Travel brands have spent the past few years accelerating their use of AI, automation and advanced analytics across the customer journey.

Our 2026 Digital Travel Benchmark found that 73% of travel brands are already using AI and/or advanced analytics at the booking and purchasing stage, with adoption also extending across in-trip and post-trip experiences.

But as investment continues into 2027, the more important question may no longer be where AI can be applied next.

It may be whether brands are applying it to the right problems in the first place.

To explore what that means for travel brands heading into 2027, we spoke with Alexi Thornton, Founder of Epalithia, about the intersection between technology, journey design, trust and the human experience.

His view is clear: the next phase of digital travel will depend not simply on how much technology brands deploy, but on how well they understand the people moving through the journeys they are trying to improve.

Signal 01: From automation to journey design

The 2026 signal: 73% of travel brands are using AI and/or advanced analytics at booking and purchasing, compared with 63% in-trip and post-trip.

The 2027 question: Are brands automating processes before fully understanding where the friction actually sits?

The pressure to remove friction from the travel journey is nothing new. What has changed is the number of tools now available to do it.

But Thornton argues that technology should come after brands understand the journey, not before.

"Removing friction which creates frustration, bottlenecks and abandonment means that organisations fully understand where their customer touchpoints are and where friction arises today," he says.

"If we implement an off-the-shelf process without understanding where our customers and employees experience friction, we are using technology the wrong way."

He points to an airline disruption process that automatically rebooked passengers onto alternative flights without first giving them the opportunity to opt out or make their own arrangements.

Operationally, the process may have been designed to resolve disruption faster. From the customer's perspective, it removed control at exactly the moment when reassurance and choice mattered most.

Similarly, automated chat experiences can create their own friction when customers become trapped in repetitive FAQs with no clear route to human escalation.

"These are the type of broken customer journeys that create unnecessary friction and frustration," Thornton says.

Before introducing new technology, Thornton feels that organisations should first understand what customers and employees see, hear, think and do; identify what data exists across the business; map the current journey with empathy; and only then design the future journey around the specific problem they are trying to solve.

The lesson is not that travel brands should automate less. It is that they need to understand more before they automate.

Thornton argues that organisations should first map what customers and employees do, think, feel and say at the touchpoints they are trying to improve.

The starting question for 2027 may therefore be less about what can we automate? and more about what experience are we actually trying to improve?

Photo by Airalo on Unsplash

Signal 02: From personalisation to context

The 2026 signal: 76% of travel brands use booking history to personalise experiences, while mobile-app behaviour sits at 55% and geo-location data at 47%.

The 2027 question: Is knowing what a traveller did before enough to understand what they need now?

Personalisation has been one of travel's defining digital ambitions for years.

Booking history, loyalty data and previous purchases can all help brands create more relevant experiences. But historical behaviour has its limits.

"Personalisation, as a word, has often been used in the wrong context in our industry," Thornton says.

"We can never know what a person is feeling, thinking or experiencing now based on their historical data."

A traveller may repeatedly choose the same airline, seat or hotel category, but their needs can change depending on the purpose of the trip, who they are travelling with or what is happening at that particular moment.

This is where the next evolution of personalisation may begin to look more like context.

Thornton expects AI to help brands combine historical preferences with a better understanding of the traveller's current situation.

But the more contextual the service becomes, the more important trust becomes too.

Rather than treating privacy and permission as a one-off interaction at sign-up, Thornton believes brands should explain clearly why they are asking for information and how it will improve the experience.

"We should explain to customers, in plain language, the why, and ask them if they mind us keeping this data for the future," he says.

For travel brands, the opportunity in 2027 may therefore be less about proving how much they know about the customer and more about demonstrating that they understand the moment responsibly.

Photo by panitan punpuang on Unsplash

Signal 03: The human premium

The 2026 signal

When measuring AI-driven personalisation, 74% of travel leaders prioritise customer satisfaction and feedback, ahead of revenue growth at 60% and increased conversion at 58%.

The 2027 question: As more of the journey becomes automated, where does access to a human become more valuable?

The growth of self-service raises an obvious question: if technology can handle more of the travel journey, what role should people play?

For Thornton, this should not be framed as a choice between digital and human service.

Instead, brands should optimise digital journeys while making human support easy to access whenever the customer needs it.

"Trust is built when a user is not sure about something, needs a little bit more guidance or has a need to interact with another human," Thornton says.

"That should be available at any given point in the process."

The same principle applies in physical environments such as airports. Technology can simplify routine interactions, but employees remain essential when circumstances fall outside the expected flow.

Thornton believes this could make frontline expertise more important, not less.

"Our employees should become our Subject Matter Experts and be there to guide other humans throughout the ever-changing technological landscape."

In that model, automation handles what is predictable, while people step in when reassurance, judgement or flexibility is required.

Those interactions also become useful signals. If travellers repeatedly seek human support at the same point in a digital journey, that may indicate the journey itself needs to be redesigned.

Photo by Tron Le on Unsplash

The 2027 leadership challenge: put people before technology

As travel brands prepare their 2027 digital investment roadmaps, Thornton believes leadership teams should challenge one fundamental assumption: that transformation begins with the technology.

"Leadership should become human centric," he says.

"This means putting people first, not technology first, not AI first."

That means understanding the touchpoints being improved, listening to signals from customers and employees, and continuing to adapt journeys as behaviours and expectations change.

Employees also need to understand why new tools are being introduced. When teams understand the problem technology is meant to solve, they are better positioned to recognise where it works, where it fails and where the process needs to evolve.

The organisations that perform best may therefore be those that treat journey design as an ongoing discipline rather than a one-off transformation project.

Thornton summarises the opportunity simply: "The winners will combine innovation with empathy."

That may be one of the most important signals for travel leaders heading into 2027.

The next competitive advantage may not come from deploying AI faster than everyone else.

It may come from knowing where it should be used, why it should be used, when the customer needs something different and when a human needs to step in.

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