All travelers want their trips to be perfect, as even the slightest inconvenience can ruin plans and result in a spoiled vacation. At the same time, planning trips is quite difficult. Some tourists prefer to cooperate with trusted agencies that understand the desires of their clients and have the required resources to create a perfect vacation program. Other travelers continue to plan trips on their own.
While artificial intelligence (AI) and tourism may seem like unrelated concepts, AI is now one of the main drivers of the development of the travel and hospitality industries, offering numerous advantages for individual travelers and industry players alike. From smart booking systems and AI-powered travel assistants to AI-driven pricing and automated customer service, AI enables individual travelers, travel agencies, and hospitality providers to automate processes, enhance personalization, and reduce costs.
In this article, we'll explore how AI is revolutionizing the travel and hospitality industries in 2025 and discuss its applications, benefits, and the future of AI-driven tourism.
What are specific AI applications in Tourism?
Personalized Travel Planning
One of the major problems travelers often face is the agony of choice. Where should they go, the Dominican Republic or Mexico? What to do - explore ancient cities in Rome, ski in the Swiss Alps, or splash in the ocean somewhere in Mauritius? Many people do not fully understand their desires and needs, so they are forced to go by trial and error. For them, the wrong choice means extra expenses, loss of time, and negative impressions. And for a business, an unhappy consumer means losses through lost customers and negative online reviews.
The solution to this problem is AI-driven tour planners. AI can gather comprehensive data on individual travelers, such as the history of browsing pages, social networks, survey forms, and cookies that the user voluntarily shared, and create detailed customer profiles. Then, AI algorithms are applied to tailor recommendations for what users are looking for, offer optimal travel destinations, choose the ideal duration of tours, and create an excursion program. AI makes it possible to book a trip in one click, without lengthy study of different offers, long consultations, and solving organizational issues. The advantages are obvious for both the client and the business.
Mindtrip is an AI-driven travel planning platform that provides personalized trip recommendations for destinations, hotels, flights, restaurants, and attractions. Mindtrip has also expanded into the B2B sector, offering solutions for travel businesses. Another popular solution is TRVLR.ai, a platform designed to transform websites into dynamic travel planning and booking platforms. It enables businesses to offer personalized itineraries and streamline the booking process for their clients.
Optimized Search Results and Smart Booking
Hospitality booking websites have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of properties and vacation rentals available. Even when applying all the filters to sort the best available options, travelers are left with dozens of pages to browse. So, companies like Expedia, Booking, Airbnb, TripAdvisor, and many others use recommendation systems to personalize the search results and suggest destinations, accommodations, and activities with best-fitting properties on top of their offerings. Just like Netflix suggests the next movie for you to watch or Amazon shows the products you should add to your shopping cart, hospitality websites find you the perfect place for your stay. AI algorithms analyze vast amounts of data to rank hotels, vacation rentals, and flights based on user preferences, availability, price trends, and wish lists or the properties they stayed at before. This level of personalization ensures a more enjoyable and seamless travel experience and benefits both travelers who save time and find what they want more easily and businesses who can better serve and not lose their clients.
But this personalization doesn't end with smart suggestions only. Companies like Expedia and Airbnb have implemented machine learning techniques to automatically select and prioritize the most engaging images to grab the traveler's attention. Expedia has trained its ML model with human-rated photos, so now it autonomously evaluates and orders images, ensuring the most attractive ones appear first. Similarly, Airbnb utilizes artificial intelligence to automatically categorize photos into specific rooms and spaces to enhance guests' visual organization and improve booking decisions.
Sabre Travel AI bridges the gap between travelers wanting unique experiences and businesses needing to stay profitable. It offers a suite of AI and ML tools including Lodging AI and Sabre Red 360 that optimize hotel rankings and speed up bookings for agencies and suppliers, ensuring travelers get tailored options fast while businesses stay profitable.
It's a B2B tool that powers the industry, often behind the scenes of platforms like Expedia and Booking.com.
Demand Forecasting and Dynamic Pricing
AI analyzes historical data and external factors (e.g., weather, economic trends, and global events) to forecast travel trends, demand, and customer preferences. For instance, it can predict peak travel times, identify emerging destinations, and analyze booking patterns. It helps airlines, hotels, and travel agencies manage inventory and staffing more effectively and plan marketing strategies.
Besides, in the travel and hospitality industries, pricing often varies according to different factors, namely how soon the flight or check-in date is, whether it is the high or low season, and what prices the competitors set up. Of course, airlines, hotels, and tour operators can change their prices manually when they expect a surge or dip in demand, but the more flight directions, properties, and rooms, the harder it is to do it. AI helps in adjusting prices in real-time automatically based on demand, seasonality, competitor rates, and user behavior through dynamic pricing models. This approach helps maximize revenue while offering competitive rates to customers.
Lighthouse (formerly OTA Insight) is a data intelligence platform that helps hotels and short-term rentals analyze market trends, set prices, and manage revenue with real-time data. It serves over 70,000 hotels in 185 countries, working with big names like Radisson, Accor, Best Western, and IHG. It takes a ton of complicated information about the travel market, like how much other places are charging for rooms or what travelers are looking for, and turns it into simple, easy-to-read charts and reports. Similarly, Sysotel.ai also focuses on automated revenue and yield management solutions, helping hotels optimize pricing and maximize revenue through data-driven strategies. Their platform provides tools like an intelligent booking engine and reputation monitoring designed to enhance profitability and streamline operations.
Fraud Detection
AI provides not only extra opportunities for businesses but also helps detect and prevent fraudulent transactions, which is one of the most common problems for hospitality and travel business providers. For a human, it's extremely hard to distinguish a fraudulent transaction from a normal one, but machine learning can look at hundreds of attributes of each payment and pinpoint anomalies in a matter of seconds. If the system is wrong, the user must simply confirm the payment via an extra verification method. But if it's right, it helps secure payments and reduce chargeback risks for travel agencies and platforms in the tourism industry, protecting both businesses and travelers.
The travel and hospitality sector widely adopts AI for fraud detection. For instance, Booking.com utilizes AI to monitor booking behaviors in real time, promptly identifying and blocking fraudulent reservations. Airbnb uses ML to detect fraud, but it also has a technique for vetting guests and properties. After a deadly shooting occurred in one of the Airbnb properties used for a party, the company banned party houses and expanded its screening of high-risk reservations.
TrustDecision provides AI-driven fraud detection solutions specifically designed for the travel and airline industry. Their platform uses extensive data history and domain expertise to analyze fraudster behavior. It helps prevent financial losses, protect genuine customers, and improve satisfaction levels. Similarly, Fraud.net offers customizable and scalable fraud management solutions tailored for airlines, hotels, travel agencies, and other travel-related businesses. Their platform provides real-time AI-powered fraud detection, case management, and advanced analytics to help businesses effectively identify and prevent fraudulent transactions.
AI-Powered Smart Assistants, Concierge Services & Translation Services
For most customers who are seeking help, the speed with which they can get answers to their questions is critical. AI-based assistants and chatbots are available 24/7 to assist travelers with their queries. These tools enhance customer service by handling booking requests, answering inquiries, dealing with complaints, and even offering real-time updates anytime of the day. They can be configured to be multilingual, perform many simple tasks like luggage finding or discovering local attractions, booking restaurants, and providing language translation services.
For instance, Expedia Group's virtual assistant allows users to cancel flights, check hotel details (e.g., breakfast options or wheelchair accessibility), and book travel via a conversational interface. It integrates with ChatGPT and was enhanced with a plugin in 2023 for up-to-date pricing and availability. In hospitality, some brands have explored physical AI-powered concierges, such as Hilton's first robot concierge Connie, introduced in 2015. However, concierge services have come a long way since Hilton debuted Connie. While physical robots sparked initial excitement, the focus has shifted to sophisticated AI-driven solutions. RENAI by Renaissance rolled out in 2023 and expanded across 20+ properties by 2024, is an AI-powered virtual concierge service that pairs human expertise with AI to deliver tailored local recommendations via text or WhatsApp. Similarly, IHG One Rewards has upgraded its mobile app with AI-driven features to enhance travel planning experience for their guests.
Facial Recognition for Automated Check-In
While we are all used to screening out identity using our fingerprints and scanning our faces when looking at our phones, this facial recognition technology can also be used at airports and for hotel check-in, serving as passengers' and guests' passports and allowing for faster registrations and security screenings. This technology is not yet widely used around the world, but some airports, train stations, and hotels have already tested it. For instance, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in cooperation with KLM and Berlin Brandenburg Airport, has introduced facial recognition systems at boarding gates, allowing passengers to board flights by simply looking at a camera. Singapore's Changi Airport decided to go a step further and become the world's first to eliminate the need for passports. It has implemented automated checks using advanced biometric facial and iris recognition technology to verify travelers' identities. Similarly, Marriott Hotels in China have facial recognition kiosks for check-in, where guests can receive room keys after a quick scan.
Regula Face SDK is a biometric verification solution designed to authenticate individuals through facial recognition technology and ensure convenience and safety at every stage of the journey, from ticket booking to baggage claim. The SDK can integrate with check-in kiosks, mobile apps, and border control systems, working with existing airport infrastructure. It uses precise facial recognition algorithms to verify passengers in real time, preventing spoofing through photos or videos.
Sentiment Analysis
Travel is an emotional experience. When travelers return home, they bring impressions that can be both positive and negative. Negative experiences often become online reviews that can damage a travel business's reputation, break trust, and reduce bookings. Sentiment analysis is another natural language processing task that can help businesses understand the emotion behind such reviews. It allows hospitality and travel businesses to analyze thousands of reviews quickly and get concise insights into the areas that require improvement.
For hotels, sentiment analysis is both a powerful marketing tool and a way to monitor competition. The technology can identify prevailing opinions about properties and even rank guests' feelings about specific amenities. While guests benefit by finding top-rated hotels without reading every review, businesses gain an invaluable tool for reputation management and competitive analysis. Understanding how travelers feel helps businesses spot trends, figure out what customers want, and make better decisions - like when a destination discovers which attractions visitors love most through online comments, they can offer more of what people truly enjoy.
TrustYou is a reputation management platform that helps businesses in the hospitality industry aggregate and analyze guest feedback, manage online reviews, track reputation and compare with competitors. It is used by hotel chains like Accor to monitor guest sentiment across properties globally. Similarly, Revinate is a hospitality-focused platform that analyzes sentiment from guest reviews, surveys, and social media, offering detailed reports on emotions tied to specific amenities (e.g., staff, cleanliness, dining).
AI-Powered Virtual Tours
Virtual tours are transforming how travelers explore new destinations, especially for those who want to travel but cannot always do it. These virtual guides provide interactive and personalized virtual tours of hotels, landmarks, and attractions. Hundreds of recorded virtual tours are already available, allowing travelers to view the Iguazu Falls from the helicopter or walk along the Huangpu River in Shanghai. You can even visit the Louvre Museum without going out. Atlantis Dubai offers virtual hotel tours that attract guests' interest and lead to more bookings. Most of these tours can be experienced simply from users' phones or laptops, while a few can offer truly immersive experiences using VR headsets.
By leveraging AI, these guides can offer detailed historical context, interesting facts, and recommendations tailored to the user's preferences, past behavior, and real-time location, for instance, suggesting a quiet cafe in Barcelona based on the user's love for coffee shops.
As AI continues to evolve, virtual travel experiences will become more dynamic, interactive, and personalized, offering a new way to explore the world. Travel companies can also use virtual tours to create engaging marketing campaigns. For example, a virtual experience of a beach resort can give potential customers an immersive preview of the destination, encouraging them to book a trip. Of course, many experienced travelers claim that it is impossible to feel the atmosphere of a certain place without physical presence. But this is already a matter of personal perception.
BRINK Traveler platform offers both AR and VR experiences, allowing users to explore some of the world's most breathtaking locations. They offer photorealistic 3D environments of natural wonders, providing a sense of presence and scale akin to actual travel, all from the comfort of the user's home. BRINK Traveler has integrated AI features to enhance its virtual travel experiences. The platform offers an AI Travel Assistant that allows users to ask questions about the locations they're exploring and receive informative responses.
AI Benefits and Challenges for Travelers and Businesses
Implementing AI in travel and hospitality offers many benefits for businesses and travelers. For travelers, AI can deliver a personalized and seamless experience across all stages of travel, from planning to execution. This experience will include tailored recommendations that match individual tastes and budgets, which can simplify the often tedious aspects of planning and result in savings in time and effort.
For businesses, AI can lower operating costs and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by delivering memorable, personalized experiences, which in turn can increase revenue.
However, these benefits come with challenges that need to be addressed. One of the main concerns is data privacy. AI systems rely on collecting and analyzing large amounts of personal data, which raises questions about how this information will be stored, used, and protected. Companies must ensure that robust security measures are in place and that they are transparent about their data practices to maintain customer trust.
Another challenge is ensuring that AI systems are fair and impartial. If AI algorithms are not designed properly, they can result in unfair treatment of certain groups of customers. For example, a booking system may unintentionally favor certain demographics over others. It is vital for companies to regularly test and improve their AI models to prevent such issues.
Additionally, while AI can perform many tasks, there are still situations where human intervention is needed. Finding the right balance between automation and human interaction is essential to providing the best service.
Conclusion
AI is a powerful tool that makes travel even more accessible, enjoyable, and memorable. No more endless browsing for travelers. Expedia's AI will pick them the perfect hotel, a virtual tour of Atlantis Dubai will seal the deal, and a smart assistant will book it all while they sip their coffee. No exhaustive repetitive work for businesses: tools like Lighthouse will help them manage room prices, TrustDecision will keep tourists' payment safe, and AI chatbots answer clients' inquiries around the clock. Advances in machine learning, natural language processing, and data analytics open up literally unlimited possibilities for even more personalized and efficient travel experiences with trips that adapt to tourists' moods and destinations that greet guests by their faces.
