The Travel Funnel Collapses: Inside the Rise of AI Agents | News
For twenty years, the structure of the travel industry remained remarkably stable.
Travelers searched, compared, booked and experienced in a linear funnel shaped by search engines, OTAs, metasearch platforms and increasingly sophisticated digital marketing systems.
But according to leaders in the Agentic AI series titled “The Rise of Agentic AI in 2026” by Dan Christian, founder and host of the Travel Trends Podcast, that structure is now starting to crumble.
The series brings together leading voices from AI, travel technology and hospitality to explore how autonomous AI systems are reshaping the industry.
Participants include industry experts Gilad Berenstein of Brook Bay Capital, Tahnee Perry, AI Expert Consultant, Christian Watts of Magpie, Ben Manzi, Co-founder and COO of Maya, Michelle Denogean, CMO of Mindtrip, Brianna MacNeil, Director of AI Products, TravelAI, Jeff Kischuk, CEO of Tripian, Jessie Fischer, Founder and CEO of GuestOS, and Marius Nigond, CEO of iWander.
What’s emerging instead is not just a wave of travel technology, but a fundamentally different architecture for the way travel decisions are made: one in which AI agents sit between intention and action, bringing discovery, planning, booking and personalization into a single intelligent layer.
Industry experts increasingly describe this shift as the shift from tools to agents – from systems that respond to systems that act.
“We are in the agent age of AI,” says Gilad Berenstein. “AI agents are deployed worldwide to assist with complex tasks.”
Unlike generative AI, which focuses on producing content, agentic AI systems are designed to perform actions autonomously: booking, recommending, resolving queries, managing workflows, and dynamically adapting to context in real time.
That shift, leaders argue, is not incremental. It’s structural.
From searching to delegating
One of the most obvious disruptions happens at the very top of the travel funnel: discovery.
For decades, travelers have actively searched for inspiration, compared options and manually curated itineraries. That behavior is now starting to shift toward conversational interfaces and AI-mediated decision making.
“It’s almost unfathomable to go back to the way we used to search, peck and hunt,” says Michelle Denogean.
Instead of scrolling through dozens of tabs or platforms, travelers are increasingly delegating decisions to AI systems capable of understanding intent, constraints, and context.
This has profound implications for visibility and marketing.
“You have to have a plan for that, because if you don’t, you’re not going to show up,” Tahnee Perry warned, referring to the rise of AI-driven discovery systems.
In this emerging model, traditional SEO and paid acquisition strategies may no longer be enough. Instead, brands will need to optimize for AI interpretation, structured data, contextual relevance, and machine-readable content that can be surfaced by autonomous agents.
The collapse of operational layers
As exploration is transformed, the operational backbone of travel is also undergoing a radical redesign.
Agentic AI systems are increasingly capable of performing repetitive, low-value, high-volume tasks that once required large teams and complex workflows.
“Low judgment work, such as general query requests, was very time-consuming for companies and today that has been completely eliminated,” said Ben Manzi.
This shift not only increases efficiency, but also fundamentally changes the way travel companies are structured.
“What you’re seeing is AI moving from novelty to usefulness,” says Jeff Kischuk.
He believes the real transformation lies in data infrastructure, the ability to connect fragmented travel information to systems that allow AI agents to make relevant, real-time decisions.
“Do they have the right context? Do they have the right relevance?” he asked.
That focus on context will be critical to how AI systems will work across the travel ecosystem.
Human roles are not disappearing, they are being redefined
Despite concerns about automation, industry leaders consistently emphasize that the human role in the travel industry is not disappearing, but evolving.
“What makes them special as a travel advisor is themselves, their experience and their personality,” said Tahnee Perry. “The profession of travel advisor is safe.”
Rather than replacing human expertise, AI is increasingly seen as a force that removes operational friction, making human judgment, taste and emotional intelligence more valuable.
“AI is excellent at performing repetitive, mundane tasks, allowing employees to focus on experiences,” said Jesse Fischer
This realignment of efforts, from administrative work to experiential value creation, is expected to redefine roles within the hospitality, consulting and travel industries.
“We need to be honest about what we are better at and when we should leave it to the chatbot,” says Christian Watts.
The rise of context as a competitive advantage
As the traditional funnel collapses, a new competitive dimension emerges: context.
Travel decisions are increasingly expected to be dynamic, adaptive and personalized in real time – and not static or predefined.
“Context is actually almost more important than data points about the customer,” says Marius Nigond
This shift marks a transition from traditional personalization – based on historical behavior – to continuous personalization driven by real-time signals such as location, intent, behavior and environment.
“This next era of personalization… will lead to better trips for travelers and more value for travel sellers,” said Brianna McNeil.
In this model, AI systems not only recommend experiences, but continuously adapt them.
A new competitive landscape
Perhaps the most disruptive implication of the agentic shift is the way it reshapes competition itself.
As AI tools become more accessible, the historic advantages of scale, large teams, budgets, and infrastructure begin to erode.
“This is the golden age for small and medium-sized businesses,” says Tahnee Perry.
At the same time, the ability to build AI-powered systems is becoming faster and cheaper than ever before.
But distribution remains a crucial challenge.
“Just because you can build something great doesn’t mean you can get distribution from it,” warned Christian Watts.
This tension, between democratized creation and still centralized distribution, could define the next phase of competition in the travel industry.
From funnel to intelligence layer
Taken together, these shifts point to a broader structural conclusion emerging from the Agentic AI discussions: the journey funnel is no longer linear. It is being replaced by an intelligent, adaptive system in which AI agents continuously interpret intentions, retrieve context, evaluate options, and perform actions on behalf of users.
Discovering, planning, booking and personalizing are no longer separate phases. They break down into a single decision layer.
And in that system, the winners may not be the companies with the biggest budgets or the strongest SEO strategies, but those that are most compatible with the way AI understands, interprets, and acts on travel intent.
As the industry moves deeper into the age of agents, one question increasingly defines the competitive landscape: not who owns the customer journey, but who is interpreted by the machine.
