Google and OpenAI have turned AI chatbots into a first stop for trip planning, and travel brands that are absent from those answers lose the booking before a search engine ever gets involved. Roughly 40% of travelers worldwide have already used an AI tool to plan a trip, according to a Phocuswire report citing Accenture research, with adoption rising fastest among travelers under 35.
Which AI Platforms Are Travelers Actually Using to Plan Trips?
Travelers are planning trips inside general-purpose AI assistants, not standalone travel apps. Google rolled out an AI-powered itinerary builder called Canvas inside AI Mode Labs for US desktop search users, letting travelers generate a full trip plan without leaving the search results page, TechCrunch reported in May 2026. In the same period, OpenAI connected ChatGPT directly to Booking.com, Expedia, and Uber, so a traveler can search hotels, flights, and rides inside a single chat rather than opening separate sites.
Why it works: When discovery and comparison both happen inside the chat interface, the AI assistant becomes the shortlist. A hotel or airline that is never mentioned in that conversation is never on the traveler's list to click through to, regardless of how well the brand's own site ranks in Google (TechCrunch, May 2026).
Do Travelers Actually Trust AI Trip Planning Tools?
Travelers are split on AI trip planning, and the split runs along experience, not just age. McKinsey found that 84% of travelers who had actually used generative AI for a trip said it improved their experience. YouGov, surveying a broader population that included people who had never tried it, found only 30% of US travelers were comfortable using AI travel tools in 2025, with 40% saying they were not comfortable, a figure unchanged from the prior year, according to a March 2026 comparison published by MonkeyTravel.
Why it works: The gap between the 84% satisfaction rate among users and the 30% comfort rate among the general population means most of the resistance is a first-use problem, not a lasting preference against AI. Travel brands that give first-time users a low-risk way to try AI-assisted planning, such as a pre-filled sample itinerary, convert skepticism faster than brands that wait for travelers to seek the tool out on their own (McKinsey, cited by MonkeyTravel, March 2026).
What Does This Mean for Travel and Hospitality Marketing?
A hotel, airline, or destination now needs to be citable inside an AI answer, not just rankable in Google. That means structured, factual content about rates, amenities, cancellation policy, and location that an AI system can read and repeat accurately, plus the third-party coverage and reviews that give the AI model a reason to trust the brand's own claims. 5W's Travel AI Visibility Index measures how individual travel and hospitality brands are cited across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews against named competitors.
Travel brands that wait for AI trip planning to plateau are waiting for a plateau that is not coming. 5WPR's travel and hospitality PR team builds the earned media and structured content that gets a brand named inside these conversations, not just found after them.
5W runs AI Search (GEO) programs for brands across consumer, B2B, financial services, healthcare, and technology, building the machine-readable footprint that gets brands cited, not just ranked. Learn more at https://www.5wpr.com/practice/geo-optimization.cfm.
