There’s a quiet shift happening in travel. Not the headline-grabbing kind driven by aircraft orders or new routes, but something subtler and arguably more important.
The industry is learning to think faster.
A new deep-dive from Skift and PwC lands at a moment when travel is no longer simply rebounding, it’s recalibrating. The report, Building an Intelligence Advantage in Travel, doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to. Instead, it reads like a memo to operators who already know the ground is moving beneath them.
And if you strip away the consulting gloss, the message is straightforward: the winners from here won’t necessarily be the biggest brands or even the most luxurious. They’ll be the ones who get smarter about how they run.
Premium Isn’t What It Used to Be
For years, premium travel was easy to define. Bigger seats. Better linen. Lounges with baristas.
Now? Not so much.
According to the report, travellers increasingly equate premium with simplicity. Less friction. Genuine anticipation of needs. Fewer moments where the experience stalls.
PwC partner Jeanelle Johnson puts it plainly: understanding behaviour before the guest articulates it is where premium is heading.
In airline terms, that might mean journeys that feel stitched together rather than segmented. In hotels, it’s the bits between the obvious touchpoints that suddenly matter: the tone of a pre-arrival message, the flexibility mid-stay, the sense that someone is paying attention.
And yes, travellers will pay for that. A majority say round-the-clock support now ranks higher than traditional luxury signals.
Which tells you everything about where the bar has moved.
Loyalty Is Getting a Reality Check
If premium is being redefined, loyalty is being quietly dismantled and rebuilt simultaneously.
Points still matter. But context matters more.
The report suggests travellers are drifting outside loyalty ecosystems not out of disloyalty, but because programmes often fail the moment real-life trips get messy.
It’s a familiar frustration. Plenty of members are sitting on miles that don’t quite work when they need them.
PwC’s view is that loyalty must become reciprocal, brands showing awareness first, rather than waiting to be rewarded for past behaviour.
In practical terms, that means fewer rigid structures and more situational perks. Lounge access when things go wrong. Recognition that feels immediate rather than tier-driven.
Not revolutionary. Just overdue.
AI Enters Quietly
There’s a temptation to treat artificial intelligence as either saviour or villain. The report does neither.
Instead, it frames AI as plumbing.
Useful, largely invisible, and increasingly unavoidable.
Across airlines, hotels and intermediaries, the technology is already doing the unglamorous work: smoothing demand spikes, predicting behaviour, shortening service loops, trimming call-centre friction.
PwC’s numbers suggest most companies deploying AI agents are seeing productivity lifts.
But the more interesting takeaway is what AI isn’t doing.
It’s not replacing the moments that matter. If anything, it’s making those moments more obvious.
The machine handles the mundane. The human handles the memory.
That division feels about right.
The Orchestration Problem
One of the sharper ideas buried in the report is the notion of orchestration deciding where automation belongs and where people still carry the day.
Anyone who’s been stuck in a chatbot spiral will appreciate the point.
Handled well, orchestration is invisible. Handled badly, it becomes the story.
The report points to brands already seeing measurable gains by getting this balance right, including tangible improvements in conversion and service efficiency.
Not magic. Just better choreography.
And in an industry where margins are thin and expectations high, choreography counts.
Disruption Is No Longer the Exception
If the last five years proved anything, it’s that disruption has stopped being episodic.
It’s structural now.
Weather volatility, geopolitical noise, and labour gaps- none of it feels temporary. The report underscores this reality, arguing that resilience is increasingly a differentiator rather than a defensive posture.
Interestingly, more executives are challenging their own assumptions as a result. A majority are actively seeking dissenting views inside their organisations.
Skift-x-PwC-Building-an-Intelli…
That’s healthy.
Travel has always been an industry that learns the hard way.
The Unsexy Bit: Data
For all the talk of intelligence, the report lands on a point that won’t surprise anyone running a travel business: most transformation still trips over the basics.
Messy systems. Fragmented data. Cultures that don’t quite align.
As one PwC contributor bluntly notes, automating a broken process simply gives you a faster broken process.
It’s not a new insight. But it remains a stubborn one.
And until it’s solved, the rest is theory.
So What Actually Changes?
Strip away the frameworks, and the future described here isn’t especially futuristic.
It’s recognisable.
Travel brands that anticipate rather than react.
Experiences that feel joined-up rather than stitched together.
Technology that fades into the background.
In other words, competence has just elevated.
The report’s closing argument is that the next phase of travel will reward organisations that combine analytical muscle with human instinct.
Not dazzling. Not theatrical. Just quietly formidable.
The Industry’s Next Advantage
Travel has always been cyclical. We’ve seen eras defined by capacity, then distribution, then loyalty.
This one looks set to be defined by intelligence, not artificial, in isolation, but organisational.
How quickly a company reads a signal.
How cleanly it responds.
How seamlessly it delivers.
The brands that manage that won’t necessarily look different on the surface. But they’ll feel different to customers.
And in a business built on perception, that tends to be the advantage that sticks.
by Michelle Warner – (c) 2026.
Read Time: 5 minutes.
About the Writer.
Michelle Warner has always carried stories the way others carry passports lightly, faithfully, and with purpose. She learned her craft in newsrooms, shaping sentences with care, before swapping deadlines for departures as a flight attendant with some of the world’s great airlines. Years aloft sharpened her eye for character and deepened her fondness for the small, dignified rituals of travel, the quiet kindness of strangers, the poetry of arrival, the patience learned between time zones.
Now grounded by choice, Michelle has come home to writing with the same calm authority she once brought to turbulent cabins. Her prose blends an editor’s discipline with a traveller’s wonder, tinged with humour and reverence for the golden age of travel. Each piece feels like a handwritten boarding pass, gracious, observant, and unmistakably alive.
