Travellers will let AI plan the trip. They will not let it spend their money. The brand that fixes that gap wins, and the fix is not smarter AI. It is a safer way to say “undo”.
Three surveys published this week tell the same story. Travellers love AI as a research assistant. They do not yet trust it as a cashier. Many will read that as a warning. I read it as a to-do list.
The numbers, in plain English
- lastminute.com: almost half (45%) of the European travellers it surveyed have used AI to plan a holiday in the past 12 months, but only 12% would currently be comfortable letting it make the booking. This comes from a guest article in Travel Weekly by lastminute.com’s Alessandro Petazzi, based on Censuswide research across five European markets.
- Eurostars: in a survey of around 2,000 of its own customers, 71% use AI when preparing trips, but just 3% fully trust its recommendations. Some 49% had used AI to find or compare hotels, yet only 5% said its advice directly shaped their final choice. FTN News notes that a hotel company’s customers are not representative of all travellers.
- ABTA: 14% of UK adults now use AI for holiday inspiration, up from 8% last year. Family and friends (42%) are still the top source, and 38% booked overseas holidays through a travel professional, up from 34%.
Different companies, different countries, same message: AI is welcome in the planning stage and much less welcome at the checkout.
My take: this is a trust problem, not a technology problem
It is tempting to say “give it time, the models will improve and people will relax”. I do not think that is enough. A holiday is a big purchase that people have looked forward to for months. Even a very good assistant makes them nervous if the answer to “what if it gets it wrong?” is “tough luck”.
Eurostars’ survey backs this up. The top worry was outdated information (39%), then privacy (30%), then recommendations that do not match personal preferences (29%). Notice what is missing: none of the top three worries is “the AI isn’t clever enough”. They are about what happens when it is wrong.
That is why I do not buy the idea that AI will simply replace travel companies. Lastminute.com makes the same point from the inside: a package means the provider is accountable for the whole holiday, and an AI-generated itinerary on its own cannot offer that protection. A company that sells packages would say that, of course, but the survey numbers back the instinct.
The brands that win make bookings reversible
If the barrier is fear of getting it wrong, the answer is to make getting it wrong cheap. One example from business travel is worth watching. Serko has launched Serko.ai in the US. According to Business Travel Executive, trips booked through it can be cancelled in one click, with the money returned as cash to the company, rather than as an expiring airline credit. Serko says every trip is fully reversible, even on non-refundable fares or hotel rates, with a cut-off of three hours before departure for flights and up to check-in for hotels.
That is Serko’s own claim from a launch announcement, and it is for US corporate travel, not leisure. I cannot tell you how well it works in practice. But the idea is the interesting bit. It does not ask the traveller to trust the AI more. It lowers the cost of the AI being wrong. Trust follows safety.
Leisure travel could learn from this. Flexible cancellation, human support and plain-English terms may do more to unlock AI-led booking than any clever assistant. This echoes what I said about the trip layer in Booking isn’t betting $100m on another chatbot. It’s buying the trip layer. The winners will own the part after “confirm”, not just the chat before it.
What travel brands should do now
- Be the source AI trusts. Outdated information was the top worry. Keep prices, availability and policies accurate and easy for machines to read. That is where specialist travel AI and GEO work pays off.
- Win the planning stage and the final click. Travellers still check details before they pay. Make your page the clearest one. Strong foundations in specialist travel SEO still matter here.
- Put your cancellation and support promise up front. If you are flexible, say so loudly.
- Do not fake an AI strategy. Plugging in a chatbot is not a plan, as I argued in Hotels have bought ChatGPT. They haven’t bought an AI strategy.
The bottom line
That gap is not a failure of AI. It is the market telling us what it needs: accuracy, accountability and an easy way out.
The brand that makes an AI-booked trip feel as safe as walking into a shop will not need to persuade anyone to trust the technology.
Over to you
Would you let an AI assistant book and pay for your next holiday if you could cancel with one click and get a full refund? Or does the trust problem go deeper than refunds? Tell me where you stand on LinkedIn or X.
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