The old travel funnel has sprung a leak several times; in fact, the traveller has wandered off with the map.
A major new joint report from McKinsey & Company and Skift Research argues that the traditional booking journey, once imagined as a reasonably orderly march from inspiration to research, booking and departure, now looks considerably more like a collection of overlapping orbits.
Travellers move in, out and sideways between social media, search engines, online travel agencies, supplier websites, reviews, friends, creators and artificial intelligence. Then, having finally booked, many keep shopping.
That matters enormously for airlines, hotels, cruise lines, tour operators, destinations, travel advisors and publishers because the battle is no longer simply to secure the booking. The new commercial contest is to remain useful and trusted throughout an increasingly restless decision cycle.
The research draws on more than 1,000 US travellers, supplemented by self-reported diaries from people researching and booking real trips. Its four central findings are formidable: always-on inspiration creates more opportunities but makes trust crucial; fragmented research creates what the report calls a “restart tax”; AI is advancing faster than operator readiness; and booking confirmation has increasingly become a waypoint rather than the finish line. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
For Australian travel businesses and advisors, the numbers should be regarded as US consumer research rather than an Australian market measurement. Nevertheless, the behaviours described will look remarkably familiar to anyone who has watched a client disappear down an internet rabbit hole containing 37 hotel tabs, three YouTube reviews and somebody on TikTok insisting that the only acceptable way to visit Japan is during a particular Tuesday in April.
From 45 touchpoints to 65 and counting
McKinsey’s comparison with its earlier research shows just how dramatically the planning process has expanded.
In 2018, McKinsey calculated that the average digital journey towards a hotel booking lasted about 36 days and involved roughly 45 touchpoints across search, intermediaries and supplier channels. The journey was not perfectly straight, but it remained recognisably bounded: the traveller developed intent, investigated choices and eventually bought. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
By 2026, the report puts the number of touchpoints at 65.
More importantly, the researchers argue that it is increasingly difficult even to determine when the journey begins. A traveller casually watching destination content may not consider themselves to be planning anything. Yet a saved restaurant, hotel reel or destination video can quietly become the first building block of a holiday months later.
The journey doesn’t necessarily end when somebody presses “book”. McKinsey’s traveller diaries showed repeated backward movement from booking to research, or research back to inspiration, illustrating how thoroughly iterative planning has become. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
A traveller might save a Sicilian hotel today, research Seoul tomorrow, ask an AI assistant about Spain next weekend and eventually book Croatia.
For marketers, it is an embarrassment of opportunity.
It is also an embarrassment of competition.
Inspiration has become entertainment
The transformation starts before travellers even decide they want a holiday.
Social media, streaming, editorial coverage, reviews and AI now inject destinations into consumers’ everyday lives. Travel inspiration has effectively become entertainment.
Around seven in ten respondents told researchers that social-media travel content had made them interested in a destination they had not previously considered. They were not necessarily researching a holiday at the time; the destination simply entered their consciousness while they were being entertained. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
Sixty per cent identified social media as one of their leading sources of trip inspiration. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
That produces a curious commercial paradox. Destinations have more opportunities than ever to attract attention, but the resulting attention may be exceptionally fragile.
A beautiful beach, mountain lodge or rooftop bar can be saved with one flick of a thumb and forgotten with the next.
The research also reveals something deeper about why travellers respond to these images. Sixty-eight per cent of survey participants said the trips they take form part of how they express who they are. Younger travellers were particularly inclined to spend more heavily on experiences. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
Travel marketing, therefore, is not merely selling aircraft seats and hotel rooms.
Increasingly, it is selling a possible version of the traveller themselves.
Trust becomes travel’s hard currency
Attention alone, however, will not pay the hotel bill.
Trust determines which idea survives.
Friends and family remain particularly influential because they help travellers answer a much more personal question than whether a destination is objectively attractive.
What consumers really want to know is: Will it suit me?
McKinsey-Skift research reports that 65 per cent of travellers regard friends and family as their most trusted source of recommendations. Travel creators also carry substantial influence because audiences can recognise people whose tastes, budgets, family circumstances or interests resemble their own. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
This is where the glossy brochure meets its modern rival: evidence.
Reviews, genuine guest photographs, credible editorial coverage, specific creator experiences and transparent information increasingly function as commercial assets rather than decorative extras.
For travel companies, authenticity cannot simply mean making the photography slightly less polished and adding the word “local” to the copy.
It means giving potential guests enough credible evidence to believe the promise.
Choice has become its own problem
Research is where matters become decidedly less romantic.
Travellers now possess extraordinarily powerful tools: Google, OTAs, review platforms, metasearch, social media, forums, supplier sites and increasingly sophisticated AI assistants.
Yet those systems rarely remember what happened elsewhere.
The hotel rejected yesterday because of its cancellation policy may reappear today in another search. The dates entered into an OTA are entered again elsewhere. A saved social-media post knows nothing about the airfare comparison performed an hour later.
McKinsey calls the resulting burden the restart tax.
Seventy-four per cent of travellers revisit the same sites or apps several times before making their decision, repeatedly reconstructing information already gathered elsewhere. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
Almost half of respondents said the quantity of online choice and information feels overwhelming, while a comparable proportion worried about making the wrong decision. Even AI, despite producing individual answers more quickly, can encourage travellers to spend more time researching overall. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
Anyone who has searched for a hotel online will recognise the condition.
It begins with optimism.
It ends at 12.47 am with the traveller comparing the breakfast photographs of two hotels situated 80 metres apart.
Travellers don’t actually want 500 choices
One of the report’s most commercially significant findings concerns curation.
Researchers asked travellers to choose between three hypothetical travel platforms offering identical inventory and pricing.
One presented 500 hotels, flights and experiences with filters. Another presented ten recommendations selected by budget, trip type, and preferences. The third offered one editable AI-generated itinerary.
The result was decisive.
Just 30 per cent preferred the enormous searchable catalogue. Sixty-three per cent chose the curated collection of ten. Only 7 per cent wanted the single AI-selected trip. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
There lies an important lesson for travel advisors.
Consumers may not require limitless choice. Nor do they appear eager to surrender the decision completely to a machine.
They want intelligent curation while retaining control.
In other words, one of travel’s newest digital discoveries bears a suspicious resemblance to what a very good travel advisor has been doing for decades.
Technology changes. Human nature is considerably less obliging.
AI wins inspiration but not yet the wallet
Artificial intelligence is nevertheless transforming the beginning and middle of the booking process remarkably quickly.
The report says 71 per cent of travellers are comfortable allowing AI to generate initial ideas, while 67 per cent are comfortable using it to compare and narrow choices. It also reports that 86 per cent would consider AI-assisted booking in the future. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
But confidence diminishes as the stakes rise.
Only about half are currently comfortable allowing AI to make a flight or hotel booking on their behalf, according to the research, and most still want final control over the transaction.
There is good reason.
Finding “three lovely hotels near the Louvre” is one thing.
Handing over several thousand dollars, coordinating air connections, interpreting room categories and sorting out a cancellation when Parisian air traffic control goes on strike is quite another.
AI has become an outstanding generator of possibilities.
Accountability remains the more difficult problem.
Welcome to GEO SEO’s new travelling companion
Travel companies cannot afford to ignore another consequence.
If travellers increasingly ask AI which hotel, destination, cruise or experience they should choose, being visible on Google alone may no longer be sufficient.
McKinsey argues that Generative Engine Optimisation GEO is emerging alongside traditional SEO.
The report describes an experiment in which the same request for family-friendly Chicago hotels with river views was submitted to several AI and OTA tools. No individual hotel appeared across every response. Properties with specific, documented details surfaced more consistently than those relying on generic descriptions. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
That is a warning shot for travel marketers.
A hotel can have an attractive website, respectable organic search rankings and perfectly competitive pricing yet fail to appear in an AI-generated shortlist.
In yesterday’s internet, being invisible meant languishing several pages down a search engine.
Tomorrow, it may mean never entering the answer.
McKinsey’s research therefore points towards richer structured information, current listings, credible third-party coverage, social proof, accurate reviews and machine-readable data. GEO should increasingly be treated as an ongoing diagnostic rather than a one-off technological curiosity. Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf… Winning Hearts in an Age of Inf…
For publishers and travel advisors, that development is equally significant. Detailed, authoritative, and specific travel content could become more valuable as AI systems seek reliable material to construct answers.
“Luxury hotel” tells a machine remarkably little.
Connecting rooms, wheelchair access, breakfast hours, airport distance, cancellation policies and exactly what is included in a room rate tell it considerably more.
Booking is no longer the finish line
Perhaps the biggest challenge for suppliers comes after the booking is secured.
McKinsey and Skift found that 78 per cent of travellers continue researching after booking, while only 18 per cent stop once the principal reservations are complete. Many keep investigating restaurants and activities, consuming destination content, asking friends for recommendations and checking alternatives. McKinsey & Company
The booking confirmation has therefore become a comma rather than a full stop.
That should concern any hotel, airline or operator that thinks the customer is safely tucked away once the confirmation email has arrived.
Flexible cancellation conditions, price-monitoring technology and constant exposure to competing offers mean travellers can continue reconsidering right up to departure.
The post-booking period consequently becomes both a retention risk and a revenue opportunity.
Useful destination information, transfers, restaurant recommendations, meaningful upgrades, activities and disruption support can reinforce the original purchase.
Generic promotional emails may simply give travellers another reason to reopen Google.
Travel advisors may become more valuable, not less
This message is particularly important for professional travel advisors.
The immediate assumption might be that AI threatens the advisor because it can search enormous volumes of information almost instantly.
That overlooks the research’s central finding.
The problem facing travellers is no longer insufficient information.
It is too much information.
What they increasingly need is reduction, validation, continuity and confidence.
A capable advisor does exactly that.
AI can tell a family there are 300 hotels in Rome.
A knowledgeable advisor can explain why three are genuinely suitable, which room configuration works for the children, whether the location makes sense, what the cancellation conditions mean and whom the traveller can ring if the wheels fall off.
That last point deserves more attention than technology’s cheerleaders sometimes give it.
Algorithms do not become tired, but neither do they pick up the telephone with reassuring authority when a flight is cancelled at 11 pm.
The winning formula: fewer dead ends, greater confidence
McKinsey’s conclusion is surprisingly restrained.
Travel companies do not need to dominate every touchpoint.
They need to understand where they can credibly earn attention, remove friction and strengthen trust.
That means pairing inspiration with evidence. It means building websites for returning visitors rather than behaving as though everyone has arrived for the first time. Preferences, comparisons, and rejected options should persist where appropriate, instead of forcing customers to constantly reconstruct their research.
It also means approaching AI progressively.
Let it answer questions. Let it compare. Let it build shortlists and itineraries. Let it eventually handle increasingly sophisticated transactions but retain review, reversibility and human assistance where the customer needs them.
The travel industry has spent the better part of two decades making transactions faster.
Its next great competitive advantage may be making decisions easier to trust.
That is the most important lesson buried beneath all the algorithms, apps and analytics.
Travellers are not necessarily demanding another hundred choices. They want confidence that the choice in front of them is sensible and that somebody remembers why they made it.
For destinations, hotels, airlines, cruise lines and tour operators, the organisation that reduces uncertainty may become more valuable than the one offering the greatest inventory.
And for travel advisors, the age of artificial intelligence contains a rather pleasing irony.
The machines can now produce possibilities at breathtaking speed.
Human judgement may be what stops the traveller from drowning in them.
The funnel may be finished.
Trust isn’t.
To read the complete report, visit the following:
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McKinsey & Company — Winning Hearts in an Age of Infinite Travel Choices
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Skift Research — Winning Hearts in an Age of Infinite Travel Choices
By: Jason Smith – © 2026.
Read Time: 9 minutes.
Author Bio:
Jason Smith didn’t learn travel from textbooks. He learned it in airports, taxis and hotel lobbies, watching the business unfold long before he played his own part. Half American, half Asian, he grew up around the quiet workings of tourism, where people come and go, and stories rarely stand still.
Bangkok came first, then formal study, then a career that carried him through Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. Each place left something behind. In the end, Thailand felt like home, along with a senior role in hotel sales.
Then everything stopped. Borders shut, planes grounded, and Jason found himself back in America with time to reflect.
Now at Stephen’s EGT Media, he writes travel as it really is: not polished, not perfect, but human, and all the better for it.
