Skift

One week until the Skift Data + AI Summit - and tickets are almost gone. If you’ve been thinking about attending, now’s your chance. On June 3 in NYC, the travel leaders shaping how AI is transforming operations, revenue, customer experience, and infrastructure will be in the room sharing what’s actually working. This is where travel’s AI conversation gets real. 🎟️ Get your ticket before it’s too late: hubs.li/Q04hPzXJ0

Throwback to Skift Asia Forum 2026 in Bangkok. The room where the assumptions got tested. Catch up on session recordings and session takeaways here: hubs.li/Q04hSvwW0

Tourism Fiji is betting on Asia as its next major growth frontier, signing a two-year deal with Trip Group to build what it calls a stronger Asia-wide ecosystem. China-based Trip Group operates across Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other parts of Asia, giving Fiji a platform with regional reach that no single-market play could offer. The challenge across Asia, however, is not just price or flight time. It is familiarity. “Awareness is absolutely one of the most important challenges for Fiji today,” Paresh Pant, CEO of Tourism Fiji, told Skift. hubs.li/Q04hRT9s0

ixigo relaunched its app with Tara, a voice-native AI assistant, targeting India's mass-market travelers who prefer voice interaction in multiple local languages. India's unique linguistic diversity, high adoption of voice technology, and the dominance of Android have made it a testing ground for voice-first travel solutions. A robust open-source voice AI ecosystem is emerging in India, setting a reference design for travel tech that is likely to influence global markets. hubs.li/Q04hRVmd0

Yatra Online reported what Chairman Dhruv Shringi called the “most profitable year in the company’s 20-year history,” even as India-Pakistan conflict, the Air India crash and travel disruptions across parts of the Middle East disrupted parts of its business during the fourth quarter. The company is capitalizing on the slow digital adoption in India's managed corporate travel market, with increasing market share and reduced dependence on the volatile IT sector. Yatra is investing in AI and technical infrastructure to automate operations and prepare for future demand from AI-powered travel agents. hubs.li/Q04hQPbL0

Generative AI is becoming the first filter in travel planning. Hotels not present in the sources these tools rely on are being cut from consideration before distribution channels ever get involved. View article here: hubs.li/Q04fQ-Vb0 In partnership with Curacity

Higher airfares are not dissuading flyers from their summer travel plans. The airline industry is preparing for another record summer, with carriers expected to operate as many as 54,000 flights during the peak of the Memorial Day travel weekend, according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration. Both American and United are also expecting a record summer. American said it would fly around 75 million people between Memorial Day and Labor Day, while United expects to fly around 53 million people. hubs.li/Q04hPyQt0

💡 Big ideas. Bold brands. Game-changing innovation. These past Skift IDEA Awards winners are shaping the future of travel. This could be you. Purchase now and have until July 1 to submit 👉 hubs.li/Q04hLznv0

100 pilots. 6 in production. That's Carnival Cruise Line's ratio. MIT found 95% of organizations report zero ROI on generative AI. Skift Research found fewer than 1 in 4 travel companies have actually scaled generative AI. Only 2% have scaled agentic AI. The gap between AI strategy and AI reality in travel is wide. Most organizations are further along on the slide deck than they are in production. Five tensions are where that gap is widest right now: 1. Pilots vs. Production - The skills that get you to a pilot aren't the ones that get you to production. 2. Speed vs. Trust - Only 2% of young leisure travelers will let AI book for them. Only 6% fully trust AI. 3. Restructuring vs. Readiness - 2.9% of travel workers have AI skills. The widest gap of any major industry. 4. Build vs. Buy - Expedia hired a Google AI VP to build. Hyatt bought ChatGPT Enterprise. Both made a bet. 5. Control vs. Visibility - The new shelf space isn't search rankings. It's whether AI can read you clearly enough to recommend you. Each one corresponds to a session at the Skift Data + AI Summit on June 3 in NYC. Each comes with a question worth putting directly to the operators making the call - Expedia, Booking, Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Amex GBT. Which tension is yours to resolve first? Full pre-read from Rafat Ali: hubs.li/Q04hMJdB0

Who’s running Choice Hotels now? Pat Pacious is out as CEO of Choice after nearly nine years. Dom Dragisich, the chief growth and strategy officer, gets the top job on an interim basis. A search for a permanent successor has begun. Pacious walks with substantially the same package he negotiated in 2022, including two times salary and bonus, and up to $50,000 in legal and PR costs. Mutual non-disparagement, both ways. Dragisich is an insider, which is either good or bad news, depending on your perspective. hubs.li/Q04hLS_X0

Ixigo relaunched its app with Tara, a voice-native AI assistant, targeting India's mass-market travelers who prefer voice interaction in multiple local languages. India's unique linguistic diversity, high adoption of voice technology, and the dominance of Android have made it a testing ground for voice-first travel solutions. A robust open-source voice AI ecosystem is emerging in India, setting a reference design for travel tech that is likely to influence global markets. hubs.ly/Q04hLFt_0

From Friday: As Air India CEO Campbell Wilson prepares to step down, he offered a candid assessment of a turbulent year. Speaking at the Wings Club in New York on Thursday, Wilson said the past 12 months had been “by no means an easy or smooth ride” — a period marked by the aftermath of a deadly crash, the Iran war, Pakistan airspace closures, U.S. tariffs, a drop in business and student visas, surging fuel prices, and a call by the Indian Prime Minister to pause international travel. Air India posted a record loss of more than $2 billion for 2025, erasing much of the financial progress made since its privatization. hubs.li/Q04hLDf90

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is looking to soften its proposal for more stringent social media vetting, with more details not expected until the fall. The initial proposed rule, which was announced in December, would require tourists applying for the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) to provide five years’ worth of social media information before entering the U.S. “We’re working through incorporating feedback from the comments we’ve received to adjust the proposal,” said Matt Davies, an executive director at CBP’s office of field operations. “We understand that there are concerns about and collecting the extensive amount of data we originally outlined.” hubs.li/Q04hLCBZ0

From earlier: Expedia Group is building a dedicated marketing function aimed not at travelers or business clients, but at AI agents — an emerging strategy often referred to as B2A, or business to agent. The logic is simple: People use brand recognition or loyalty to streamline purchase decisions. AI agents don’t need shortcuts. They reason through every option, and the competitive edge shifts from name familiarity to whether an agent can find and evaluate what makes a property, route, or package different. “Agents are becoming a new audience, in addition to businesses and consumers,” Expedia Chief Marketing Officer Jochen Koedijk said at an Expedia Explore panel in Las Vegas this week. “This is not a transition from consumer to agent, but it’s in parallel.” hubs.li/Q04hLq-S0

This weekend the word is that the U.S. and Iran may have found a solution to the war the former is waging on the latter. Who saw this coming with exactly this timing? Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, of course. Read on: hubs.li/Q04hLLJz0

From Friday: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky held a media roundtable at company headquarters in San Francisco this week following the company’s annual summer release event. In the wide-ranging conversation, Chesky reflected on what Airbnb learned from last year’s Experiences relaunch, previewed a new push into the creator economy, explained the company’s pivot toward boutique hotels, and laid out a 12-month window he believes Airbnb has before consumer AI arrives. He is also willing to say out loud where Airbnb has been "asleep at the wheel." hubs.li/Q04hLxgV0

From this week’s Jet Stream newsletter: For many travelers, high fuel prices aren’t stopping them from planning out their summer vacations. Domestic airfares are up around 30% compared to last year and all major U.S. airlines have implemented baggage fee increases to offset the surging price of fuel. The Federal Aviation Administration said airlines will operate a peak of 5.4 million flights during the holiday weekend, with a peak of 54,000 flights on Thursday, May 21. American and United have also said they are expecting this summer to be record-breaking. hubs.li/Q04hLX570

Spain's Supreme Court voided a national registry for short-term rental hosts, citing lack of central government authority over regional regulations. The decision follows major fines and removal orders against Airbnb for unlicensed listings, as Spain intensifies its crackdown on short-term rentals. Short-term rental listings in Spain and Ibiza have declined, while cities like Barcelona plan to phase out all short-term rentals by 2029 amid rising housing costs. hubs.li/Q04hK7mZ0

Condor is not a name that rolls off the tongue for most U.S. travelers. Yet the German carrier – with its hard-to-miss candy-striped jets – flies into more than a dozen points across the Americas, and around 40% of its summer transatlantic passengers are American. CEO Peter Gerber, who took the controls in February 2024 after more than three decades inside the Lufthansa Group, is keen to close the recognition gap. He sat down with Skift to discuss Condor’s pivot away from its former parent company, its growth ambitions, and how bookings for this summer’s World Cup are tracking. hubs.li/Q04hLFy40

Dubai approved a $408 million economic support package for its tourism and hospitality sector, offering fee exemptions and reduced charges to help businesses facing a steep drop in demand after regional flight disruptions triggered by the Iran war. While operators welcome the measures, many see them as temporary buffers rather than lasting solutions, especially as hotel occupancy is projected to fall dramatically. The sector is seeing a shift toward resident-driven demand, with domestic guests sustaining occupancy while international travel slowly recovers. hubs.li/Q04hLCs80