Travellers let AI plan the trip but keep the final click

The WTM Global Travel Report, released on 4 November, found that only 36% of travellers trust agentic AI to complete a booking. Age splits the answer: 54% of 18 to 34 year olds would let an assistant pay, against 18% of those aged 55 and over.

Anyone booking a trip this winter will meet an assistant inside an app they already use. Most of them will still want the final click. That split shapes how Agoda, MakeMyTrip and their rivals sell the next phase of travel booking.

Agoda has just put its assistant in front of users in 21 markets. The prize is not the transaction. It is the research hours before it.

Trust splits sharply by age

The WTM report defines agentic AI as software that completes tasks on a traveller's behalf. The age gap is wide: the under-35s are almost five times as likely as those aged 55 or over to have used AI for inspiration or itinerary development.

Use of AI chatbots for international trip planning more than doubled, from 10% in 2024 to 24% in 2026, the report found. Trust in research runs higher. Some 58% of travellers trust AI tools to search and compare prices and 53% to generate recommendations.

Agoda takes its assistant to 21 markets

Agoda has expanded its AI Assistant to 21 markets, including Vietnam and India, after a limited test in September. Vietnam News reported the Vietnam rollout on 4 November. Agoda calls it the first new booking experience in its more than 20-year history.

The assistant combines conversational planning with Agoda's live inventory of more than 6 million accommodations, over 130,000 flight routes and more than 300,000 activities. Its conversational functions run on OpenAI models. Restaurants and points of interest come through Gemini with Google Maps Grounding, including ratings, photos and opening hours. A trip planner canvas keeps bookings and half-formed ideas in one view.

Travel planning is fragmented, CEO Omri Morgenshtern said. People jump between apps, tabs, messages and spreadsheets, he said. The goal, he said, is to remove repetitive work so travellers can decide with more confidence.

Agoda's own survey finds few would hand over payment

Agoda's 2027 Asia Travel Pulse found that 53% of surveyed Asian travellers now use AI to plan trips, up from 33% a year earlier. IT Brief Asia reported the findings on 4 November. Only 7% said they would use AI to make a booking, while 64% use it to build an itinerary.

Caution about money runs through the answers. Across 11 Asian markets, 89% said they still want some degree of control over hotel bookings, and 57% would rather book a hotel themselves. Of the 38% who would let an agent book in some form, 23% would allow it only with a review before confirmation and 9% only for simple or low-cost reservations.

The regional average hides big differences. AI use for planning rose from 30% to 63% in Vietnam and from 35% to 63% in Taiwan. Vietnam also recorded the highest full trust in AI booking, at 19%, more than three times the regional figure. The survey covered 3,395 respondents across 11 markets.

Idan Zalzberg, Agoda's chief technology officer, said research that used to take travellers hours can now be done in a single conversation. Booking is different. Many travellers still want to make the final decision on their own terms, he said.

MakeMyTrip's Myra: volume up, full bookings unclear

MakeMyTrip's assistant, Myra, now handles more than 90,000 daily conversations and assists over 3,000 bookings a day, CEO Rajesh Magow said on the company's earnings call for the quarter ended 30 September. That is up from 25,000 conversations a day a year earlier. Customers who use Myra book 1.7 times as often as those who do not, and 2.1 times as often in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, which account for 55% of its conversations. Myra resolves over 53% of post-booking flight and hotel queries without a human.

Magow drew a line between recommending and delivering. "A general assistant can recommend. A travel platform is accountable for delivery," he said, citing supply, transaction-level data and servicing as reasons general-purpose assistants cannot replace MakeMyTrip. MediaNama reported the call on 27 October. MakeMyTrip launched end-to-end booking and payment inside Myra last quarter but gave no figures for bookings completed fully inside it.

Nobody can measure AI's real share yet

Booking Holdings said referrals from AI platforms account for less than 1% of its room nights, according to the WTM report. The report says that undercounts AI. Travellers who research with an assistant and then book directly or through a search engine are not counted as AI referrals.

Agoda says early beta users are more likely to book a "connected trip" combining hotels, flights, tickets and tours. It has published no figures for that shift.

The report's authors expect the trust figure to move. "As awareness and usage increase, trust in using AI applications to complete bookings is likely to grow," the WTM Global Travel Report said.