Last updated: August 2026
It is a Tuesday evening. The dishes are done, the laptop is shut, and somebody is lying on the sofa scrolling their phone with one thought running on a loop: we need a holiday. Not a specific one yet. Just a feeling. Somewhere warm, somewhere that will not wreck the budget, somewhere that does not require three evenings of research to find.
So they open an AI assistant and type something like: “Where’s warm in March for a couple’s holiday for under £800 each?”
Nobody in that moment is thinking about your brand. They are not thinking about SEO, funnels, or channels at all. They just want an answer that feels honest. And whether they realise it or not, that is the exact moment your relationship with them begins, quietly, somewhere you were probably not watching.
A global survey of 22,000 travellers by Skyscanner found that more than half are now comfortable using AI to help plan or book a trip in 2026. That number is moving fast, and it comes with a catch: the more people trust these tools, the less patience they have for anything that turns out to be wrong, outdated, or exaggerated. Travellers do not want to be sold to. They want to be told the truth, quickly.
Nobody researches a trip in a straight line
There used to be a tidy way of describing how people bought things: awareness, interest, desire, action, in that order. Travel planning has never actually worked like that, and Google now has a name for the real pattern: the messy middle. People bounce between apps, half-formed ideas, short videos, forum threads and reviews, circling a decision rather than marching towards it.
You will see a stranger’s TikTok of a beach, a friend’s Instagram story from a city break, a Reddit thread arguing about whether a resort is overrated, all before anyone types a single brand name into a search bar. If your visibility plan still assumes Google is the only place this happens, you are only seeing a fraction of the actual journey.
What a real 2026 trip search often looks like
Strip away the marketing language and a fairly typical path looks something like this:
An AI assistant for inspiration (“where’s warm in March”). Another AI tool to narrow it down (“compare 3-night city breaks for couples”). Google Maps for the unfiltered version, reviews, photos, local tips. A quick Reddit search to settle a nagging worry (“is Lisbon safe at night?”). Then, finally, a plain Google search for something very specific (“book hotel Lisbon centre”), and your website.
Notice how late your website appears in that list. Everything before it is where the decision actually gets made.
The four moments worth understanding
Dreaming out loud, to an AI
This is where the loose, aspirational questions live, and where AI assistants are pulling from travel articles, PR coverage, review platforms and destination guides to build an answer. How Travellers Are Using AI to Plan a Trip goes into this properly.
Checking the story holds up
The moment the dream needs a reality check: is this actually safe, do the photos match what people say, does the AI’s version match TripAdvisor’s. Is This Hotel Actually Good? covers what travellers are really doing here.
Letting AI make the call between two options
This is newer, and stranger, than most brands realise: people are now asking AI to decide for them between two operators or hotels. Why AI Recommends Some Travel Brands and Not Others explains what tips that decision one way or the other.
Handing over the money
By the time someone reaches a booking form, the emotional work is already finished. Making the Booking Easy covers what still manages to go wrong here anyway.
Why this matters more than it looks like it should
If a brand is invisible across the first three of those moments, the fourth simply never happens. A stunning booking page cannot rescue a trip that was never on someone’s radar in the first place.
Travellers are not looking for the loudest voice in the room. They are looking for the calmest, clearest path to an answer they can trust, and that path now runs through AI assistants and review sites long before it runs through your homepage. Our AI team helps travel brands build exactly that kind of presence.
Download the Guide to AI Search for Travel and Tourism, covering everything in this series.
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