Tourism has a vital role to play in a world which is increasingly coming under the sway of AI and algorithms, Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) Chief Executive Rebecca Ingram told TRENZ 2026 in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.
“We are living in a world that is becoming more polarised, more digital, more algorithmic,” Ingram said.
“Platforms are showing people more of what they already believe. Screens are mediating more of our relationships.
“In that environment, travel is one of the few remaining forces that puts people in genuine contact with one another; with other cultures, other landscapes, other ways of being in the world.
The way people find, choose, and book travel has changed more in the last three years than in the previous 30 years, Ingram noted.
“AI can now build a personalised itinerary in seconds. It brings together thousands of reviews into a single recommendation. It generates images of a place you’ve never been, written in your language, pitched at your interests, priced to your budget.”
The result for tourism businesses was that the relationship between a traveller and a destination was increasingly mediated by a platform or an algorithm, Ingram said.
“A recent US study by Phocuswright showed that over half of US travellers are now actively using AI to inform their travel booking decisions. These AI travellers are younger, taking more trips annually and spending significantly more on travel during those trips.
“AI is a fact of the landscape we’re operating in, and the opportunities are there for tourism operators to use it to its fullest potential.”
And yet, as Ingram pointed out, AI has its limits.
“If AI can plan the trip, describe the destination, recommend the operator and generate the content – what can’t it do?
“It can’t give comfort or reassurance on your travels like a guide or agent can. And it can’t make you feel.
“People don’t travel to gather information. They travel because they are seeking a feeling – often one they couldn’t name before they had it. Perspective. Renewal. Contact with something ancient or vast. Discovery. The quality of being somewhere that is not their ordinary life.
That’s not a small thing. That is a function tourism performs almost like nothing else.”
New Zealand is perfectly positioned to benefit from all this.
As Ingram puts it, “New Zealand creates a particular kind of feeling that is not generic. It is something to do with scale. The landscape here is vast relative to humans. You can be genuinely alone in New Zealand in a way that is almost impossible in many parts of the world.
“It is also something to do with the beautiful culture that is embedded across our rohe [a Māori term for area or region]. Te ao Māori is not a layer applied over our tourism product. It is woven into what this place is – the names, the values, the way the land, water, mountains and the sky are understood.
“In tourism, we express this through Tiaki – Care for New Zealand. Our operators live and breathe these values and seek to instil them in visitors at every opportunity.
“The data tells us that many international travellers share specific feelings about their New Zealand experience, using words like welcomed, safe and relaxed, saying they feel deeply connected to nature and our environment, and that locals are friendly and helpful.
“That feeling is New Zealand’s competitive advantage. And in a world that is becoming more synthetic, more screen-mediated and more polarised, the demand for the feeling that New Zealand delivers is not decreasing. It is increasing.”
Even in a world where so much can be mediated by a screen, Ingram told TRENZ 2026 that 1,200 travel professionals had all chosen to be in Auckland. “To meet in person. To have the conversations you can only have when you’re in the room together. To do business with trade partners that love New Zealand and represent us proudly back home.
“New Zealand has something the world needs more of right now. We are in the business of changing how people feel – about themselves, about other cultures, about the natural world. New Zealand is well placed, but our advantage is not automatic. It has to be understood, protected, designed for, and well promoted. That’s the work. And we’re in it together.”
By Peter Needham at TRENZ 2026 in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland – (c) 2026.
Read Time: 4 minutes.
About the Author.
With more than 35 years in travel journalism, Peter Needham has filed stories from Fleet Street to Fiji, and just about everywhere in between. As Managing Editor (Australasia) for Global Travel Media, he shapes industry coverage with the steady hand of someone who’s seen fashions come and go and knows what lasts.
Since going freelance in 1993, his byline has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review, Reader’s Digest and Qantas’ inflight magazines. He edited Inside Tourism for seven years, wrote the long-running Travel Tales column for Vacations & Travel, and even crafted copy for Tourism Australia ahead of the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
