Travel Brands Are Building AI Agents for a Consumer That Doesn’t Exist

Gareth Williams built one of the world’s largest travel metasearch platforms. As the founder and former CEO of Skyscanner, he watched the industry move from paper tickets to mobile booking. Now an investor, he’s watching it move toward artificial intelligence that can plan, compare, and eventually purchase trips on a traveler’s behalf.

He’s not sure the public is coming along.

“I’ve been really struck by how negative the public is towards AI compared to people inside the industry,” Williams told Skift.

He believes consumer wariness may be harder to shake than daily users of the technology expect given how quickly trust erodes.

That skepticism meets an industry moving fast in the opposite direction. The travel industry calls its latest AI push “agentic,” a word that implies agency to act on a traveler’s behalf. The promise is AI that doesn’t just answer questions, but books flights, reserves hotels, and manages disruptions autonomously.