San Diego, with its unmistakable sunshine and reliably upbeat disposition, proved an unexpectedly fitting stage for a debate that left more than 600 global travel leaders leaning forward in their chairs at The Phocuswright Conference 2025. Despite the Californian warmth, the industry mood swung between optimism and existential uncertainty, and perhaps that’s the clearest sign that the next era of travel isn’t just arriving. It’s already knocking loudly on the departure gate.
What emerged across the conference’s opening day was a shared realisation: AI is no longer the future of travel – it is the present, reshaping everything from bookings to loyalty, payments and even how we define trust. Yet, amid the fanfare of automation, clever algorithms and new-shiny-everything, there was also a gentle but persistent reminder: travellers still want something profoundly old-fashioned, connection, honesty and the reassurance of human judgement.
In other words, the more futuristic travel becomes, the more we seem to crave something that feels comfortingly familiar.
“OTAs are becoming banks”: Agoda CEO plants the flag
The conference warmed up early thanks to Agoda CEO Omri Morgenshtern, who delivered a statement bold enough to cut through even the thickest corporate keynote fog.
“OTAs… have banks that are accessing debt and accessing travel… and I think it’s only going to grow worldwide,” he said in conversation with Web in Travel’s Siew Hoon Yeoh.
For years, online travel agencies leaned heavily on marketing budgets, price-matching and endless UX redesigns to outmanoeuvre rivals. Now, according to Morgenshtern, the true battleground isn’t choice, it’s financial capability. Travel, after all, remains one of the most significant discretionary spends for most households, and OTAs, with their vast troves of customer data, are ideally placed to slide into the fintech lane with loans, savings tools and foreign-exchange products.
He credited Agoda’s culture for enabling this shift:
“I’m really lucky… that we’re getting not only the support to grow and invest… but also to stay entrepreneurship and an engineering element.”
Consider it the corporate equivalent of keeping the spirit of the garage start-up alive, albeit with far better coffee.
TikTok, Reddit and YouTube push back: “67% want human recommendations”
If Morgenshtern sketched the industry’s new money map, the major social platforms drew the emotional one.
A rapid-fire panel with Reddit, TikTok, YouTube and Google tackled the uneasy dance between AI-generated content and the authentic traveller storytelling consumers still trust.
Eric DeLange of Reddit noted the rise of “Reddit-appended searches,” the modern traveller’s version of asking a mate at the pub. Add “Reddit” to a Google query and, suddenly, you’re handed real experiences from real people — bumps, blisters, dodgy hostels and all.
TikTok’s David Hopkins revealed the data point that stole the session:
“67% of our users say the most important recommendation they’ll get from travel is from a fellow traveller.”
If AI wants to create travel inspiration, it seems it needs to start by sounding distinctly less like AI. And YouTube’s Travis Katz reminded the room of the conversion power of creators, two-thirds of travellers watch videos before booking, and 95% of the top travel channels are run by independent storytellers with no corporate script in sight.
Authenticity, it seems, still hasn’t gone out of fashion.
“The next OTA will look like a credit card company”: Loyalty gets a makeover.
If anyone thought loyalty was an outdated relic of the 1990s, Chase Travel CEO Jason Wynn politely disagreed.
“The next OTA will look like a good credit card company with a great loyalty program called Ultimate Rewards,” he predicted.
Banks, not travel operators, may soon wield the real power. After all, they already own the customer relationship — not just at booking, but every time a card is tapped, dipped or waved.
Wynn said Chase is pouring investment into curated experiences, from Holi festival journeys to a St. Moritz adventure co-hosted with Shaun White. The target markets? Gen Z and millennials, who now make up 65% of new Chase cardholders and increasingly view loyalty points as a lifestyle currency, not a flight benefit.
Hopper’s Dakota Smith added fuel to that fire, revealing that a remarkable 90% of Hopper’s revenue now comes not from selling travel, but from Hopper Technology Solutions, which powers giants like Air Canada and Nubank.
Meanwhile, iSeatz CEO Kenneth Purcell reminded the room that the pipes of travel, the unglamorous infrastructure behind loyalty booking, have been quietly running behind brands like Amex Travel for years.
Loyalty research exposes an inconvenient truth: “Most travellers cheat”
Phocuswright’s own Madeline List brought data that had everyone shifting in their seats.
While 62% of US leisure travellers redeemed points on their most recent trip, 84% admitted to “gaming” loyalty schemes and the vast majority cheerfully confessed to “cheating” on their favourite brand.
Brand exclusivity, it appears, lasts only as long as the next irresistible offer.
List’s warning was blunt:
“Loyalty is not the product of an interaction with a program, but rather the totality of all brand interactions over the customer lifetime.”
In other words, you can’t bribe travellers into love. You have to earn it repeatedly.
“We’ve taken the joy out of hospitality”: Hoteliers face a harsh wake-up call.
The hospitality panel proved the most soul-searching of the day, tackling a question many travellers have been silently muttering for years: has modern hotel tech made stays better… or simply more complicated?
CitizenM CEO Leonard de Jong didn’t sugarcoat it:
“We’ve taken a lot of joy out of hospitality… by being on the back foot on the technology side.”
Former Peregrine Hospitality CCO Kristie Goshow challenged operators to move beyond thinking of themselves as room providers:
“If anything and everything is inventory to be sold, and anywhere and everywhere is point of sale… then the technology providers need to find solutions that support that.”
Cloudbeds CEO Adam Harris looked ahead, predicting the “re-democratisation” of hotel distribution as AI enables direct relationships:
“In five years, we will not be interacting with websites. It will be interacting with brands.”
And Accor Group Deputy CEO Jean-Jacques Morin tried to calm any AI-induced existential panic with a reminder:
“It’s not so much artificial intelligence, then it is augmented intelligence… just like we go for augmented hospitality.”
Data Appeal launches agentic destination management tool
Closing out the day, The Data Appeal Company, part of Almawave Group, unveiled a tool that promises to drag destination management organisations out of the dashboard dark ages.
The new agentic platform swaps static dashboards for a conversational interface, drawing on a decade of curated datasets from Data Appeal and Mabrian. It can generate reports, alerts, scenario analyses and even marketing plans… in real time.
CEO Mirko Lalli put it:
“Destinations do not need another dashboard: they need a team empowered to act.”
Given the labour shortages and data fragmentation plaguing tourism boards, the industry didn’t need much convincing.
The takeaway: the tech is racing forward – but humans still lead
At the end of an unashamedly dense Day One, Phocuswright 2025 left the industry with a refreshingly traditional truth: technology is powerful, but trust is priceless.
Travel’s future may be digital, automated and frighteningly clever, but its beating heart, from TikTok testimonials to hotel encounters, remains reassuringly human.
And if the industry can strike that balance, the next chapter might just be its most promising one yet.
By Jason Smith – (c) 2025
Read Time: 6 minutes.
About the Writer
Jason Smith has the kind of story you can’t fake, built on long flights, new cities, and that unmistakable hum of hotel life that gets under your skin and never quite leaves. Half American, half Asian, he grew up surrounded by the steady rhythm of the tourism trade in the U.S., where his family helped others see the world long before he did.
Eager to carve out his own path, Jason packed his bags for Bangkok and the Asian Institute of Hospitality & Management, where he majored in Hotel Management and found a career and a calling. From there came years on the road, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, each stop adding another thread to his craft.
He made his mark in Thailand, eventually becoming Director of Sales for one of the country’s leading hotel chains. Then came COVID-19: borders closed, flights grounded, and a new chapter began.
Back home in America, Jason turned his knack for connection into words, joining Global Travel Media to tell the stories behind the check-ins written with the same warmth and honesty that have always defined him.
