The overall advertising landscape is undergoing a profound transformation, with a rapidly increasing number of travel customers turning to generative search and their social feeds to create bespoke travel itineraries and choose the brands that will best facilitate their travel experiences.
In this industry deep dive, Open Partners explores this seismic shift, detailing AI’s impact on key marketing channels in travel, the risk of inaction, and how brands can flip risk into reward.
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Setting the scene: the rapidly changing tides of search, PPC, and paid social
Organic Search:
Last year, Google’s share of the global search engine market dipped below 90% for the first time in more than a decade. While it still holds the lion’s share, this shift shed light on a trend that has since continuously snowballed – users migrating to AI search.
Very rapidly, AI has fragmented the traditional search journey, making organic discoverability more challenging for brands that rely on informational content (blogs, articles, listicles, etc) to drive organic site traffic, brand awareness, and online revenue. In fact, Gartner predicted that by 2028, brands will lose up to 50% of their organic traffic to AI search, but it appears this may happen even sooner in some sectors.
Brands must now be strategising around AI visibility, prioritising Generative Search Optimisation (GEO) over legacy SEO strategies in order to maintain performance and survive in the AI-first advertising landscape.
PPC:
Of course, organic search is not the only channel being majorly affected by AI. Performance marketing is also taking a hit.
With ChatGPT announcing in-app shopping earlier this year and Google trialling AI Mode Ads in the U.S (where ads will be displayed to users at the earliest sign of search intent), traditional PPC strategies are set to lose effectiveness. Users will be able to easily reach a decision before they ever see a top-of-the-SERPS PPC ad.
Ultimately, AI has massively disrupted the “pay to play” dynamic of performance marketing. It’s not about who has the biggest budget – it’s about training the algorithms better and faster than anyone else.
Paid Social:
Similar to PPC, in the world of Paid Social, budget has traditionally been the biggest driver of success. That era is over.
As users continue to expect engaging, hyper relevant content (i.e. the TikTok ‘For You’ page or Instagram’s Reels feed), content has usurped budget as the biggest ROI lever in paid advertising. In fact, Deloitte predicts that the demand for content will increase 10X over the next two years.
Now, brands must feed hungry social algorithms with 5-10x more creative assets, supplemented by quality data and AI-first campaign strategies, while legacy tactics (big budget, broad targeting, few creative assets) fade out.
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AI’s impact on ROI, brand loyalty, and competitive positioning for travel brands
AI is reshaping traveller expectations and loyalty
Travel planning is rapidly shifting from days of research and travel agent consultations to instant, AI-powered recommendations, changing traveller expectations and shrinking brand exposure opportunities.
AI now delivers complete itineraries in seconds, condensing reviews, rankings, and guides into one place and shortening the consideration phase, leaving brands less time to influence high-value customers.
Travelers also expect real-time, agent-level expertise on prices, availability, visas, and local experiences (without multiple clicks) raising the bar for how brands must provide information.
Waning ROI from traditional SEO and paid strategies:
The rise of AI-driven search is weakening the impact of traditional SEO optimised travel content, i.e. “Top 10 Beaches in Spain,” with AI providing an instant summary without users ever visiting a site. For travel blogs and publications, this poses a significant threat to performance outcomes.
AI search also poses a loss of control over how content is presented. AI summaries may misinterpret pricing, availability, or brand USPs, leading to inaccurate messaging that can damage brand reputation.
As touched on above, PPC and Paid Social effectiveness will also erode if they cannot feed the algorithms what they need to perform. Advertisers will see lower click through rates, higher CPAs, difficulties with attribution, and diminishing returns over time.
OTA & aggregator power Is increasing:
AI-powered search engines tend to play favourites, and they’re not picking the smaller, boutique travel brands. Major OTA players like Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor have an enormous advantage because they’re packed with structured data, millions of listings, and constant content updates. That makes them incredibly “AI-friendly,” so they’re far more likely to appear in generative search results.
For individual hotels, airlines, or tour operators, this presents a very real and urgent challenge to remain visible and competitive.
Brand differentiation is harder:
AI search also has a habit of presenting travel brands side by side with very little context. Airlines, hotels, and tour operators can all appear in the same flat list, which makes it harder for any one brand to stand out.
The storytelling and visual content, usually bringing a travel experience to life, doesn’t carry through the same in AI-generated summaries. Instead, these responses tend to focus on essentials like price and availability, which can make brands feel more alike than they really are.
Travel brands must find new ways to ensure their brand personality and unique value shine through in an AI-driven environment.
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Quantifying the cost of inaction:
AI is not a nebulous threat – inaction poses serious material risks for travel brands who are currently or were previously performing well online. To help quantify this risk in more material terms, here are some examples of how revenue may be affected for a mid-to-large sized travel agency, per channel:
Organic search: a major online travel agency generating £40M annually from organic blog traffic could see 20-30% of that revenue eroded – a potential £8-12M loss in bookings if content isn’t optimized for AI snippets or structured data.
Paid search: a mid-sized tour operator spending £4M/year on paid search campaigns may experience a 25% drop in click-through rates. To maintain the same booking volume, they may need to spend an extra £1M annually, reducing overall ROI and campaign efficiency.
Paid Social: a luxury resort brand investing £2.4M/year in paid social targeting high-intent travellers could see engagement decline by 30–40%. This translates to £720K-£960K in lost potential bookings, directly impacting revenue and diminishing social campaign ROI.
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Dominating the travel market with AI powered marketing
Working with global travel brands and as forerunners in AI marketing, Open Partners has the unique insight, experience, and expertise to empower travel brands with their growth ambitions. To learn more about how we can scale your travel brand, contact us at info@open.partners.