Generative AI, along with all of its potential and drawbacks, has become a hot topic of conversation in nearly every industry - from education to healthcare, finance and manufacturing.

Along with all of those industries, Generative AI is also having a profound impact on travel.

A newly released report from Phocuswright shows that not only is GenAI being rapidly adopted by travelers, but these same travelers are also very happy with the results of such technological developments.

Titled Travelers and Tech 2024: GenAI, VR and More, the report shows that in 2023, 22 percent of all U.S. travelers were using GenAI for any topic (not just travel), which was less than other popular consumer technologies measured, such as virtual reality and augmented reality.?

But come 2024, GenAI leapfrogged to 39 percent usage, which was far more than VR and AR.? It's a development the report authors called "remarkable" given that VR and AR technologies have been around much longer?

The Phocuswright researchers found that of those individuals who used GenAI at all in the past year, 46 percent did so for travel, making it the second most popular topic after entertainment/arts.?

This reality places the overall rate of usage of GenAI technology for leisure travel among the traveling population at 18 percent, says the report.?

And moving forward, usage of GenAI is expected to grow even further among travelers.?

In the next 12 months, leisure travel will be the top GenAI use case for travelers.?

Why the mass adoption of Gen AI among the traveling public?

The report offers some ideas on this front: "This is because most travelers have a very positive view of it. They are most likely to see it as useful and creative," says the report.

Being quite happy with it, travelers are significantly more likely to use GenAI again in the next 12 months for all types of uses associated with the travel journey.?

The top use for GenAI over the coming year among travelers will be to gather ideas about where to go, with 74 percent of respondents indicating this is how they plan to use the technology.

Researching flights is shaping up to be the second most common use of GenAI moving forward, with 65 percent of respondents stating that this too is how they would use GenAI.

Rounding out the top three GenAI uses is 'comparing and choosing destinations,' with 63 percent indicating this is how GenAI could be helpful to them.

Some of the additional ways consumers foresee using GenAI in the travel process include:

• Comparing and choosing things to do (55%)
• Putting together an itinerary (54%)
• Getting ideas about things to do (52%)
• Researching hotels and short-term rentals (49%)
• Researching car rentals (43%)
  
  

With these sorts of statistics in mind, Phocuswright says its main trend for 2025 is the "significant shift of travel intent into generative chat and search environments, with the anticipation that a meaningful number of bookings will occur there in the next year or two."?

Need further proof that GenAI will be a major force in the future? Google has already started working on integrating bookings into its chat environment. And in April 2024 at the Google Cloud Next conference, the company demonstrated flight search inside its GenAI Gemini.

This has yet to roll out publicly, but it¡¯s coming, says Phocuswright.

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