Agentic AI set to ‘redefine traveller journey’

Sabre whitepaper forecasts paradigm shift in travel commerce

Agentic AI is a new paradigm poised to ‘redefine the traveller journey’ and ‘unlock unprecedented growth’ across the travel industry, according to a new white paper from Sabre.

The software and technology company’s report forecasts ‘one of the most disruptive shifts in travel tech history’ as ‘conversational commerce’ comes on board.

The paper, Chat As the New Influencer: From Conversations to Clicks, predicts a ‘seismic shift’ in how travel is discovered, personalised, and booked.

It says agentic AI is ‘not just a new channel’ and compares its growing use in travel to how social media has changed retail over the past decade.

Sabre says that travel is a high complexity purchase, unlike clothing, involving syncing flights, hotels, ground transport and availability of multiple travellers, complexities which it believes agentic AI can help solve.

“Conversational commerce is more than ‘just’ a tech trend for the travel industry; it’s a generational leap,” said Jen Catto, chief marketing officer at Sabre.

“It will collapse the distance between desire and delivery, turning complexity into conversion and transforming every traveller into their own influencer. Talk is no longer cheap. It’s AI-powered and driving revenue.”

The whitepaper outlines a vision for the future of travel retailing, in which social commerce inspires travel purchases, and conversational commerce converts.

It found that AI is expanding the travel market, with more than half of travellers using agentic AI to discover options they may not have found otherwise, ‘signalling true demand creation, not just share shift’.

Sabre says ‘the storefront is changing’ and that: ‘Travel won’t just be sold on websites and apps. It will be co-created in chat windows, voice assistants, and AI agents.’

Trust, it says, will be ‘the new currency’, predicting that as AI adoption accelerates, transparency, governance, and data integrity will ‘separate leaders from laggards’.

Through its SabreMosaic platform, Sabre is deploying AI built on Google’s Vertex AI and Gemini solutions, powered by Sabre’s industry-leading curated travel data cloud.

Its Sabre IQ AI Layer personalises interactions at scale, while its IQ Assurance Layer ensures outputs are explainable, secure, and compliant.

“Sabre isn’t just responding to change, we’re setting the pace,” said Garry Wiseman, chief product and technology officer.

“We’re building the platforms to turn conversations into commerce, and commerce into loyalty. This is travel retailing reimagined – from static search to dynamic, personalised dialogue.”

The paper calls on travel brands, retailers, and suppliers to act now to embrace conversational interfaces, rethink merchandising, and build for trust.

It forecasts that, as traveller expectations evolve, “the winners will be those who meet them inside the conversation with speed, relevance, and confidence”.

Brian Reeves, chief executive and co-founder of roomangel Foundation also pointed to the ability of agentic AI to ‘hyper-personalise’ the travel booking experience as he predicted the future of hotel distribution will be ‘unrecognisable’.

He predicted that this will ‘transform the entire booking funnel’ for OTAs and impact hotels’ distributions strategies.

“In this new scenario, instead of opening 10 tabs on Google to search and book trips, hotel bookings are made agentically. That is, through an AI Agent where the search is no longer done through keywords but through conversations that allow you to search, compare, book, and hyper-personalize your experience all in one place,” said Reeves.

He said the change makes travel retailing ‘no longer about marketing’ but ‘all about data’, saying: “If hotels play their cards right, direct bookings will dominate and distribution costs will fall dramatically.

He said the speed, structure and depth of data available to agentic AI platforms will be crucial in determining how it meets users’ needs.

He said trust was the biggest challenge for agentic AI and questioned how it will interpret value for users.

“Loyalty and rewards systems in this agentic world will become part of the overall value dataset, but we will need to rethink what that agentic loyalty marketplace might look like,” said Reeves.

“There is no technical reason, for example, that a customer cannot define the rewards that are meaningful to them. For example: ‘For this hotel booking, I would like rewards in the form of Emirates Skywards points, Amazon vouchers, or XYZ.”