A new travel operating system is taking shape at Phocuswright Europe | News
Phocuswright Europe opened this week with a clear message: AI is no longer an afterthought, it is the center of gravity of the next era of travel. On the main stage, speakers warned that the industry’s economics, interfaces and power structures are changing faster than many companies can adapt.
OAG CEO says Travel’s next operating system will be built on ‘trusted intelligence’
Filip Filipov, CEO of OAG, sharply warned that the travel industry is heading for the biggest interface shift since the rise of online booking. Search boxes, filters and price-driven comparisons – the model that has defined digital travel for nearly three decades – are no longer suitable for an AI-powered world, he said.
Filipov traced the evolution of personal agents into the web and mobile era, each reshaping consumer behavior. AI, he argued, represents a break from that pattern because “the traveler becomes the interface.” Instead of searching, travelers will rely on agentic systems that understand identity, preferences and context.
The challenge is that the industry’s infrastructure is still being built with ‘cheapest first’ in mind. GDSs, reservation systems and pricing logic all assume a search-driven world. Filipov warned that look-to-book ratios in an agentic environment could reach a million to one, making the current backend architecture untenable.
He said the next operating system for travel will be defined by trusted context: a shared, real-time data layer that allows an AI agent to continuously manage a trip, from planning to disruption. “The best interface becomes invisible,” he said. When asked who will lose power first, he said: “The big four agencies will feel it first.”
Data from Phocuswright shows that AI adoption is accelerating as the productivity gap widens
New research presented on the main stage shows that AI adoption among travelers and travel companies is increasing at record speed, creating a widening productivity gap that will define the next phase of the industry.
Mike Coletta from Phocuswright said that more than a third of European travelers are now using AI to plan their trips, up from single figures two years ago. In the US, usage has reached 56 percent. “This is the fastest behavioral change we have ever measured,” he said. Despite this surge, trust remains low, with travelers still preferring friends, family and human agents.
On the business side, only 12 percent of travel companies felt ready for AI last year, and only 6 percent were using agentic AI at scale. Coletta estimates that this number is now closer to 17 percent, but most companies are still in the early stages of their transformation.
He highlighted the economic implications: AI-native companies are already showing much higher revenue per employee, while token costs continue to fall sharply. “The winners will not be the companies that cut back on labor,” he said. “They will be the ones using AI to do a hundred times more work.”
Coletta concluded: AI advantage equals demand capture multiplied by operating leverage multiplied by trust velocity.
Founders and investors say AI is reshaping travel startups, but trust and results matter most
The Day 1 founder and investor panel painted a clear picture of the travel startup landscape being reshaped by AI, but not defined by it. The foundations of trust, workflow integration and measurable results remain decisive.
The panel included Leyla Allahverdiyeva (Nuitée), Callum McPherson (Obvlo) and Roger Sharp (Web Travel Group / North Ridge Partners). McPherson argued that AI has eroded software as a defensible moat. “Customers don’t buy AI,” he said. “They buy results.” He said the companies that will win will be those that are deeply embedded in customers’ workflows.
Allahverdiyeva emphasized that infrastructure players succeed when they become part of a partner’s ecosystem, rather than a supplier. She said Nuitée’s growth comes from enabling direct connectivity and cutting out middlemen, not from chasing AI hype.
Sharp described a divided investment climate: private capital is flowing into groundbreaking AI, while public markets remain highly sensitive to perceived disruption. Even strong travel companies, he noted, could see their valuations fall sharply if investors fear they are exposed to AI-driven shifts.
Despite predictions of disintermediation, the panel agreed that the middle layers will continue to exist, but in new forms. LinkedIn data shows that the number of people with “travel agent” in their title has increased by 25 percent. This underlines that there is still a demand for human expertise.
