2026 › February

AI in travel is no longer new, but it isn’t settled either. Companies are scaling real use cases while discovering, in real time, where speed, trust, and control start to collide.

Comcast and Adara have a new bid to give travel marketers what TV has rarely offered: a credible line from ad exposure to bookings and revenue. Now it’s time to see if it can scale.

The world is no longer expecting Indian travelers to adapt during their travels, and is ready to cater to them instead.

Artificial intelligence isn’t charging hotels commissions yet. But lawyers at Marriott and Hilton are already preparing for a world where AI platforms could become the next powerful gatekeepers in travel distribution.

Marriott is the first major hotel to publicly discuss its work with Google on its upcoming agentic AI travel booking tool. But it raises more questions than answers — especially whether AI Mode offers in-chat checkout for partners and link-outs for everyone else.

The decline in visitors from Canada that hit the U.S. travel industry hard in 2025 shows no signs of slowing down.

New Frontier CEO James Dempsey wants to take the carrier back to its low-cost roots, saying that saving on costs will lead Frontier to a more sustainable path.

Hilton’s muted growth in revenue per available room last year primarily reflected an economic strain on mid-market travelers. Yet CEO Chris Nassetta is optimistic about what he's seeing in the overall bookings data for 2026.

The Classic Vacations acquisition hands TBO a new distribution footprint. It brings higher-value bookings and deep industry relationships. But that also means that TBO’s numbers will look messy until the integration is done.

Two startups from two different worlds are quietly rewriting the rules of who controls the travel transaction, with fascinating implications.