Key Takeaways
- A study shows 71% of U.S. adults are open to using AI for travel booking, indicating a shift in consumer sentiment.
- Travelers prefer AI for practical tasks like booking hotels (66%) and flights (65%) for deal-finding and time-saving purposes.
- Despite interest, trust issues remain: concerns include AI errors, accountability, and privacy.
- Millennials and business travelers show the highest interest, suggesting complex needs drive adoption.
- Brands must balance AI automation with transparency and human support to gain consumer trust.
As generative AI becomes a bigger part of how people search for and plan trips, new research from travel marketing agency Dune7 and boutique market research firm Flesh & Bone suggests the next frontier is already emerging: letting AI actually book travel on a consumer’s behalf.
In an online study of 1,000 U.S. adults aged 18+ who traveled by plane in the past 12 months, 71% said they are interested in using an AI travel assistant that can search, compare, select, and book travel based on their preferences.
While much of the industry conversation to date has focused on how consumers use generative AI for inspiration and itineraries, far less research has examined how travelers feel about letting AI complete the actual booking.
The findings suggest meaningful consumer openness — but not without conditions.
Travelers were most interested in using agentic AI for practical tasks such as booking hotels (66%), flights (65%), and personalized travel packages (61%). The strongest perceived benefits centered on finding deals, saving time, and handling disruptions in real time.
At the same time, the biggest barriers were all trust-related. Travelers’ top concerns included AI errors being hard to reverse, not knowing who is responsible if something goes wrong, lack of human support, and personal data privacy.
Interest was especially high among Millennials, business travelers, international travelers, and current AI users, suggesting that consumers dealing with more complex travel needs may be the earliest adopters.
Tom Buckley, cofounder at Dune7, says, “The market is not saying ‘don’t let AI book for me.’ It is saying, ‘let AI do the work — but inside rules I set, with approval rights, transparency, and a human fallback when it matters.’ The brands that win will be the ones that combine automation with transparency, control, and trust.”
For travel brands and technology platforms, the message is clear: consumers are not rejecting agentic AI. They are asking for a version of it that gives them confidence, visibility, and recourse when something goes wrong.
Methodology: Online study among n=1,000 Americans age 18+ who traveled by plane either domestically or internationally in the past 12 months. Fieldwork was conducted March 6–9, 2026
