The AI agent is here: How travel brands can win in the new era of Search
Edoardo Bortolato is a director at Google. He partners with market-leading brands — including top travel companies across key markets in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa — to leverage digital innovation and AI to capture evolving demand and drive sustainable growth.
With economic pressure and uncertainties in the travel industry, today’s travellers are trapped in a “window shopping gap”. They spend months dreaming, researching, and planning their holidays, but delay making their actual booking until closer to the departure date.
When travellers are finally ready to book, they need a frictionless path from hesitation to confidence. AI-powered Search can help them make decisions faster by acting as a new kind of travel agent — delivering the intelligent, agentic, and hyper-specific information they are looking for.
For travel brands, this prolonged hesitation creates a challenge. How do you hold people’s attention while they endlessly browse, and secure the booking when they finally commit?
Trend 1: The new rhythm of travel planning and booking
One of the changes we’re seeing in the travel industry is that traditional booking timelines are changing. While the initial research phase stretches on longer than ever, the actual <a href="https://traveltradeconsultancy.co.uk/news-insights/we-surveyed-travel-businesses-in-the-lead-up-to-summer-2026-heres-what-they-said/” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>window between booking and departure is shrinking.
As early inspiration evolves into active intent, AI serves as the ultimate discovery guide, empowering travellers to research, plan, and book with ease. In fact, 3 in 4 users say AI Mode and/or AI Overviews help them make faster and more confident decisions.1
The marketing solution: Power inspiration with Google Search and YouTube
For travel brands to show up at crucial booking moments, the best ads are answers. That is why Google Search is such a powerful conversion tool. Research shows that 53% of travellers regularly use Google Search to learn about, stay informed, or simply enjoy content related to travel.2
But while travel planning often begins with a search, experiencing a destination is inherently visual. YouTube powers discovery through visual inspiration to drive confident decisions across every screen and format. Solutions like Demand Gen, Video Reach Campaigns, and Video View Campaigns can help marketers visually build their brand in the living room, and beyond.
And nothing compares to the performance you get from pairing Google with YouTube. Running Google Search and YouTube campaigns together drives 21% higher ROAS than all other media combined.3
For travel brands to show up at crucial booking moments, the best ads are answers
Trend 2: The rise of the value-driven traveller
We are witnessing a fundamental shift in how consumers manage their travel wallets. In the U.K., travel spend has cooled for the first time in five years, while across continental Europe, travellers are tightening their belts by booking fewer, shorter getaways. Coupled with a surge in U.S. searches for budget-friendly travel, the message for brands is clear: value is often a key driver in travel planning.
When consumers are hesitant about spending, clarity is the ultimate reassurance. AI Mode removes the guesswork as it can pull in Maps data and web data to check the weather, flight prices, hotel information, and more into one comprehensive response, complete with links to dive deeper.
Let’s say a traveller wants to embark on a tour of The Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland to discover the best live music. AI Mode can instantly pinpoint the top venues, detail their opening hours, and tell them exactly when the bands start playing.
The marketing solution: Use AI to prove value and capture spend
To capture value-driven demand, brands need to remove financial hesitation before a user even reaches checkout. The key is surfacing real-time pricing and flexibility across every touchpoint.
Travel Feeds in Search Ads and Hotel Center Feeds in Demand Gen campaigns enhance ads with valuable data like hotel property information, pricing, and images, which helps increase ad engagement and performance. Travel Promotion Ads support hotel campaigns by driving clicks and more direct traffic as it serves up offerings prominently while a user is still exploring. And Hotel free booking links bring users directly to the hotel’s page to book.
When you use these formats with prominent budget-protecting features — such as price guarantees and flexible cancellation policies — you deliver the transparency and reassurance travellers need to justify their spend and commit.
The message for brands is clear: value is often a key driver in travel planning
Trend 3: The era of strict travel peak seasonality is over
We are seeing a major realignment of the travel calendar, defined by elongated peak seasons and a surge in shoulder-season demand. While July and August have historically absorbed 31% of all annual nights spent in EU tourist accommodations, 42% of travellers are now actively planning trips outside of these traditional windows.
But as the travel calendar stretches into a year-round cycle, the window shopping gap widens. This makes the eventual moment of booking much harder to predict for travel brands.
The marketing solution: Adopt demand-led budgets to capture unpredictable peaks
To win over today’s season-agnostic traveller, brands must abandon rigid planning in favour of fluid, demand-led budgeting.
When travel interest spikes unpredictably across the calendar, fixed marketing budgets will cause you to miss out on these new waves of demand. Instead, marketers must uncap budgets and tie them directly to strict business goals — like a Target return on ad spend (ROAS). This empowers AI to automatically capture profitable bookings whenever and wherever new demand emerges.
Marketers must meet travellers exactly where they are with speed, clarity, and always-on agility
Beyond budget fluidity, capturing unpredictable demand requires the right tools to act instantly the moment a shopper is ready to commit. That is why we’re launching Search Campaigns for Travel to bring travel feeds and formats into standard Search campaigns later this year. By linking your feeds to AI Max, you will be able to unlock new formats, expand your reach, and match your content to more relevant searches. This ensures your offerings surface the exact second a traveller shifts from researching to booking.
Meet the new pace of travel Search
The modern travel landscape has been completely remapped. Travellers are taking longer to research, but executing their final booking choices faster than ever. For travel brands, waiting for consumers to find their way through the complex decision-making maze is no longer an option.
Marketers must meet travellers exactly where they are with speed, clarity, and always-on agility. By leveraging the power of AI to prove upfront value, pairing Search with YouTube for maximum inspiration, and adopting demand-led budgeting to catch unpredictable peaks, marketers can guide consumers effortlessly from curiosity to check-out.
Embrace the advantage of intelligent Search, simplify the path to purchase, and turn today’s hesitant browsers into tomorrow’s confirmed bookings.
Get your ticket to Think Travel on 24 September (and view on-demand after).
Edoardo Bortolato
Sales Director in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa
1 Google commissioned Ipsos research, AR, AU, BR, CA, CL, CO, DE, ES, FR, ID, IN, IT, JP, KR, MX, NL, PE, PH, PO, SG, SW, TW, TH, U.S., U.K., Global Consumer Journeys, Online survey, Global average of select countries adults 18+, n=13,189 online shoppers who made a consumer good purchase requiring consideration in the past week (range of categories) and used Google AI Overviews or AI Mode, Dec. 2025.
2 Google commissioned Ipsos research, AU, BR, CA, DE, FR, IN, JP, MX, U.K., U.S., Vertical Consumer Journeys, Online survey, Global average of select countries, Adults 18+, n=14,000 In-market or past-month purchasers of travel (flight, car rental, or accommodation), July 2025.
3 Google-commissioned TransUnion analysis, U.S., MMM Meta-Analysis & Synergy Simulations of YT + Search vs. All Other Media in aggregate, 4,046 Auto, Consumer Electronics, CPG, Finance, Retail, and Travel models, Jan.-March 2022–Oct.-Dec. 2024.
