Commentary: AI travel agents? Bring them on

At an industry conference this month, James Byers, Google’s travel product lead, said the company was working with industry partners to develop end-to-end agentic travel services, promising to give users “superpowers” they never had before.

Google already operates a travel search engine and could, with user permission, pull in data from its other services. To be effective, an AI agent would have to access confidential information, such as location, bank account, passwords and email. “Trust and transparency about these decisions are paramount,” Byers acknowledged.

TRUST ISSUES

One other trust challenge for companies such as Google, though, will be to convince users that their AI agents are working purely for their benefit – and not surreptitiously accepting deals with the company’s preferred commercial partners.

After abandoning the online agencies, I went straight to Air Canada’s website and managed to buy two one-way economy tickets to London via Vancouver and Toronto (with an overnight stay) on three jam-packed aeroplanes for £1,770 apiece (US$2,376). We finally made it home and did at least receive a refund on our original Etihad tickets.

But a good example of how the interests of paying partners can trump those of regular users emerged when I applied for an electronic travel authorisation to enter Canada. The top-ranked (sponsored) link on Google search promised to help sort my application for C$99 (US$72.17). The official Canadian government visa site, ranked a lot lower down, speedily completed the process for just C$7.