A bot may soon be booking your vacation.
Millions of travelers already use artificial intelligence to compare options for flights, hotels, rental cars and more. About 30 percent of U.S. travelers say they’re comfortable using A.I. to plan a trip. But these tools are about to take a big step.
Agentic A.I., a rapidly emerging type of artificial intelligence, will be able to find and pay for reservations with limited human involvement, developers say. Companies like Expedia, Google, Kayak and Priceline are experimenting with or rolling out agentic A.I. tools.
Travelers using agentic A.I. would set parameters like dates and a price range for their travel plans, then hand over their credit card information to the bot, which would monitor prices and book on their behalf.
These tools, still in their early stages of deployment, are set to grow rapidly: 80 percent of travel executives plan to begin offering agentic A.I. tools “at scale” within the next five years, according to a September report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and Skift, a travel industry publication.
As with all A.I. tools, the landscape is changing fast. Here’s a look at what you can, and can’t, do with agentic A.I. right now, and what the future may hold.
How can travelers use agentic A.I.?
For now, agentic tools aren’t able to book independently. Instead, they offer users a much finer level of detail than searches using generative tools.
Think of agentic A.I. as a personal assistant, said Shilpa Ranganathan, the chief product officer at Expedia Group, which is developing both generative and agentic A.I. trip-planning tools.
While the more familiar generative A.I. can summarize information and answer questions, agentic tools can carry out tasks. Travelers benefit by deputizing these tools to perform time-consuming chores like tracking flight prices.
“Instead of manually running every search or comparison yourself, agentic A.I. can do that work in the background and come back with the most relevant options,” Ms. Ranganathan said.
When comparing hotel options, for example, an agentic tool should be able to pinpoint multiple properties’ rates for your requested dates, identify whether they have availability and compile that information in one place so you can easily compare. A generative tool might simply recommend hotels that broadly fit your budget, and offer links to each website, where you can check the details.
The technology to automate purchases already exists, said Cobus Kok, the vice president for product and A.I. at the online travel agency Priceline, but consumers may not be ready for it.
“We don’t yet have a view on how much autonomy customers may want,” said Mr. Kok, who is developing Priceline’s A.I. bot, Penny.
When Penny debuted in 2023, it primarily served to answer simple questions, such as if pets were allowed at a hotel. Today, the tool can conduct several searches at once, telling a user, for example, which winter weekend has the cheapest flights for a getaway to Miami.
When it comes to booking, Mr. Kok said, “I can definitely see a future where Penny does some tasks autonomously or semi-autonomously.”
Steve Hafner, chief executive of the online booking site Kayak, said his company was “building software that can book, modify and manage travel in real time.” He described the process as “a multiyear journey,” noting it may take time for consumer habits to adjust accordingly.
Google has also begun a phased rollout of agentic A.I. tools to find restaurant reservations, event tickets and more. The company has not announced a timeline for enabling A.I. to make reservations directly, though a company blog post hinted at the effort: “In the future, we’ll also make it possible to finish booking flights and hotels directly in A.I. Mode.”
How are travelers reacting?
Cautiously. Just 2 percent of travelers were ready to give A.I. autonomy to book or modify plans after receiving human guidance, Skift’s State of Travel 2025 report found.
A Booking.com report published in July found that 12 percent of respondents were comfortable with A.I. making independent decisions, concluding, “The greatest opportunity lies in positioning A.I. as a supportive tool that enhances, rather than replaces, human judgment.”
At the same time, more than 90 percent of travelers said they highly trusted travel information generated by A.I., Skift found.
Privacy also remains a top concern. The Booking.com survey found that more than half of consumers were worried about how companies use their data, a hurdle that developers will need to overcome if they want to persuade travelers to hand over their credit card numbers.
Proponents argue that providing advance authorization for a purchase, within established criteria, is hardly different from customers making purchases themselves.
“While their habits may evolve with new technology, that fundamental trust won’t change,” Mr. Hafner said. “Bots will simply be an extension of that behavior.”
Doesn’t A.I. make things up?
Hallucinations, in which A.I. chatbots give false information in their answers, are a well-documented problem.
“In travel, accuracy is everything,” Ms. Ranganathan said. “If A.I. suggests the wrong hotel, flight or visa requirement, it can erode trust instantly.”
To mitigate the risk, she said, Expedia’s A.I. draws information from the same data set its classic booking interface uses, and not from the wider internet, as a general-interest chatbot does.
Other companies say their tools have similar safeguards. Mr. Kok said rigorous testing and customer feedback would help identify and root out any problems.
“No one else in the market is doing this yet,” he said. “We expect to stay at the forefront, but we’re also responsible and making sure we’re not pushing products on customers.”
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Gabe Castro-Root is a travel reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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