The Rise of Agentic AI: Redefining the Future of Travel Technology

This blog post is written by Jon Pickles, Chairman, TTI

AI is evolving fast. What started as a wave of generative capabilities is now giving rise to a new breed of intelligent systems: Agentic AI.

Unlike traditional AI tools that rely on static prompts or predefined rules, Agentic AI introduces autonomous agents, digital entities that can reason, plan, and act proactively in pursuit of goals. In the travel sector, this marks the beginning of a new era: one where AI doesn’t just respond to users, it works for them.

What is Agentic AI?

Agentic AI refers to AI systems that possess agency: the ability to make decisions, take initiative, and act independently within defined parameters. These systems can assess objectives, prioritise actions, interact with multiple data sources, and even collaborate with other agents to deliver outcomes.

It’s not just about generating text or images. It’s about thinking, planning, and doing,  autonomously.

Whereas a traditional chatbot waits for a traveller’s query, an Agentic AI might monitor flight delays, cross-reference hotel check-in times, rebook an airport transfer, and notify the traveller.  All before they even realise there’s been a disruption.

Real-World Travel Use Cases

The opportunities for Agentic AI in travel are profound. Here are just a few practical scenarios we’ll see emerging:

1. Dynamic, Self-Improving Itineraries

An Agentic travel assistant can automatically adjust a customer’s itinerary when disruptions occur, considering factors like personal preferences, loyalty status, weather, and current availability across suppliers.

2. Autonomous Travel Planners

Imagine giving your AI a budget, dates, and travel goals (“somewhere warm with culture and good food”), and it builds, books, and adjusts your entire journey across flights, hotels, insurance and excursions, negotiating price and availability in real-time.

3. Proactive Corporate Travel Management

For TMCs, Agentic AI can act as a virtual assistant monitoring policy compliance, supplier performance, traveller wellbeing and costs, automatically adjusting future bookings and flagging anomalies before they escalate.

4. Post-Booking Personalisation

An autonomous agent can scan local events, partner offers and contextual signals (e.g. weather, mood from past feedback, location triggers) to push timely, hyper-personalised upsells, upgrades or content throughout the travel lifecycle.

How Can Travel Businesses Start?

Adopting Agentic AI doesn’t require a complete tech overhaul but it does demand intentional design. Here are some places to begin:

• Map your workflows: Where do repetitive or decision-based tasks exist? Look for areas where a human currently “orchestrates” actions across systems.

• Audit your data infrastructure: Agentic AI thrives on connectivity. Ensure APIs, supplier feeds, and real-time data flows are available.

• Start small with travel-specific agents: Use cases like quote building, CRM enrichment, email triage, or product matching are good first steps.

• Experiment with agent frameworks: Tools like AutoGen, CrewAI, and LangGraph are early platforms supporting multi-agent architectures, but consider safety and domain control carefully.

Ethical & Regulatory Considerations

With greater autonomy comes greater responsibility. Travel brands exploring Agentic AI must also factor in:

• Transparency: Users need to understand what actions an agent is taking, and why.

• Control: There should always be human override mechanisms, especially in sensitive journeys.

• Data compliance: With GDPR and the incoming EU AI Act, businesses must ensure data flows, model usage, and decision-making are compliant, auditable, and fair.

• This is not a space to “move fast and break things”. Travel is a high-trust sector, and reputational risk is real.

Why TTI is Watching Closely

At the Travel Technology Initiative (TTI), we’ve spent over 30 years helping travel businesses navigate disruption and this next shift is one of the most transformative yet. Agentic AI isn’t a futuristic concept, it’s an emerging design pattern that will reshape how travel operates.

Following our successful “AI in Action” event, our Autumn Conference, titled “The Future is Agentic”, will dive deeper into how leading travel and travel tech companies are already embracing agentic systems and where the next wave of value will come from.

We believe travel businesses that experiment early, build responsibly, and collaborate openly will have a distinct advantage.