expert help. Complexity drives, not replaces, the need for advisors and travel trade professionals.

The Agent-to-Agent environment is evolving, but it requires a better user experience than just the chat function we see today. OpenAI’s integrations and new partnerships with Booking.com and Expedia mark the dawn of AI-to-AI collaboration in travel. It is a shift that will spark imagination and innovation across the industry. Our hope is for an open ecosystem where many players can participate, not dominated by a single player.

Listen to the podcast version: