A new report from Phocuswright and ITB Berlin paints a striking picture of what the travel industry could look like by 2046 – and the window to shape it is closing fast.
Imagine booking a trip in 2046. You don’t browse, compare, or click through checkout flows. An AI agent does it all – negotiating on your behalf, drawing on years of your preferences, and filtering out destinations that have simply priced you out or closed their borders. It sounds convenient. It might also sound like a loss of something.
That tension – between efficiency and equity, between personalization and power – sat at the heart of the inaugural Leadership Exchange, a closed-door summit co-hosted by Phocuswright and ITB Berlin in March 2026. Senior travel executives gathered at CityCube Berlin to ask hard questions about where their industry is actually headed, and who gets to decide.
Trust is the new battleground
The consensus among attendees was clear: AI will strip enormous amounts of friction from travel. But friction isn’t always the enemy. Much of it is where trust lives – the reviews you read, the agent you call, the brand you’ve relied on for years.
As AI intermediaries multiply, accountability gets murky. Who is responsible when an AI-booked trip goes wrong? Sunweb Group CEO Mieke De Schepper put it plainly: trust isn’t a formula you can automate. Increasingly, she noted, it won’t just be companies that are evaluated for trustworthiness – travelers will be too.
Brands may matter less than you think
For decades, travel brands competed fiercely for customer loyalty. That competition may soon feel quaint. As AI agents take over search and discovery, the “source of truth” becomes the agent itself- not the airline, hotel chain, or tour operator behind the booking. T2Impact’s Timothy O’Neil-Dunne delivered a blunt forecast: by 2029, traditional discovery is nearly gone.
That’s less than three years away.
Who gets to travel at all?
Technology tends to promise democratization. And in some ways, AI-powered travel could deliver it – smoother logistics, lower planning barriers, better access for first-time or less experienced travelers. But the summit surfaced a harder reality running in parallel: geopolitics, pricing, and regulation are actively narrowing who qualifies.
Some countries are already using visa regimes and tourism caps to manage – or limit – inflows. Stephen Joyce of Protect Group described a future where nations either “visa their way out of tourism or simply price people out.” Travel, once framed as a right, is quietly being reclassified as a privilege.
The consolidation question
Will AI create a more diverse travel ecosystem, or a more concentrated one? Possibly both, in different layers. Smaller operators could thrive by using AI to reach hyper-specific audiences. But whoever controls the data -and the agents that interpret it – holds disproportionate power. The companies that sit between travelers and their destinations may not be travel companies at all.
Participants left without a single agreed-upon vision of 2046. That, arguably, was the point. The future isn’t fixed – but the decisions being made right now about data ownership, AI architecture, and regulatory frameworks will determine whose version of it comes true.
-The rewrite preserves all the core ideas while restructuring for a general audience – leading with a concrete scenario to draw the reader in, grouping insights thematically, and replacing conference-speak with sharper, more direct language. The diagram above maps the four central tensions the summit identified.
The Future of Travel Is Being Decided Right Now
A new report from Phocuswright and ITB Berlin paints a striking picture of what the travel industry could look like by 2046 – and the window to shape it is closing fast.
Imagine booking a trip in 2046. You don’t browse, compare, or click through checkout flows. An AI agent does it all – negotiating on your behalf, drawing on years of your preferences, and filtering out destinations that have simply priced you out or closed their borders. It sounds convenient. It might also sound like a loss of something.
That tension – between efficiency and equity, between personalization and power – sat at the heart of the inaugural Leadership Exchange, a closed-door summit co-hosted by Phocuswright and ITB Berlin in March 2026. Senior travel executives gathered at CityCube Berlin to ask hard questions about where their industry is actually headed, and who gets to decide.
Trust is the new battleground
The consensus among attendees was clear: AI will strip enormous amounts of friction from travel. But friction isn’t always the enemy. Much of it is where trust lives – the reviews you read, the agent you call, the brand you’ve relied on for years.
As AI intermediaries multiply, accountability gets murky. Who is responsible when an AI-booked trip goes wrong? Sunweb Group CEO Mieke De Schepper put it plainly: trust isn’t a formula you can automate. Increasingly, she noted, it won’t just be companies that are evaluated for trustworthiness – travelers will be too.
Brands may matter less than you think
For decades, travel brands competed fiercely for customer loyalty. That competition may soon feel quaint. As AI agents take over search and discovery, the “source of truth” becomes the agent itself – not the airline, hotel chain, or tour operator behind the booking. T2Impact’s Timothy O’Neil-Dunne delivered a blunt forecast: by 2029, traditional discovery is nearly gone.
That’s less than three years away.
Who gets to travel at all?
Technology tends to promise democratization. And in some ways, AI-powered travel could deliver it – smoother logistics, lower planning barriers, better access for first-time or less experienced travelers. But the summit surfaced a harder reality running in parallel: geopolitics, pricing, and regulation are actively narrowing who qualifies.
Some countries are already using visa regimes and tourism caps to manage – or limit – inflows. Stephen Joyce of Protect Group described a future where nations either “visa their way out of tourism or simply price people out.” Travel, once framed as a right, is quietly being reclassified as a privilege.
The consolidation question
Will AI create a more diverse travel ecosystem, or a more concentrated one? Possibly both, in different layers. Smaller operators could thrive by using AI to reach hyper-specific audiences. But whoever controls the data — and the agents that interpret it – holds disproportionate power. The companies that sit between travelers and their destinations may not be travel companies at all.
Participants left without a single agreed-upon vision of 2046. That, arguably, was the point. The future isn’t fixed – but the decisions being made right now about data ownership, AI architecture, and regulatory frameworks will determine whose version of it comes true.
–The rewrite preserves all the core ideas while restructuring for a general audience – leading with a concrete scenario to draw the reader in, grouping insights thematically, and replacing conference-speak with sharper, more direct language. The diagram above maps the four central tensions the summit identified.
