From SEO to agentic optimisation: Travel’s next digital shift
Recently Leighton conducted research on the adoption of AI-powered discovery across the travel industry, exploring how customer expectations are changing and where travel brands should focus their efforts as AI reshapes the path from inspiration to conversion.
As part of this research, we sat down with Steve Morland, CTO at Leighton to discuss the future of travel discovery, the fragmentation of customer journeys and why AI may fundamentally change the role websites play within the travel ecosystem.
For more than two decades, travel brands have invested heavily in digital discovery. Websites became the centre of the customer journey, search engine optimisation shaped acquisition strategies and marketing teams optimised pathways from inspiration through to conversion, carefully measuring every click, interaction and referral source along the way.
However, in our interview with Steve, he highlighted that the industry may now be entering a very different era. One where websites remain important but are no longer the primary gateway between travel brands and their customers.
One of the biggest shifts underway in travel is the changing nature of discovery itself. Increasingly, customers are turning to generative AI platforms and conversational interfaces to plan trips, compare destinations and build itineraries. Instead of navigating traditional booking journeys, travellers are beginning to describe what they want in natural language and expect instant, contextual recommendations in return.
As part of this new normal, customers are increasingly relying on AI-powered tools to research, compare and discover travel options. Rather than navigating websites themselves, users are being guided directly to relevant content, products and booking experiences. This seemingly subtle behavioural shift has significant implications for travel brands. Historically, websites provided businesses with visibility into customer journeys. Brands could see how users arrived, what pages they visited, where they dropped off and which channels influenced conversion. That visibility is now beginning to fragment.
Instead of moving step-by-step through carefully designed digital funnels, customers increasingly arrive at websites much deeper into their booking journeys from AI-generated recommendations, social content or conversational agents.
For travel businesses, this creates a significant challenge. The traditional metrics that have powered digital marketing strategies for years may become less reliable as AI platforms increasingly sit between brands and consumers.
This does not mean websites disappear, but it may mean they become part of your infrastructure rather than the destination.
The booking systems, APIs and data layers behind travel brands will remain critical, but customers may interact with them through entirely different interfaces. For example, instead of selecting dates, passenger numbers and routes through traditional search flows, travellers may increasingly use conversational prompts such as:
“I want to take the family to New York.”
OR
“Book me the cheapest business class flight to Milan next week.”
The challenge for travel providers is translating natural language intent into valid bookings while maintaining commercially viable customer experiences and increasingly, that means thinking beyond the website itself.
Travel brands may need to consider exposing inventory, pricing and booking functionality directly into AI ecosystems and conversational interfaces, allowing external platforms and agents to interact with their systems more dynamically. This presents an interesting challenge of how to balance that visibility while maintaining control and managing inventory.
Some businesses are already exploring proof-of-concept environments where bookings can happen directly within AI interfaces and the implication of that is profound. The website may no longer be the primary driver of discovery, even if it continues powering the underlying transaction.
Travel has always been technologically complex. Behind seemingly simple booking experiences sits a highly interconnected ecosystem of legacy reservation systems, ancillary services, pricing structures and operational dependencies, and that complexity continues to grow.
Modern travel products are no longer just flights or hotel rooms. They include seat selection, baggage options, insurance, transfers, upgrades, loyalty integration, flexible fares and countless combinations of ancillary products layered on top.
This creates a major challenge for businesses attempting to integrate AI-native experiences into legacy technology stacks.
Many airlines and travel businesses rely on multiple systems operating simultaneously – some modern and some decades old. As a result, organisations increasingly need orchestration layers capable of connecting legacy infrastructure with newer AI-enabled interfaces and services.
However, the difficulty is not simply technical capability. It is understanding the domain deeply enough to build systems that can handle the complexity of real-world travel products and customer journeys.
For years, travel businesses focused heavily on SEO. As conversational AI platforms increasingly mediate discovery, travel brands face growing pressure to become more accessible, more discoverable and more “bookable” within these ecosystems.
That uncertainty makes investment decisions difficult. Businesses are simultaneously trying to; maintain existing digital experiences, modernise infrastructure, improve AI discoverability, experiment with conversational interfaces and preserve visibility into customer behaviour.
And unlike traditional SEO, where customer pathways were relatively measurable, AI-driven discovery introduces much greater ambiguity. Brands may see bookings arrive without understanding how decisions were made upstream.
Ironically, as customer journeys become more fragmented, first-party booking data may become even more strategically important. Travel providers still retain access to one of the richest sources of behavioural insight available, historical booking patterns.
Traditionally, many travel brands underutilise this data. AI creates opportunities to interrogate this data more intelligently and personalise interactions far beyond traditional mass marketing approaches.
Rather than sending generic campaigns, travel brands could begin creating highly contextual experiences tailored to individual behaviours and intent signals. They have the opportunity to create genuinely useful experiences that reduce effort for customers while increasing relevance and conversion, and keep their websites relevant for customers.
One of the clearest themes emerging across the industry is that there is no settled playbook for AI transformation. The pace of change is simply too fast.
Businesses are being forced to experiment in real time while balancing operational risk, technical debt and uncertain customer adoption patterns. The challenge is not just building new capabilities, it is building systems that can safely evolve, scale and, if necessary, be switched off. That requires a different mindset from traditional digital optimisation.
Historically, digital experimentation often focused on incremental improvements such as changing layouts, testing colours or refining user journeys. AI-driven experiences are fundamentally less predictable some experiments may generate meaningful commercial uplift and others may fail entirely. What matters increasingly is the ability to test, learn and adapt quickly.
Travel businesses are unlikely to abandon traditional booking journeys entirely. Customers will still visit websites, search flows will still matter, and structured booking experiences will remain important. But how your customers get to the point of booking will be distinctly different.
Customers now move fluidly between AI assistants, social platforms, recommendation engines, conversational interfaces, direct channels, aggregators and even loyalty ecosystems.
The challenge is no longer simply building better websites. It is learning how to operate within a world where discovery happens everywhere and where being accessible to AI-driven ecosystems may become just as important as being visible on Google once was.
Steve’s interview was conducted alongside sessions with travel industry professionals and input from 1,000 recent travel consumers as part of Leighton’s inaugural travel, aviation and hospitality research programme.
You can download the full report here: https://landing.leighton.com/travel-aviation-capabilities
Recently Leighton conducted research on the adoption of AI-powered discovery across the travel industry, exploring how customer expectations are changing and where travel brands should focus their efforts as AI reshapes the path from inspiration to conversion.
As part of this research, we sat down with Steve Morland, CTO at Leighton to discuss the future of travel discovery, the fragmentation of customer journeys and why AI may fundamentally change the role websites play within the travel ecosystem.
For more than two decades, travel brands have invested heavily in digital discovery. Websites became the centre of the customer journey, search engine optimisation shaped acquisition strategies and marketing teams optimised pathways from inspiration through to conversion, carefully measuring every click, interaction and referral source along the way.
However, in our interview with Steve, he highlighted that the industry may now be entering a very different era. One where websites remain important but are no longer the primary gateway between travel brands and their customers.
One of the biggest shifts underway in travel is the changing nature of discovery itself. Increasingly, customers are turning to generative AI platforms and conversational interfaces to plan trips, compare destinations and build itineraries. Instead of navigating traditional booking journeys, travellers are beginning to describe what they want in natural language and expect instant, contextual recommendations in return.
As part of this new normal, customers are increasingly relying on AI-powered tools to research, compare and discover travel options. Rather than navigating websites themselves, users are being guided directly to relevant content, products and booking experiences. This seemingly subtle behavioural shift has significant implications for travel brands. Historically, websites provided businesses with visibility into customer journeys. Brands could see how users arrived, what pages they visited, where they dropped off and which channels influenced conversion. That visibility is now beginning to fragment.
Instead of moving step-by-step through carefully designed digital funnels, customers increasingly arrive at websites much deeper into their booking journeys from AI-generated recommendations, social content or conversational agents.
For travel businesses, this creates a significant challenge. The traditional metrics that have powered digital marketing strategies for years may become less reliable as AI platforms increasingly sit between brands and consumers.
This does not mean websites disappear, but it may mean they become part of your infrastructure rather than the destination.
The booking systems, APIs and data layers behind travel brands will remain critical, but customers may interact with them through entirely different interfaces. For example, instead of selecting dates, passenger numbers and routes through traditional search flows, travellers may increasingly use conversational prompts such as:
“I want to take the family to New York.”
OR
“Book me the cheapest business class flight to Milan next week.”
The challenge for travel providers is translating natural language intent into valid bookings while maintaining commercially viable customer experiences and increasingly, that means thinking beyond the website itself.
Travel brands may need to consider exposing inventory, pricing and booking functionality directly into AI ecosystems and conversational interfaces, allowing external platforms and agents to interact with their systems more dynamically. This presents an interesting challenge of how to balance that visibility while maintaining control and managing inventory.
Some businesses are already exploring proof-of-concept environments where bookings can happen directly within AI interfaces and the implication of that is profound. The website may no longer be the primary driver of discovery, even if it continues powering the underlying transaction.
Travel has always been technologically complex. Behind seemingly simple booking experiences sits a highly interconnected ecosystem of legacy reservation systems, ancillary services, pricing structures and operational dependencies, and that complexity continues to grow.
Modern travel products are no longer just flights or hotel rooms. They include seat selection, baggage options, insurance, transfers, upgrades, loyalty integration, flexible fares and countless combinations of ancillary products layered on top.
This creates a major challenge for businesses attempting to integrate AI-native experiences into legacy technology stacks.
Many airlines and travel businesses rely on multiple systems operating simultaneously – some modern and some decades old. As a result, organisations increasingly need orchestration layers capable of connecting legacy infrastructure with newer AI-enabled interfaces and services.
However, the difficulty is not simply technical capability. It is understanding the domain deeply enough to build systems that can handle the complexity of real-world travel products and customer journeys.
For years, travel businesses focused heavily on SEO. As conversational AI platforms increasingly mediate discovery, travel brands face growing pressure to become more accessible, more discoverable and more “bookable” within these ecosystems.
That uncertainty makes investment decisions difficult. Businesses are simultaneously trying to; maintain existing digital experiences, modernise infrastructure, improve AI discoverability, experiment with conversational interfaces and preserve visibility into customer behaviour.
And unlike traditional SEO, where customer pathways were relatively measurable, AI-driven discovery introduces much greater ambiguity. Brands may see bookings arrive without understanding how decisions were made upstream.
Ironically, as customer journeys become more fragmented, first-party booking data may become even more strategically important. Travel providers still retain access to one of the richest sources of behavioural insight available, historical booking patterns.
Traditionally, many travel brands underutilise this data. AI creates opportunities to interrogate this data more intelligently and personalise interactions far beyond traditional mass marketing approaches.
Rather than sending generic campaigns, travel brands could begin creating highly contextual experiences tailored to individual behaviours and intent signals. They have the opportunity to create genuinely useful experiences that reduce effort for customers while increasing relevance and conversion, and keep their websites relevant for customers.
One of the clearest themes emerging across the industry is that there is no settled playbook for AI transformation. The pace of change is simply too fast.
Businesses are being forced to experiment in real time while balancing operational risk, technical debt and uncertain customer adoption patterns. The challenge is not just building new capabilities, it is building systems that can safely evolve, scale and, if necessary, be switched off. That requires a different mindset from traditional digital optimisation.
Historically, digital experimentation often focused on incremental improvements such as changing layouts, testing colours or refining user journeys. AI-driven experiences are fundamentally less predictable some experiments may generate meaningful commercial uplift and others may fail entirely. What matters increasingly is the ability to test, learn and adapt quickly.
Travel businesses are unlikely to abandon traditional booking journeys entirely. Customers will still visit websites, search flows will still matter, and structured booking experiences will remain important. But how your customers get to the point of booking will be distinctly different.
Customers now move fluidly between AI assistants, social platforms, recommendation engines, conversational interfaces, direct channels, aggregators and even loyalty ecosystems.
The challenge is no longer simply building better websites. It is learning how to operate within a world where discovery happens everywhere and where being accessible to AI-driven ecosystems may become just as important as being visible on Google once was.
Steve’s interview was conducted alongside sessions with travel industry professionals and input from 1,000 recent travel consumers as part of Leighton’s inaugural travel, aviation and hospitality research programme.
You can download the full report here: https://landing.leighton.com/travel-aviation-capabilities
Recently Leighton conducted research on the adoption of AI-powered discovery across the travel industry, exploring how customer expectations are changing and where travel brands should focus their efforts as AI reshapes the path from inspiration to conversion.
As part of this research, we sat down with Steve Morland, CTO at Leighton to discuss the future of travel discovery, the fragmentation of customer journeys and why AI may fundamentally change the role websites play within the travel ecosystem.
For more than two decades, travel brands have invested heavily in digital discovery. Websites became the centre of the customer journey, search engine optimisation shaped acquisition strategies and marketing teams optimised pathways from inspiration through to conversion, carefully measuring every click, interaction and referral source along the way.
However, in our interview with Steve, he highlighted that the industry may now be entering a very different era. One where websites remain important but are no longer the primary gateway between travel brands and their customers.
One of the biggest shifts underway in travel is the changing nature of discovery itself. Increasingly, customers are turning to generative AI platforms and conversational interfaces to plan trips, compare destinations and build itineraries. Instead of navigating traditional booking journeys, travellers are beginning to describe what they want in natural language and expect instant, contextual recommendations in return.
As part of this new normal, customers are increasingly relying on AI-powered tools to research, compare and discover travel options. Rather than navigating websites themselves, users are being guided directly to relevant content, products and booking experiences. This seemingly subtle behavioural shift has significant implications for travel brands. Historically, websites provided businesses with visibility into customer journeys. Brands could see how users arrived, what pages they visited, where they dropped off and which channels influenced conversion. That visibility is now beginning to fragment.
Instead of moving step-by-step through carefully designed digital funnels, customers increasingly arrive at websites much deeper into their booking journeys from AI-generated recommendations, social content or conversational agents.
For travel businesses, this creates a significant challenge. The traditional metrics that have powered digital marketing strategies for years may become less reliable as AI platforms increasingly sit between brands and consumers.
This does not mean websites disappear, but it may mean they become part of your infrastructure rather than the destination.
The booking systems, APIs and data layers behind travel brands will remain critical, but customers may interact with them through entirely different interfaces. For example, instead of selecting dates, passenger numbers and routes through traditional search flows, travellers may increasingly use conversational prompts such as:
“I want to take the family to New York.”
OR
“Book me the cheapest business class flight to Milan next week.”
The challenge for travel providers is translating natural language intent into valid bookings while maintaining commercially viable customer experiences and increasingly, that means thinking beyond the website itself.
Travel brands may need to consider exposing inventory, pricing and booking functionality directly into AI ecosystems and conversational interfaces, allowing external platforms and agents to interact with their systems more dynamically. This presents an interesting challenge of how to balance that visibility while maintaining control and managing inventory.
Some businesses are already exploring proof-of-concept environments where bookings can happen directly within AI interfaces and the implication of that is profound. The website may no longer be the primary driver of discovery, even if it continues powering the underlying transaction.
Travel has always been technologically complex. Behind seemingly simple booking experiences sits a highly interconnected ecosystem of legacy reservation systems, ancillary services, pricing structures and operational dependencies, and that complexity continues to grow.
Modern travel products are no longer just flights or hotel rooms. They include seat selection, baggage options, insurance, transfers, upgrades, loyalty integration, flexible fares and countless combinations of ancillary products layered on top.
This creates a major challenge for businesses attempting to integrate AI-native experiences into legacy technology stacks.
Many airlines and travel businesses rely on multiple systems operating simultaneously – some modern and some decades old. As a result, organisations increasingly need orchestration layers capable of connecting legacy infrastructure with newer AI-enabled interfaces and services.
However, the difficulty is not simply technical capability. It is understanding the domain deeply enough to build systems that can handle the complexity of real-world travel products and customer journeys.
For years, travel businesses focused heavily on SEO. As conversational AI platforms increasingly mediate discovery, travel brands face growing pressure to become more accessible, more discoverable and more “bookable” within these ecosystems.
That uncertainty makes investment decisions difficult. Businesses are simultaneously trying to; maintain existing digital experiences, modernise infrastructure, improve AI discoverability, experiment with conversational interfaces and preserve visibility into customer behaviour.
And unlike traditional SEO, where customer pathways were relatively measurable, AI-driven discovery introduces much greater ambiguity. Brands may see bookings arrive without understanding how decisions were made upstream.
Ironically, as customer journeys become more fragmented, first-party booking data may become even more strategically important. Travel providers still retain access to one of the richest sources of behavioural insight available, historical booking patterns.
Traditionally, many travel brands underutilise this data. AI creates opportunities to interrogate this data more intelligently and personalise interactions far beyond traditional mass marketing approaches.
Rather than sending generic campaigns, travel brands could begin creating highly contextual experiences tailored to individual behaviours and intent signals. They have the opportunity to create genuinely useful experiences that reduce effort for customers while increasing relevance and conversion, and keep their websites relevant for customers.
One of the clearest themes emerging across the industry is that there is no settled playbook for AI transformation. The pace of change is simply too fast.
Businesses are being forced to experiment in real time while balancing operational risk, technical debt and uncertain customer adoption patterns. The challenge is not just building new capabilities, it is building systems that can safely evolve, scale and, if necessary, be switched off. That requires a different mindset from traditional digital optimisation.
Historically, digital experimentation often focused on incremental improvements such as changing layouts, testing colours or refining user journeys. AI-driven experiences are fundamentally less predictable some experiments may generate meaningful commercial uplift and others may fail entirely. What matters increasingly is the ability to test, learn and adapt quickly.
Travel businesses are unlikely to abandon traditional booking journeys entirely. Customers will still visit websites, search flows will still matter, and structured booking experiences will remain important. But how your customers get to the point of booking will be distinctly different.
Customers now move fluidly between AI assistants, social platforms, recommendation engines, conversational interfaces, direct channels, aggregators and even loyalty ecosystems.
The challenge is no longer simply building better websites. It is learning how to operate within a world where discovery happens everywhere and where being accessible to AI-driven ecosystems may become just as important as being visible on Google once was.
Steve’s interview was conducted alongside sessions with travel industry professionals and input from 1,000 recent travel consumers as part of Leighton’s inaugural travel, aviation and hospitality research programme.
You can download the full report here: https://landing.leighton.com/travel-aviation-capabilities
Recently Leighton conducted research on the adoption of AI-powered discovery across the travel industry, exploring how customer expectations are changing and where travel brands should focus their efforts as AI reshapes the path from inspiration to conversion.
As part of this research, we sat down with Steve Morland, CTO at Leighton to discuss the future of travel discovery, the fragmentation of customer journeys and why AI may fundamentally change the role websites play within the travel ecosystem.
For more than two decades, travel brands have invested heavily in digital discovery. Websites became the centre of the customer journey, search engine optimisation shaped acquisition strategies and marketing teams optimised pathways from inspiration through to conversion, carefully measuring every click, interaction and referral source along the way.
However, in our interview with Steve, he highlighted that the industry may now be entering a very different era. One where websites remain important but are no longer the primary gateway between travel brands and their customers.
One of the biggest shifts underway in travel is the changing nature of discovery itself. Increasingly, customers are turning to generative AI platforms and conversational interfaces to plan trips, compare destinations and build itineraries. Instead of navigating traditional booking journeys, travellers are beginning to describe what they want in natural language and expect instant, contextual recommendations in return.
As part of this new normal, customers are increasingly relying on AI-powered tools to research, compare and discover travel options. Rather than navigating websites themselves, users are being guided directly to relevant content, products and booking experiences. This seemingly subtle behavioural shift has significant implications for travel brands. Historically, websites provided businesses with visibility into customer journeys. Brands could see how users arrived, what pages they visited, where they dropped off and which channels influenced conversion. That visibility is now beginning to fragment.
Instead of moving step-by-step through carefully designed digital funnels, customers increasingly arrive at websites much deeper into their booking journeys from AI-generated recommendations, social content or conversational agents.
For travel businesses, this creates a significant challenge. The traditional metrics that have powered digital marketing strategies for years may become less reliable as AI platforms increasingly sit between brands and consumers.
This does not mean websites disappear, but it may mean they become part of your infrastructure rather than the destination.
The booking systems, APIs and data layers behind travel brands will remain critical, but customers may interact with them through entirely different interfaces. For example, instead of selecting dates, passenger numbers and routes through traditional search flows, travellers may increasingly use conversational prompts such as:
“I want to take the family to New York.”
OR
“Book me the cheapest business class flight to Milan next week.”
The challenge for travel providers is translating natural language intent into valid bookings while maintaining commercially viable customer experiences and increasingly, that means thinking beyond the website itself.
Travel brands may need to consider exposing inventory, pricing and booking functionality directly into AI ecosystems and conversational interfaces, allowing external platforms and agents to interact with their systems more dynamically. This presents an interesting challenge of how to balance that visibility while maintaining control and managing inventory.
Some businesses are already exploring proof-of-concept environments where bookings can happen directly within AI interfaces and the implication of that is profound. The website may no longer be the primary driver of discovery, even if it continues powering the underlying transaction.
Travel has always been technologically complex. Behind seemingly simple booking experiences sits a highly interconnected ecosystem of legacy reservation systems, ancillary services, pricing structures and operational dependencies, and that complexity continues to grow.
Modern travel products are no longer just flights or hotel rooms. They include seat selection, baggage options, insurance, transfers, upgrades, loyalty integration, flexible fares and countless combinations of ancillary products layered on top.
This creates a major challenge for businesses attempting to integrate AI-native experiences into legacy technology stacks.
Many airlines and travel businesses rely on multiple systems operating simultaneously – some modern and some decades old. As a result, organisations increasingly need orchestration layers capable of connecting legacy infrastructure with newer AI-enabled interfaces and services.
However, the difficulty is not simply technical capability. It is understanding the domain deeply enough to build systems that can handle the complexity of real-world travel products and customer journeys.
For years, travel businesses focused heavily on SEO. As conversational AI platforms increasingly mediate discovery, travel brands face growing pressure to become more accessible, more discoverable and more “bookable” within these ecosystems.
That uncertainty makes investment decisions difficult. Businesses are simultaneously trying to; maintain existing digital experiences, modernise infrastructure, improve AI discoverability, experiment with conversational interfaces and preserve visibility into customer behaviour.
And unlike traditional SEO, where customer pathways were relatively measurable, AI-driven discovery introduces much greater ambiguity. Brands may see bookings arrive without understanding how decisions were made upstream.
Ironically, as customer journeys become more fragmented, first-party booking data may become even more strategically important. Travel providers still retain access to one of the richest sources of behavioural insight available, historical booking patterns.
Traditionally, many travel brands underutilise this data. AI creates opportunities to interrogate this data more intelligently and personalise interactions far beyond traditional mass marketing approaches.
Rather than sending generic campaigns, travel brands could begin creating highly contextual experiences tailored to individual behaviours and intent signals. They have the opportunity to create genuinely useful experiences that reduce effort for customers while increasing relevance and conversion, and keep their websites relevant for customers.
One of the clearest themes emerging across the industry is that there is no settled playbook for AI transformation. The pace of change is simply too fast.
Businesses are being forced to experiment in real time while balancing operational risk, technical debt and uncertain customer adoption patterns. The challenge is not just building new capabilities, it is building systems that can safely evolve, scale and, if necessary, be switched off. That requires a different mindset from traditional digital optimisation.
Historically, digital experimentation often focused on incremental improvements such as changing layouts, testing colours or refining user journeys. AI-driven experiences are fundamentally less predictable some experiments may generate meaningful commercial uplift and others may fail entirely. What matters increasingly is the ability to test, learn and adapt quickly.
Travel businesses are unlikely to abandon traditional booking journeys entirely. Customers will still visit websites, search flows will still matter, and structured booking experiences will remain important. But how your customers get to the point of booking will be distinctly different.
Customers now move fluidly between AI assistants, social platforms, recommendation engines, conversational interfaces, direct channels, aggregators and even loyalty ecosystems.
The challenge is no longer simply building better websites. It is learning how to operate within a world where discovery happens everywhere and where being accessible to AI-driven ecosystems may become just as important as being visible on Google once was.
Steve’s interview was conducted alongside sessions with travel industry professionals and input from 1,000 recent travel consumers as part of Leighton’s inaugural travel, aviation and hospitality research programme.
You can download the full report here: https://landing.leighton.com/travel-aviation-capabilities
