
New Report: How Travel Marketers Are Using AI
The travel business has unparalleled access to customer data, and AI offers ample avenues to apply it and improve the traveler experience. By creating insights and knowledge, including who to talk to, where to reach them, and what to say to them, AI offers travel marketers unique opportunities to help their brands make better decisions that can drive business growth at scale.
This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.
The travel industry stands apart in terms of the vast amounts of customer data it has at its fingertips. Travel's customer journey is uniquely personal, and the complexity of planning and booking yields rich customer profiles unparalleled in other industries and sectors.
This outstanding opportunity comes with an equally daunting challenge. The amount of data available to travel marketers is much more than any person or team of people can make sense of on their own.
Enter AI. Applications of AI technology give travel marketers the ability to create insights and knowledge, including who to talk to, where to reach them, and what to say to them. This offers opportunities to help their brands make better decisions that can drive business growth at scale.
According to a 2024 Skift survey, nearly 90% of travel marketing leaders said that AI will be important in driving overall business value for their organization in the next three years. However, just 64% said they had already deployed AI solutions for marketing and advertising.
This gap indicates that many in the industry willingly acknowledge the value of AI, but actual implementation often lags behind interest. What's holding them back?
A new Epsilon Pulse research report analyzed motivations, investments, and barriers to AI across the retail, financial services, travel, restaurant, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries. Its insights help travel executives in all departments better understand how AI is revolutionizing the customer experience — and what they can do now to leverage its benefits to improve engagement and drive more revenue.
AI Strategies for Travel Marketing: Key Trends and Highlights
Travel Lags in Some Aspects of AI Strategy
Like marketers in other industries, a vast majority of travel leaders are already invested in using AI for marketing. However, travel had the highest prevalence of non-users (11%), while all other sectors checked out between 4% and 6%.
Furthermore, the travel industry was the least likely to find AI capabilities 'extremely valuable' for their business. Overall, 46% of marketers gave this response, compared to about 38% among travel leaders.
Breaking the Cycle of Reactivity
According to travel marketers, 'cost reduction' was the most common reason their organizations were motivated to adopt AI. By comparison, leaders in all other industries were most likely to say their organizations were primarily motivated by 'improving the customer experience' or 'increasing operational efficiency.'
In addition, the travel industry's number one barrier to AI adoption was 'fear of change.' The landscape is changing around them, and if travel marketers aren't able to persuade organizational leaders how AI can benefit them through proactive customer engagement, they'll continue to lag behind.
Top AI Applications for Travel Marketing
Looking around at their counterparts, 33% of travel marketers believe that their colleagues and competitors in the industry are using AI effectively to offer personalized recommendations for customers, the most common response in the survey. When asked about specific marketing challenges that they believe AI can solve, 61% of travel marketers said that customer journey mapping was the most useful, followed distantly by predictive maintenance (39%).
Additional Research and Data in This Report
How marketers are using AI in travel and beyond
AI's impact on market performance
What's driving brands to invest in AI
How much budget they're allocating to AI tools and technologies
How to measure success
Closing the Gap Between Theory and Practice
This report explores the contrast between what travel marketers observe in their organizations — i.e., hesitancy to adopt due to cost and logistical concerns — and the potential value they see in improving the customer experience by moving forward with sophisticated AI strategies.
The road to productive use of AI is a marathon, not a sprint, and there are widely varying degrees of usefulness and utility depending on the company and its goals. However, all travel marketers need to get off the starting blocks and benchmark against their competitors if they expect to stay in the race.
This content was created collaboratively by Epsilon and Skift's branded content studio, SkiftX.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Gizmodo
24 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
Apple's Ushers In New Glassy Design With iOS 26 and ‘Liquid Glass' Interface
Jony Ive's long era of flat design is dead. At WWDC 2025 today, Apple ushered in 'Liquid Glass,' a new interface for iOS 26 (all of Apple's software platforms are jumping straight to '26') modeled after the glassy, reflective, and translucent software design it first introduced for Vision Pro's visionOS two years ago. The new Liquid Glass visual refresh is Apple's first major interface overhaul for the iPhone in 12 years. In 2013, former design chief Ive rebooted the iPhone's operating system with iOS 7 (aka The Great Flattening)—a shift away from the skeuomorphic interface that Steve Jobs and former Apple software chief Scott Forstall had championed in favor of rounder and texture-free iconography, thinner fonts, and brighter colors and more negative space. iOS 7 was so jarring for so many iPhone users that Apple slowly undid the extreme redesign in subsequent iOS updates to make it more usable, though the general aesthetic of flat software remained flat. Liquid Glass brings back depth with a modern twist. Instead of skeuomorphism—digital design that imitates real-world objects and textures—iOS 26 uses light reflections and shadows to make buttons and menu bars appear layered on top of content. Though Apple improved usability with thicker fonts and subtle gradients, it could still be difficult to identify what was a tappable element versus what is content. iOS 26 seems to merge the best of flat design (uncluttered minimalism) with just a smidge of skeuomorphism (glass and the way it reacts to lighting at different angles). Beyond the fresh coat of paint, iOS 26 is mostly the same familiar iPhone software over 1 billion users use to connect with each other. That is to say, there won't be a steep learning curve. Most of Apple's own apps work largely as before. Some apps have been tweaked to be easier to use. For example, the camera app now has a more unified experience for shooting and the Photos app. This story is developing…


Bloomberg
27 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Apple Unveils New Liquid Glass Software Interface at WWDC Event
Apple Inc. unveiled a new operating system interface called Liquid Glass at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, calling it the company's broadest design update ever. For the first time, the same interface will work across the company's products, executive Alan Dye said Monday during a video presentation from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California. The company also confirmed plans to open up its AI models to outside app creators.


Forbes
28 minutes ago
- Forbes
Navigating Orlando, Florida's Award Winning Dining Scene
A table at Capa at The Four Seasons Resort Orlando Orlando, Florida is well known as a popular travel destination. With its warm climate and variety of theme parks and attractions, it welcomes millions of visitors each year. In fact, WalletHub named Orlando number one on their list of the best places to visit in the summer of 2025. While roller coasters and sunshine help make Orlando a beloved vacation spot, the city also has a vibrant and award winning restaurant scene attracting visitors. The culinary landscape in Orlando is booming. According to the Florida Department of Businesses and Professional Regulations, the number of restaurant licenses in Orlando has increased year over year. Not only is the number of restaurants growing, but the number of award-winning restaurants is increasing as well. Orlando now has the second highest number of Michelin-starred restaurants in the state of Florida, coming in behind Miami. The Michelin Guide for Florida added 11 new restaurants to the Orlando line up for 2025. The city now has 59 restaurants that have been recognized by The Michelin Guide. That includes nine starred venues, 15 Bib Gourmands and 35 Michelin Recommended dining destinations. Orlando also had two James Beard nominated chefs in 2025. Amy Drew Thompson is a multimedia food reporter for Orlando Sentinel who has lived in the city for 20 years. She calls the dining evolution in Orlando 'incredible." 'We have so much available now, at all price points, from killer weekly food truck events to, as of this year, two-Michelin-star venues for visitors to explore,' Thompson said in an email. As Thompson notes, Orlando is the new home of one of only two two-Michelin-starred restaurants in the entire state of Florida. Sorekara, a restaurant in the Baldwin Park neighborhood that serves a tasting menu highlighting Japan's 72 micro seasons, was awarded the coveted distinction in April 2025 at the Michelin Guide Awards for Florida. The tasting menu at Sorekara starts at $275. The dining room at Capa Capa, a Spanish-influenced steakhouse perched on the 17th floor of The Four Seasons Orlando, earned a Michelin star for the fourth year in a row at the April awards. According to Capa's head chef, Chris Edwards, Orlando's not just a city for tourists to grab a quick bite, it's a place where food is taken seriously. 'It's an exciting time for the city for any culinary professional to grow and thrive. With Orlando being a major tourist destination, it gives us the opportunity to experiment with local ingredients and the fusion of multicultural techniques,' chef Edwards said in an email. Steak at Capa at The Four Seasons Resort Orlando The Four Seasons Orlando is also home to the Michelin recommended restaurant, Ravello, that offers a modern Italian menu. Bacán, a restaurant in The Lake Nona Wave Hotel serving innovative Latin American dishes, and Nami, the Lake Nona Wave's contemporary Japanese restaurant, are also Michelin recommended. Diners can even get a Michelin-starred meal right in one of Orlando's famed theme park destinations. Victoria & Alberts is located inside Walt Disney World at the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa. It serves modern American cuisine in an elevated Victorian setting just a stones throw away from Cinderella's castle in the Magic Kingdom park. It's the only restaurant owned and operated by a U.S. theme park to be awarded a Michelin star. But Thompson says it's not just pricy tasting menus and Michelin starred establishments contributing to Orlando's thriving food scene. There are restaurants at all price points serving up delicious food from cuisines around the globe. The Mills 50 District, which is directly north of downtown Orlando, is a colorful neighborhood known for its wide variety of Asian-owned businesses and eateries. One of the neighborhood hubs is Mills Market, a food hall featuring two Michelin Bib Gourmand recognized establishments, Bánh Mì Boy and UniGirl. The Bib Gourmand distinction is reserved for restaurants that offer exceptional food at reasonable prices. UniGirl is an onigiri snack shop designed like a Japanese 'konbini' or convenience store. They serve freshly made onigiri with fillings like spicy mentaiko (a Japanese delicacy made from salt-cured Alaska pollock roe) and sea urchin. Bánh Mì Boy is a Vietnamese café that takes a creative spin on traditional dishes, like a French dip bánh mì and Saigon street wings. A dish at Kaya Around the corner from Mills Market is Kaya, a Filipino restaurant set in a small bungalow with patio seating and a garden. Kaya earned a Michelin Green Star award which is given to restaurants that are eco-friendly and demonstrate exceptional sustainable practices. Kaya sources 90% of their produce from Central Florida farms. According to Thompson, Kaya diners should also head out to the backyard where they'll find a small stand that makes 'artisan-level' kakigori, a Japanese shaved ice dish. The stand is called Koko Kakigori and Thompson says it's one of her favorite desserts in the city. Mead at Zymarium For those looking for an award winning drink, bars in the area include Otto's High Dive, a rum bar specializing in Cuban dishes with a Michelin Bib Gourmand distinction and Zymarium, Orlando's first meadery. Zymarium has also been awarded the most 90 point meads in the world by The Mead Institute. 'The more attention the city gets, the more talent it attracts, so the culinary fires here, small and scattered to start, are starting to grow and spread,' Thompson said in an email. According to chef Edwards, the food renaissance in Orlando is thanks to the thriving local food culture and an influx of talented chefs. 'With chefs and restaurateurs opening establishments that focus on high-quality ingredients and creative dishes, Orlando is increasingly recognized for its culinary talent, chef Edwards said in an email. "It's not just a city for tourists to grab a quick bite; it's a place where food is taken seriously."