Amadeus: Travel Trends 2026

jonpickles5
Dec 4
8 min read

Five Signals Every Travel Tech Leader Should Be Building For Now according. to Amadeus Travel Trends 2026 Report for Travel Tech Leaders

(Inspired by the Amadeus Insights / Globetrender “Travel Trends 2026” report.)

TL;DR: Travel Trends 2026 for Travel Tech Leaders

Five big shifts: Pets as real travellers, AI-blended trip planning, new long-range routes, fandom-fuelled trips and configurable hotel stays. All are powered by data, AI and new infrastructure.
Data gets granular: Pets, room attributes, fandom links, biometrics and wellness needs all become first-class data points, not free-text “notes” in legacy systems.
AI-first discovery: Travellers already mix generative AI, social video and community reviews. If your content, inventory and rules are not structured for AI agents, you risk never appearing in the shortlist.
New networks and products: Long-range narrow-body aircraft and ultra long-haul routes change which cities matter. At the same time, IP partnerships and fan communities become hard demand drivers that need to be surfaced in search and packaging.
Hotels become “Pick ’n’ Stays”: Attribute-based retailing means guests configure stays by feature and are willing to pay more for the right setup. This demands new CRS, PMS and channel capabilities.
Membership and collaboration matter: These trends cut across airlines, airports, hotels, tech vendors and regulators. Industry bodies and membership communities that align standards, data models and APIs will give their members a structural advantage.
Five big shifts: Pets as real travellers, AI-blended trip planning, new long-range routes, fandom-fuelled trips and configurable hotel stays. All are powered by data, AI and new infrastructure.
Data gets granular: Pets, room attributes, fandom links, biometrics and wellness needs all become first-class data points, not free-text “notes” in legacy systems.
AI-first discovery: Travellers already mix generative AI, social video and community reviews. If your content, inventory and rules are not structured for AI agents, you risk never appearing in the shortlist.
New networks and products: Long-range narrow-body aircraft and ultra long-haul routes change which cities matter. At the same time, IP partnerships and fan communities become hard demand drivers that need to be surfaced in search and packaging.
Hotels become “Pick ’n’ Stays”: Attribute-based retailing means guests configure stays by feature and are willing to pay more for the right setup. This demands new CRS, PMS and channel capabilities.
Membership and collaboration matter: These trends cut across airlines, airports, hotels, tech vendors and regulators. Industry bodies and membership communities that align standards, data models and APIs will give their members a structural advantage.

Travel Trends 2026: Five Signals Every Travel Tech Leader Should Be Building For Now

By 2026, travel will feel more like near-future science fiction than a continuation of 2019. Amadeus and Globetrender’s latest Travel Trends 2026 report highlights five big shifts: dignified pet travel, AI-blended trip planning, long-range narrow-body aircraft, fandom-driven trips and hyper-personalised hotel stays. Underneath the colourful labels, these are all technology stories, rooted in data, infrastructure and AI.

For travel and travel-technology companies, the question is not whether these trends are “interesting”. It is how quickly you can re-platform your products, data and partnerships so you can sell into these new patterns of demand and avoid being edited out by AI-driven discovery.

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The five trends in one view

1. The Pawprint Economy: pets as real travellers, not accessories

Pet ownership continues to rise globally and the pet industry is forecast to reach around 500 billion US dollars by 2030. Amadeus highlights a shift away from novelty “pawsecco” type offers towards serious investment in pet welfare, both on the move and at home.

Key signals include:

New rules that bring pets out of “cattle class”, such as larger dogs in cabins on Italian airlines and the reintroduction of pet passports in the UK, restoring easier cross-border travel for pet owners.
Dedicated pet-forward charters and long-haul services, such as SkyePets’ planned transpacific in-cabin pet flights.
Smart pet tech at home, like AI feeders that recognise individual pets, track unusual eating patterns and self-sterilise, plus biometric collars linked to 24/7 tele-vet services.

For travel tech, this is about new customer records, new ancillaries and new operational data flows. Pet profiles, health certificates, cabin seat-maps, loyalty logic and insurance rules need to be modelled as first-class objects, not notes in a free text field.

2. Travel Mixology: travellers blend AI, content and community

The report shows the share of travellers using generative AI tools for trip planning has risen from 11% to 18% in a year, a 64% increase. Many use AI to save time, seek personalised recommendations and discover new destinations.

At the same time, trust is not automatic:

A quarter of travellers report receiving outdated or inaccurate information from AI while planning trips.
Only 46% of people say they are willing to trust AI systems at all.

As a result, travellers are building their own “mix”: LLMs for the big picture, Reddit and YouTube for lived experience, then brand chatbots and direct channels for prices and bookings. Reddit’s travel community has grown rapidly, and user-generated video is now the second most influential research source, after word of mouth.

For travel companies, Travel Mixology should shape both marketing and product:

Content and product data must be structured so AI agents can parse it, verify it and quote it accurately.
At the same time, brands need visible human expertise on forums, social and video to give synthetic output “human glue” that builds trust.

3. Point-to-Point Precision: new aircraft and new airport journeys

Long-range narrow-body aircraft such as the Airbus A321XLR and other extended-range models are redefining what is possible in a single hop. There are more than 500 orders for the A321XLR alone; early adopters like Iberia and Aer Lingus are already planning or operating long routes such as Madrid to the Americas and new US links out of Ireland.

Benefits include:

Fuel efficiency gains of 25 to 30 percent per seat compared with previous models.
New non-stop links between “thinner” city pairs such as Montréal–Mallorca and India–Athens.

On the ultra long-haul side, Qantas’ Project Sunrise will link Sydney directly to London and New York, with cabin layouts designed around wellness, movement and lighting sequences to manage circadian rhythms.

On the ground, Amadeus cites growing appetite for biometric corridors. Around 69% of global travellers say they would use biometric gateways if it meant no stopping for passports, and Amadeus’ own Seamless Corridor is already being piloted. Airports themselves, especially in Asia, are being rebuilt as biophilic destinations in their own right, rather than places to rush through.

For technologists, this changes capacity planning, search and merchandising. Schedules, availability and pricing become more complex as second-tier cities gain direct connectivity. Retail systems, corporate booking tools and NDC/API stacks need to reflect that, and servicing platforms need richer data about biometric tokens and traveller consents.

4. Pop Culting: fandom and IP as hard demand drivers

The report argues that fragmented content feeds and algorithmic recommendations are eroding shared culture. In response, fans will travel to find connection in the real world.

Examples include:

Seoul’s K-drama tourism, where the Seoul Tourism Organization has built a full visitor journey around a blockbuster Netflix film, complete with themed food, craft workshops and dance classes. Future bookings to Seoul between January and June 2026 are already tracking 19% above the previous year; bookings from Japan and the USA are up 33% and 30% respectively.
Alberta, filming location for “The Last of Us”, where international bookings for the first half of 2026 are up 20%, with EU27 demand up 47%, alongside rising hotel occupancy and average daily rates.
Virgin Voyages’ themed “True Crime Voyage” cruises, and Airbnb Originals, which let guests book immersive experiences with creators, chefs and performers linked to famous shows and formats.

Destinations and brands are also investing in long-term IP anchors, from Universal’s planned UK park to Disneyland Abu Dhabi.

These are not marketing campaigns; they are pipelines of intent that show up clearly in booking data. The tech challenge is to stitch IP into inventory and content so that fans can search, price and book by story, character or creator, not just by city and date.

5. Pick ’n’ Stays: hotels as configurable products

Personalisation is finally reaching the hotel room. Amadeus describes a near future where guests configure stays at attribute level: blackout blinds, in-room Pilates, dual-screen work setups, consoles for gaming, even proximity to the breakfast buffet.

This shift is powered by evolving central reservation systems and booking engines, such as Amadeus’ iHotelier, and integrations with partners like Shiji that allow hotels to track detailed attributes, bundle them and price them dynamically.

Demand is clear:

63% of travellers say they are willing to pay extra for specific room attributes beyond the standard daily rate.
17% of US business travellers would pay up to 20% more for business services bundled with the room.
12% of Gen Z travellers would pay up to 25% more for features such as gaming consoles or premium TV.

Layer in digital twins such as Hotelverse, where guests can explore a 3D replica of the property before choosing a specific room, and you have a redefinition of what “looks to book” means.

For hotel tech providers, this is all about attribute-based retailing at scale: new data models, new connectivity with OTAs and wholesalers, and new revenue management logic for micro-attributes, not just room types.

What this means for travel technology and membership communities

Across all five trends, a few common threads emerge.

Data is becoming more granular and more contextual
Pets, fandoms, health needs, attributes and biometric tokens are now central to the journey. Travel companies need clean, interoperable data models that can represent people, companions, assets and preferences at a much finer level than legacy CRS, PSS and GDS schemas ever expected.
AI and agents will sit on top of that data
As AI-powered search, planning and agentic workflows mature, they will only recommend, price and book what they can understand and trust. That means structured content, current inventory, explicit rules and robust APIs. It also means clarity about provenance and bias, so travellers can see where recommendations are coming from.
Infrastructure and standards will decide who wins
Long-range narrow-bodies, biometric corridors and attribute-rich CRS platforms all rely on standards, open interfaces and shared language. Membership organisations, consortia and industry bodies are the natural places to align on those foundations and avoid every brand building its own incompatible stack.
Experience design is now a joint product between suppliers and tech partners
From K-pop tours to Pick ’n’ Stays, what the traveller perceives as “one experience” is often a mesh of airline, airport, hotel, attraction, payments and identity providers. Travel tech firms that can orchestrate these ecosystems through real-time APIs, consented data sharing and interoperable identity will have a structural advantage.

Practical questions for travel leaders

To turn the report into a roadmap, boards and product teams might ask:

Can our current systems handle pets, attributes, fandom-linked offers and biometrics as first-class data, or will they disappear in free text and manual notes?
Are we ready for AI-first discovery, with content structured so that LLMs and answer engines can surface us accurately and fairly?
How would our distribution strategy change if ultra long-haul routes reshaped demand away from our current hubs?
What IP relationships or subcultures are naturally aligned with our brand, and do we have the technology to turn them into bookable experiences?
For hotels and accommodation providers, do we have a clear attribute strategy, from PMS to channel management, revenue and CRM?

The Amadeus Travel Trends 2026 report is full of vivid examples, but its real value is as a prompt. It challenges travel and travel-technology leaders to treat pets, AI, attributes, IP and infrastructure as connected parts of the same transformation, not isolated fads.