AI is Becoming the New Travel Agent: How People Are Planning Trips Differently in 2026

There was a time when planning a vacation meant hours of browser tabs, conflicting review sites, and a growing sense that you were missing something better just one more search away. That experience shaped how an entire generation approached travel. Then online booking platforms arrived and streamlined part of the process, but the fundamental work of assembling a coherent, personalized trip still fell almost entirely on the traveler. In 2026, that dynamic is shifting in a meaningful and accelerating way. Generative AI has moved beyond novelty and into genuine utility, and travelers across income levels, trip types, and destinations are starting to notice. For anyone interested in how the world of travel is evolving - and what that means for how we make decisions about where to go, what to do, and how much to spend - this is one of the most important conversations happening right now. David Denenberg has been following these developments closely, and what emerges from a clear-eyed look at the data and the trends is a story that is more nuanced, more exciting, and more consequential than simple headlines about robots replacing travel agents.

How AI Has Changed the Starting Point for Trip Planning

The most fundamental shift is not about speed or convenience, though both have improved. It is about where the planning process begins. Traditional trip research required travelers to already have a destination in mind, or at least a region. You searched for "best hotels in Lisbon" or "things to do in Costa Rica" because search engines needed a specific query to return useful results. That meant travelers were largely limited to places they had already heard of, or places that appeared prominently in popular travel media. The discovery process had a built-in bias toward already-famous destinations.

AI flips that starting point entirely. A traveler can now open a conversation and say something like, "I have ten days in late summer, a budget of around three thousand dollars, two kids under twelve, and I want somewhere with a mix of history and outdoor activity that is not completely overrun with tourists." The AI does not need a specific destination query. It can reason across that entire combination of variables simultaneously and return options that might never have surfaced through conventional search. That is a genuinely different kind of discovery, and its implications extend well beyond making planning easier.

Skyscanner's Horizons 2026 research, which surveyed 22,000 travelers across multiple markets, found that 54 percent of travelers now feel confident using AI to help plan and book travel. That is not a fringe behavior. Deloitte's 2026 U.S. summer travel research found that 43 percent of a digitally engaged traveler segment uses generative AI in trip planning. Mastercard's 2026 international travel research, drawing on more than 15,000 consumers across 11 countries, similarly identifies AI-assisted planning as a defining characteristic of the modern international traveler. These are not small pilot programs or tech-enthusiast behaviors. They represent a broad and accelerating shift in how millions of people approach one of their most significant discretionary spending decisions each year.

The Practical Value of Hyper-Personalized Itineraries

One of the most compelling things AI brings to travel planning is its ability to hold an unusually large number of variables in mind at once. Traditional destination guides, even excellent ones, are written for a generalized audience. They can acknowledge that some travelers have dietary restrictions or mobility considerations, but they cannot seamlessly weave those factors into every recommendation throughout a complete multi-day itinerary. AI can do exactly that, and it can do it conversationally, which means travelers can refine and adjust as the plan takes shape rather than starting over when a key detail changes.

Consider what a genuinely personalized itinerary requires. Budget matters, obviously, but so does how that budget is distributed - some travelers prefer to spend heavily on accommodation and economize on food, while others want the reverse. Travel pace varies enormously; some people want to cover significant ground while others would rather spend three days in one neighborhood and truly know it. Family composition, dietary needs, physical mobility, interest in history versus nature versus food versus nightlife, preferred climate, tolerance for crowds, available time - these inputs interact with each other in ways that are difficult to capture in a simple search. The conversational nature of AI planning means travelers can describe all of this in natural language and receive recommendations that actually reflect their specific situation rather than a statistical average of what most travelers want.

This also makes AI particularly valuable as a budget optimizer. Rather than searching separately for cheap flights, affordable hotels, and free activities, a traveler can describe a fixed total budget and ask the AI to construct the best possible trip within that constraint. The AI can identify trade-offs, suggest alternatives, and explain why certain choices affect the overall cost structure. Expedia's Unpack '26 research, which drew on platform data and input from 24,000 travelers across 18 countries, reflects this budget-conscious mindset. Roughly 63 percent of U.S. travelers planned a domestic trip in summer 2026, and conversations about domestic vacations doubled year over year - a pattern that suggests travelers are making deliberate trade-offs to manage costs while maintaining meaningful travel experiences.

Agentic Travel and the Next Frontier Beyond Planning

If current AI tools have changed how trips are planned before departure, the next wave of development is focused on what happens during the trip itself. Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel has described a future in which AI does not simply respond to questions but proactively anticipates and responds to problems - a sudden weather change, a flight cancellation, a restaurant closure - and suggests or even executes alternatives in real time. This concept is often described as agentic AI: systems that can take sequences of actions on a user's behalf rather than simply providing information for the user to act on.

The implications are significant. Travelers currently manage disruptions manually, which often means scrambling for information under stress while simultaneously navigating an airport or a foreign city. An AI system with access to your itinerary, your preferences, real-time flight data, hotel inventory, and local conditions could theoretically handle most of that work in the background and present you with a set of pre-evaluated options rather than a raw problem. That is still an emerging capability rather than a fully realized product, but the direction of development is clear, and the industry's major players are investing accordingly.

This agentic vision also connects to a broader shift in traveler expectations. Booking.com's 2026 Travel Predictions, based on responses from 29,733 travelers across 33 countries and territories, consistently emphasize a desire for unusually personalized experiences rather than standardized vacations. Travelers in 2026 are not just looking for a good deal; they are looking for a trip that feels like it was designed specifically for them. AI is increasingly the tool that makes that kind of personalization scalable, available not just to those who can afford a dedicated travel advisor but to anyone with a smartphone and a clear sense of what they want from a trip.

Some of the most interesting travel behaviors emerging in 2026 reflect this appetite for personalization. Expedia's research highlights what it calls set-jetting - travel inspired by film and television locations - alongside literary travel, sports-driven fan voyages, and a renewed interest in farm stays and slower travel experiences. These are not mass-market categories. They represent niches within niches, and AI is particularly well suited to serve them because it can reason about a traveler's specific interests and map them onto a coherent itinerary without requiring that niche to be large enough to support a dedicated travel magazine or booking platform.

What AI Still Cannot Do - and Why Human Expertise Remains Relevant

A clear-eyed assessment of AI in travel has to include an honest accounting of its current limitations, because those limitations are real and consequential. The most serious is the tendency of AI systems to present outdated or incorrect information with the same confident tone they use for accurate information. Opening hours change. Attractions close permanently. Visa requirements are updated. Transit times that look reasonable on a map can be wildly optimistic in practice. An AI that was trained on data from a year ago may not know that a popular restaurant closed last spring or that a border crossing now requires additional documentation.

For casual recommendations or broad itinerary structures, this is usually manageable - a traveler can verify specific operational details through official sources before booking. But for complex international trips where a single incorrect assumption can cascade into significant logistical problems, the confidence with which AI delivers information can be more dangerous than helpful. Visa requirements in particular should always be verified directly with official government sources, not taken from AI output, because the consequences of errors are severe and the AI has no mechanism to flag its own uncertainty.

This is part of why experienced human travel advisors are not simply disappearing in the face of AI tools. For luxury travel, complex multi-destination international itineraries, group travel with multiple stakeholders, or any situation where firsthand knowledge of a destination makes a real difference in quality, human expertise continues to provide value that AI cannot reliably replicate. The more accurate frame for 2026 is not AI versus human advisors - it is understanding which planning tasks AI handles well, which benefit from human judgment, and how the two can work together to produce better outcomes than either alone.

Skyscanner's data showing that 84 percent of travelers plan to take the same number or more trips in 2026 as they did in 2025 reflects an enduring appetite for travel even in a complex economic environment. What is changing is not whether people want to travel, but how they prepare for it, how they make choices within their budgets, and what they expect from the planning process. AI is accelerating and in some ways reshaping that process, but the desire to discover, to experience new places, and to create meaningful memories is entirely human - and no algorithm is going to change that.

What This Shift Means for Travelers Planning Trips Right Now

For travelers thinking practically about how to use these tools, a few principles are worth keeping in mind as AI becomes a larger part of the planning conversation. First, specificity produces better results. The more clearly you can articulate what you actually want from a trip - not just a destination but a mood, a pace, a set of priorities - the more useful AI output tends to be. Vague prompts produce generic itineraries. Detailed, honest descriptions of your travel style produce recommendations that feel genuinely tailored.

Second, treat AI output as a strong first draft rather than a finished plan. Use it to generate options, identify possibilities you might not have considered, and construct a structural framework for the trip. Then verify the operational details - hours, prices, reservation requirements, visa and entry documentation - through official and current sources before committing money or time. The combination of AI-generated breadth and human-verified accuracy is more reliable than either approach alone.

Third, remember that AI recommendation patterns could begin to shape travel at scale. If millions of travelers are asking the same AI systems where to go, those systems may develop their own version of the over-tourism problem - concentrating visitors in AI-favored locations while genuinely undiscovered places remain undiscovered. Travelers who want authentic, less-crowded experiences might find that the AI's most enthusiastic recommendations are also its most popular ones, and that a degree of independent research still yields the best finds.

The interface for planning travel is changing faster than at any point since online booking became mainstream, and 2026 feels like a genuine inflection point. What began as a curiosity - asking an AI to suggest a travel itinerary - has become, for a significant and growing share of travelers, a primary planning tool. David Denenberg recognizes that understanding how these tools work, what they do well, and where their limits lie is genuinely useful for anyone who loves to travel and wants to make the most of the time and money they invest in it. The best trips will always come from a combination of good information, honest self-knowledge about what you want, and a willingness to stay curious - whether the source of that information is a well-trained AI, an experienced human advisor, or the kind of unexpected discovery that no algorithm could have predicted.

If you are planning a trip this summer and want to explore how thoughtful research and current travel intelligence can help you make better decisions, now is an excellent time to start the conversation. The tools available today are genuinely more powerful than anything travelers had access to even two years ago, and the travelers who learn to use them well - while staying appropriately skeptical about their limitations - are likely to have a meaningful advantage in getting more out of every journey they take.