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Agentic AI could upend the travel industry. Travel and hospitality organizations should explore how agentic can help catalyze AI’s transformative potential.
The travel industry has been no stranger to tech upheaval. Tectonic shifts over the past several decades have changed the ways that we plan, book, and experience our journeys— while also disrupting the companies that help bring those journeys to life.
While some tech innovations create clear and capturable opportunities for travel industry growth, others offer tantalizing potential that bumps up against real-world challenges. With the arrival of each successive tech trend, industry stakeholders are forced to ask some questions: Will this flashy invention bring delight to travelers and deliver ROI to travel companies? Or will it burn time, money, and effort while generating little in the way of concrete results?
Consider gen AI, a heralded technology that has garnered considerable attention from investors, executives, and boardrooms. Within two months of ChatGPT ushering gen AI into the public consciousness in 2022, the software had already attracted more than 100 million users. But a few years later, gen AI’s significance for most corporations remains undetermined: McKinsey research indicates that 78 percent of companies report using gen AI, yet more than 80 percent of companies have seen no material contribution to earnings from their gen AI initiatives. This suggests that there continues to be great enthusiasm about what the technology can do and great uncertainty about how best to extract value from it.
Agentic AI is the buzziest new tech tool on the scene, and it offers thrilling capabilities. While gen AI mostly functions as an adviser by providing well-informed counsel, agentic AI can function more as a direct report by accomplishing tasks. It has the agency to make decisions and then autonomously act on them. It can identify problems, find fixes, and apply solutions all on its own. It’s smart and tireless, a self-starter and go-getter, requiring only limited human oversight. Perhaps most important: Agentic AI can serve as an interface that could help companies harness the full power of AI.
Agentic systems could hold the keys that at last unlock the AI-fueled productivity and efficiency gains that have so far proved elusive for many organizations. Agentic AI makes possible true process reinvention, not just task automation, by embedding agents across complex vertical workflows and function-specific use cases. It can boost speed, personalization, and resilience while opening new revenue streams.
Given the tremendous potential of agentic AI, travel and hospitality companies are beginning to experiment with it. But to realize the technology’s full impact, organizations will need to create new AI strategies, governance, and infrastructure—altering core business processes and ways of working. Companies will have to shift from scattered pilots to enterprise-scale transformations architected by cross-functional teams and championed by deeply engaged C-suite leaders.
What does the travel industry need to know as it ponders going all in on agentic AI? How suited is this technology to the unique dynamics of the travel sector? Which consumer- and non-consumer-facing use cases could offer travel and hospitality players the most ROI in the near term and over the long haul? How can organizations integrate agentic AI in ways that will allow it to deliver maximum benefit to companies, workers, and consumers?
This report, a collaboration between McKinsey and Skift, examines the potential for agentic AI to unleash the full value of AI in travel. Based on analysis incorporating surveys of 1,002 travelers and 86 travel executives, the report traces the digital prologue that brought the industry to this moment, details agentic AI’s transformative capabilities for both travelers and travel companies, and provides a blueprint for travel and hospitality leaders who are eager to accelerate their organizations’ agentic AI initiatives
Agentic AI could upend the travel industry. Travel and hospitality organizations should explore how agentic can help catalyze AI’s transformative potential.
The travel industry has been no stranger to tech upheaval. Tectonic shifts over the past several decades have changed the ways that we plan, book, and experience our journeys— while also disrupting the companies that help bring those journeys to life.
While some tech innovations create clear and capturable opportunities for travel industry growth, others offer tantalizing potential that bumps up against real-world challenges. With the arrival of each successive tech trend, industry stakeholders are forced to ask some questions: Will this flashy invention bring delight to travelers and deliver ROI to travel companies? Or will it burn time, money, and effort while generating little in the way of concrete results?
Consider gen AI, a heralded technology that has garnered considerable attention from investors, executives, and boardrooms. Within two months of ChatGPT ushering gen AI into the public consciousness in 2022, the software had already attracted more than 100 million users. But a few years later, gen AI’s significance for most corporations remains undetermined: McKinsey research indicates that 78 percent of companies report using gen AI, yet more than 80 percent of companies have seen no material contribution to earnings from their gen AI initiatives. This suggests that there continues to be great enthusiasm about what the technology can do and great uncertainty about how best to extract value from it.
Agentic AI is the buzziest new tech tool on the scene, and it offers thrilling capabilities. While gen AI mostly functions as an adviser by providing well-informed counsel, agentic AI can function more as a direct report by accomplishing tasks. It has the agency to make decisions and then autonomously act on them. It can identify problems, find fixes, and apply solutions all on its own. It’s smart and tireless, a self-starter and go-getter, requiring only limited human oversight. Perhaps most important: Agentic AI can serve as an interface that could help companies harness the full power of AI.
Agentic systems could hold the keys that at last unlock the AI-fueled productivity and efficiency gains that have so far proved elusive for many organizations. Agentic AI makes possible true process reinvention, not just task automation, by embedding agents across complex vertical workflows and function-specific use cases. It can boost speed, personalization, and resilience while opening new revenue streams.
Given the tremendous potential of agentic AI, travel and hospitality companies are beginning to experiment with it. But to realize the technology’s full impact, organizations will need to create new AI strategies, governance, and infrastructure—altering core business processes and ways of working. Companies will have to shift from scattered pilots to enterprise-scale transformations architected by cross-functional teams and championed by deeply engaged C-suite leaders.
What does the travel industry need to know as it ponders going all in on agentic AI? How suited is this technology to the unique dynamics of the travel sector? Which consumer- and non-consumer-facing use cases could offer travel and hospitality players the most ROI in the near term and over the long haul? How can organizations integrate agentic AI in ways that will allow it to deliver maximum benefit to companies, workers, and consumers?
This report, a collaboration between McKinsey and Skift, examines the potential for agentic AI to unleash the full value of AI in travel. Based on analysis incorporating surveys of 1,002 travelers and 86 travel executives, the report traces the digital prologue that brought the industry to this moment, details agentic AI’s transformative capabilities for both travelers and travel companies, and provides a blueprint for travel and hospitality leaders who are eager to accelerate their organizations’ agentic AI initiatives
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