Advertisement
PostMag
Life.Culture.Discovery.
Tourism
PostMagTravel

AI travel agents transforming industry as Expedia, Booking.com play catch-up

A host of tourism tech firms are offering holidays planned by artificial intelligence in a challenge to established market players

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Want to pack your bags and head off on holiday? Then a host of new start-ups are entering the market and using AI to help travellers book and plan their vacations. Photo: Shutterstock
Agence France-Presse
Dreaming of going on holiday but not sure where to go? Increasingly the answer – and how to get there, what to eat and where to stay – will come from advanced AI, rather than your old-school travel agent.
Start-up Mindtrip’s generative AI can craft a tailor-made itinerary in seconds from a simple text prompt, with suggestions for hotels, restaurants, sightseeing and activities.
New travel-focused start-ups like Mindtrip, Vacay and Navan are using AI to muscle in on the tourism market. Photo: Shutterstock
New travel-focused start-ups like Mindtrip, Vacay and Navan are using AI to muscle in on the tourism market. Photo: Shutterstock

After picking out their favourite options, travellers can have every step of the trip reserved in the app – or on partner websites that open directly to the relevant page.

Advertisement

“Instead of going to Google and you do one search, and then you do another … you can actually just get into everything,” Mindtrip chief executive Andy Moss said.

Similar tourism-focused start-ups include Vacay, while others like Navan are taking on the business travel market.

Advertisement
Generative AI heavyweights like Google with its Gemini chatbot, OpenAI with Operator or Anthropic with Claude are also heavily marketing holiday planning.
Advertisement
Select Voice
Choose your listening speed
Get through articles 2x faster
1.25x
250 WPM
Slow
Average
Fast
1.25x