Companies such as Trivago, Withlocals, Faye, Priceline, and Travelier are among those that have significantly increased their internal investment in artificial intelligence. This interest is not simply driven by a technological trend, but by the need to operate more quickly, improve productivity, and provide a more personalised experience in an increasingly competitive travel market.
Tourism businesses work with an enormous volume of information. They must interpret traveller preferences, product availability, price fluctuations, shifts in demand, customer reviews, operational incidents, and multiple communication channels. In this context, artificial intelligence offers the ability to process data more efficiently and turn it into more useful decisions for the organisation.
Trivago clearly illustrates this transformation. During the first seven months of 2026, the company invested more than five times the amount it had spent on artificial intelligence tools and tokens throughout the whole of the previous year. Growth is evident not only in its budget, but also in adoption among its teams. Ninety-three per cent of its employees say they now use these technologies on a daily basis, compared with 63 per cent one year earlier.
The expansion of internal use confirms that artificial intelligence is entering a wide range of business areas. It can help streamline content creation, enhance customer service, organise information, support programming tasks, facilitate commercial analysis, optimise marketing campaigns, and identify opportunities to improve working processes. Its value lies not only in completing tasks more quickly, but also in enabling professionals to devote more time to responsibilities requiring knowledge, judgement, creativity, and human connection.
The results are also beginning to become apparent. In Trivago’s case, 86 per cent of employees state that the use of these tools is producing a measurable improvement in their work. This perception is particularly significant in an industry where responsiveness can make the difference between securing a booking, resolving an issue in time, or maintaining a traveller’s confidence.
The decision to partially reduce expenditure on certain SaaS solutions or outsourced development does not mean that these tools have lost all relevance. Many will continue to form part of companies’ technological infrastructure. However, the shift reveals a reassessment of priorities: businesses are seeking more flexible, integrated systems that can adapt rapidly to their operational requirements.
Artificial intelligence also makes it possible to move towards greater personalisation. Today’s travellers expect recommendations tailored to their interests, straightforward booking processes, immediate responses, and consistent communication across different channels. To meet these expectations, businesses need to understand their audiences more effectively while maintaining privacy, transparency, and the responsible use of information.
At the same time, the adoption of this technology presents important challenges. Companies will need to ensure data quality, protect sensitive information, supervise the results generated by these systems, and provide appropriate training for their teams. Artificial intelligence does not replace professional responsibility or knowledge of the destination, the tourism product, or each customer’s genuine needs.
Real progress will come when technology is integrated with a human-centred vision of tourism. Travel remains an experience closely linked to emotion, trust, discovery, and contact with other cultures. Intelligent tools should therefore serve to improve service, simplify processes, and strengthen companies’ ability to respond better to people.
The growing investment made by companies such as Trivago, Withlocals, Faye, Priceline, and Travelier signals a new stage for the sector. Artificial intelligence is no longer viewed as a distant possibility, but as a central element in building tourism businesses that are more agile, efficient, innovative, and better prepared to respond to the evolving demands of the market.
