How agentic AI can improve the guest experience by easing travel disruption

<p><span class="h6">Travel and hospitality brands can’t eliminate travel disruption, but they can use AI to predict when an event will occur and mitigate its impact.</span></p>

<p>For most travelers, a canceled flight isn’t a singular disruption. It sets off a chain reaction, requiring changes to hotel reservations, rental cars, restaurant bookings or even ticketed events, all of which travelers are typically left to coordinate themselves.</p>
<p>And unfortunately, these challenges are too common.&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.perk.com/blog/business-travel-chaos-survey/">80% of global business travelers experienced disruptions in 2025</a>, and the reasons behind them are expected to continue.</p>
<p>Travel and hospitality brands may not be able to control the forces behind these disruptions, but they can do more to eliminate the pain around them. This will require them to predict when an event will occur and mitigate its impact before the traveler needs to intervene.</p>
<p>AI is making both parts of that equation increasingly possible. And while prediction and orchestration may be most critical during disruption, their value extends across the guest experience, from anticipating a preferred seat or room to recognizing when a family might benefit from a larger rental car.</p>
<p>Making that vision a reality requires both adopting new technology and embracing new ways of working. Here’s what it will take for travel and hospitality brands to smooth the customer journey through prediction, action and orchestration.</p>
<h3><b data-rte-class="rte-temp"><span style="font-weight: normal;" class="h4">Predict: Build the intelligence to anticipate a travel disruption</span></b></h3>
<p>Predictions are built on data, but organizations can’t rely on historical information to shape them. To create accurate and relevant recommendations, travel and hospitality organizations must combine behavioral and loyalty data with real-time journey information, operational conditions and customer context to understand not only what a guest might need but also when and why. AI can then convert those signals into timely, explainable predictions tied to a clear decision or intervention<a>.</a></p>
<p>For example, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.amd.com/de/resources/case-studies/finnair.html">Finnair developed an AI solution</a> that uses weather data and forecasts to predict major flight delays up to 12 hours in advance. By integrating the tool into its operations control center, Finnair gives teams more time to anticipate disruption, prioritize responses and reduce the impact on travelers.</p>
<p>Hotels can apply the same principle. They can combine historical demand with seasonality, local events and other signals to better anticipate occupancy and guest needs.</p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: normal;" class="h4">Act: Turn the right insight into a meaningful response</span></h3>
<p>The next step is enabling AI agents and employees to turn insight into action using a complete view of the traveler, connected operational systems and clear rules around what the system is authorized to do.</p>
<p>For many organizations, that will mean gradually expanding AI autonomy as confidence in its performance grows. Lamington Group, for example, initially <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://hoteltechreport.com/success-stories/guest-experience/hijiffy/lamington-group">introduced conversational AI at one hotel</a>&nbsp;using a hybrid model, with AI working alongside human staff. As confidence grew, the group switched to a full automation model and expanded the technology across its properties, ultimately automating 93% of guest queries while maintaining an 87% customer satisfaction score.</p>
<p>AI also needs access to the systems and workflows required to act. For example, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://worktual.com/success-stories/ai-chatbot-voicebot-hotel-guest-experience/">one boutique hotel chain</a> integrated an AI assistant with its property management, billing and payment systems. This enabled the agent to respond to requests and support transactions directly while escalating more complex interactions to employees. Response times fell from 10–15 minutes to under a minute, while booking conversion increased from 35% to 40%–42%.</p>
<p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://news.delta.com/more-control-fewer-taps-delta-concierge-expands-all-skymiles-members">Delta Concierge</a> offers an example of how this concept can extend across the traveler journey. This in-app tool supports common travel needs, including disruption rebooking support, bag and account lookups and eligible flight cancellations that can generate a refund request or eCredit in real time. Beyond answering questions, it completes customer-authorized transactions, while keeping employees available for situations requiring additional judgment or care.</p>
<p>These examples point to a practical path forward: Start with focused, high-value use cases, keep humans in the loop while accuracy and outcomes are validated, and expand autonomy as confidence grows. Security, privacy and governance should be built into every stage from the outset, together with explainability, customer consent, human override and ongoing monitoring.</p>
<p>Enabling this capability also requires an underlying operating model shift: customer, operations, digital and partner teams need to share journey outcomes, agree on decision rights and establish common measures of success. Without that alignment, predictions remain insights rather than coordinated experiences.</p>
<h3><span style="font-weight: normal;" class="h4">Orchestrate: Coordinate the guest experience, not just the action</span></h3>
<p>A guest journey is rarely confined to one system or even one company. Resolving a missed flight could require coordinating a new one, as well as airport operations, hotel accommodation and ground transportation. This makes connectivity across internal platforms and external partners critical.</p>
<p>With agentic AI, multiple agents coordinate those activities around a shared understanding of the traveler and situation.</p>
<p>Some early applications hint at what this kind of orchestration could eventually look like. For example, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://press.priceline.com/pricelines-penny-goes-fully-agentic/">Priceline’s Penny</a> now operates as a coordinated system of more than 10 specialized AI agents spanning flights, hotels, rental cars and customer service. Rather than requiring travelers to navigate each part of a trip separately, the agents work together to interpret the request, evaluate real-time options and move the traveler through to booking. It is an early glimpse of a more connected model in which intelligence is coordinated across different parts of the journey rather than applied to a single interaction.</p>
<p>The bigger opportunity is to bring that same orchestration to the journey itself. Imagine a flight disruption that triggers not only rebooking but also coordinated changes to a hotel stay and rental car based on the traveler’s preferences. Instead of requiring the guest to resolve each touchpoint separately, multiple agents could coordinate the response across providers.</p>
<p>That level of ecosystem orchestration is still emerging, but it represents the logical next step from predicting a need and executing an individual action to managing the experience around the traveler.</p>
<h4><span style="font-weight: normal;" class="h4">A connected guest experience with AI</span></h4>
<p>The path from prediction to action to orchestration does not need to happen all at once. Organizations can start with a focused use case that delivers clear customer and business value, demonstrating measurable outcomes, such as faster recovery, reduced effort, higher conversion and greater satisfaction, while building trust and maturity.</p>
<p>From there, individual use cases can become the building blocks of a broader orchestration capability that allows AI to not only anticipate what customers need but also mobilize the organization to respond across systems, teams and, in time, the entire guest experience.</p>