AI is making travel planning faster, but not necessarily easier. As information becomes abundant, travelers increasingly need confidence, judgment, and trusted guidance. The future isn't AI replacing travel advisors. It's AI handling the research while humans focus on the decisions that matter.

Every generation of travel technology has been announced as the end of the travel agent. Online travel agencies in the late 1990s. Metasearch in the 2000s. Mobile in the 2010s. Now large language models that can write you a fourteen-day Japan itinerary in seconds.

But the data from 2026 tells a more interesting story. Chase Travel surveyed more than 4,000 travelers between 18 and 60 and found that 60% of Gen Z and Millennial travelers say they want to use a travel advisor. Forty-four percent also say they feel more overwhelmed planning trips than they used to. That caught my attention.

Younger, digitally native travelers now have access to more travel information and better planning tools than any generation before them. Yet many still want a human advisor. That sounds contradictory until you look at what AI actually changed.

The bottleneck moved

Trip planning has always had two very different costs.

The first is the information cost: finding out what exists. Which neighborhoods are worth staying in? Which hotels fit your budget? How long does it take to get from the airport? Which destinations make sense in a particular season?

The second is the decision cost: actually choosing. That sounds simple, but it isn't. Once you've narrowed your options down to five great hotels, which one should you book? Is the more expensive one actually worth it? Are the reviews telling you something important that the photos don't? Will your family enjoy the location? What happens if you make the wrong call?

Technology has spent decades attacking the information problem, and it has been remarkably successful. Today, information about travel is abundant. Generative AI has pushed that even further. You can ask an AI model to build a two-week itinerary for Japan, compare neighborhoods in Paris, or suggest hotels in Rome and get a reasonable first draft almost instantly.

The cost of generating a plan is approaching zero. But the cost of trusting that plan hasn't gone away. In some ways, it has gone up. Every new option creates another decision. Every recommendation creates another question. And when you're spending $10,000, $20,000 or more on a trip you've been planning for months, “probably right” isn't always good enough.

Barry Schwartz wrote about this years ago with the paradox of choice. Travel may be one of the best examples of it because the stakes are unusually high: expensive purchases, limited vacation time, emotional expectations and no opportunity to test the experience before you buy it.

AI solved the information problem. It didn't solve the confidence problem. That's where things get interesting.

What AI genuinely automated

I think it's important to be honest about what AI is already doing extremely well. A lot of the traditional travel advisor workflow is becoming automated.

• Destination research. Comparing regions, seasonality, rough routing and typical costs can be done quickly.
• Supplier and property discovery. AI can surface hotels and experiences that fit a client's basic criteria.
• First-draft itineraries. Give a model the right inputs and it can produce a surprisingly good day-by-day plan.
• Proposal assembly. Turning options into a clean, client-ready document is exactly the kind of repetitive work software should handle.

Fora's Via is going after many of these workflows, including destination research, supplier knowledge, itineraries and proposal generation. That's not a bad thing for travel advisors. In fact, I think it's exactly the right direction. The uncomfortable part is what it means for advisors whose primary value was knowing more information than their clients.

That advantage is disappearing. If the value proposition is simply, “I know which hotels exist and I can put together an itinerary,” AI is going to compete with you. But that's not the whole job.

Where the human advantage still matters

There are parts of travel advising that are much harder to automate because the value isn't sitting in a database.

Access

A Virtuoso-affiliated advisor can offer clients benefits at participating properties that aren't necessarily available when booking directly, such as daily breakfast, room upgrades subject to availability, late checkout and property credits. That value doesn't come from better search. It comes from relationships and negotiated access. An AI model can tell you which hotel participates in a preferred program. It can't manufacture the relationship that makes those benefits possible.

Accountability

This one is easy to underestimate until something goes wrong. A flight gets canceled. A hotel closes unexpectedly. A connection falls apart. A passport gets stolen in Lisbon. In those moments, the question isn't “What does the internet recommend?” It's “Who is going to help me fix this?” AI can explain your options. An advisor can take ownership of the problem. For high-consideration purchases, accountability is part of the product.

Judgment

Two five-star hotels can look almost identical online. The difference might be that one gets noisy on weekends because of weddings. One has a beautiful pool but a terrible setup for families. One is technically closer to the attractions but requires a transfer that makes every morning painful. Those details don't always show up in reviews. They often live in someone's experience. That's a different kind of knowledge.

Asking the questions clients don't know to ask

This may be the most underrated part of the job. A client says they want a relaxing vacation. What does that actually mean Maybe they want a quiet beach. Maybe they want a resort where their teenagers can disappear for six hours a day. Maybe they don't actually want “relaxing” at all. They want to come home feeling like they did something completely different from their normal life.

The best advisors aren't just collecting preferences. They're uncovering them. AI is getting much better at asking questions. But there is still a difference between asking a question and understanding what someone really means. That's why I don't think the future is AI versus humans. I think it's AI handling the information layer while humans become more valuable at the moments where access, judgment, trust and accountability matter.

Look at what the industry is actually building

The most interesting signal isn't what travel companies say about AI. It's what they're spending money to build. Fora is a good example. Its Via platform is designed to give travel advisors AI assistance rather than remove the advisor from the transaction. The idea is straightforward: automate the work that consumes an advisor's time so the advisor can spend more time with clients.

Virtuoso is another interesting example. Its 2026 Luxe Report, based on responses from more than 2,400 advisors across more than 50 countries, points to affluent travelers continuing to value experiences and the guidance that comes with them.

These are different businesses with different models, but there's a common thread. The technology is moving into the workflow. The human relationship isn't going away. That distinction matters. The question isn't whether AI will replace every travel advisor. The better question is: Which parts of the advisor's job are actually worth automating?

I think the middle gets squeezed

Here's where I think the travel advisor market gets more interesting. If AI can do research and itinerary assembly for free, some travelers simply won't pay someone to do those things anymore. That's not necessarily a problem. If a traveler only needed someone to search hotels and assemble a seven-day itinerary, there wasn't much durable value there to begin with.

At the other end, advisors with genuine relationships, specialized expertise, access and strong judgment can become more valuable. They can use AI to remove hours of administrative work and put that time back into client relationships. The vulnerable group sits in the middle. These are advisors whose primary value was taking publicly available information, organizing it and presenting it to the client. That was a legitimate job for a long time. AI is changing the economics of it.

And I think we'll see more differentiation around specialization, credentials, supplier relationships and demonstrated expertise as a result. When everyone can produce a plausible itinerary, the itinerary itself becomes a weaker signal of quality. The question becomes: Why should I trust you with my trip? That's a much harder question to automate.

What I would build

I've spent much of my career building growth systems that automate work people used to do manually. One pattern shows up again and again: automation doesn't eliminate the need for judgment. It changes where judgment matters.

If I were building in travel today, I'd focus on three things.

1) Automate the research layer aggressively.

Don't pretend that destination research is a moat. It won't be. The cost of generating good recommendations will continue to fall. Use AI as infrastructure.

2) Measure confidence, not engagement.

Travel products can easily get obsessed with searches, clicks, saved hotels and time spent exploring. But more exploration isn't necessarily better. If someone spends three hours comparing 47 hotels and still doesn't book anything, the product hasn't necessarily created value. I'd care much more about the distance between “I'm thinking about going somewhere” and “I know what I want to do.”

3) Design for the handoff.

I don't think the winning travel experience will be completely autonomous. I also don't think it will be completely human. The interesting opportunity is somewhere in between. AI can help a traveler discover what they want, ask the questions they haven't thought about and organize their preferences. Then, at the moment when the decision becomes important, it can hand that context to a human who knows how to act on it. That handoff could become one of the most important experiences in travel.

The bigger lesson

Travel is just one example of a much broader shift we're going to see as AI gets better. When technology makes producing an answer nearly free, the answer itself becomes less valuable.

The scarce thing becomes everything around the answer: context, judgment, trust, access and the confidence to act. That's why I don't think better AI planning tools necessarily mean fewer travel advisors. They may mean fewer advisors who are primarily selling information.

And more advisors who are selling something much harder to automate: confidence that you're making the right decision.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will AI replace travel advisors?

Probably not entirely. AI is increasingly capable of handling research, recommendations, and itinerary creation, but travel advisors provide judgment, relationships, access, and accountability that software can't fully replicate.

Are travel advisors still relevant in 2026?

Yes. As AI makes travel information easier to access, the value of trusted expertise and decision-making can increase, particularly for complex, expensive, or highly personalized trips.

What can AI do better than a travel advisor?

AI can quickly research destinations, compare options, generate itineraries, summarize information, and automate repetitive administrative work.

What can travel advisors do that AI can't?

Human advisors can provide personal judgment, supplier relationships, negotiated access, accountability, and nuanced understanding of a client's preferences and priorities.

Why would travelers use a human advisor if AI can plan a trip?

Because planning isn't the same as deciding. AI can generate options, but travelers may still want someone they trust to help them choose, manage complexity, and step in when something goes wrong.

How will AI change the travel advisor industry?

AI will likely automate more of the research and administrative work while increasing the importance of specialization, relationships, judgment, and client trust.