Consumers want AI to help them plan travel, not book it for them, new research finds

Industry research shows commerce media racing to be visible inside AI recommendations — even as consumers draw a line at letting AI buy

Driving the news. New research from commerce media firm Koddi finds consumers want AI to help plan a trip and stop short of letting it pay. About three in four US consumers are comfortable with AI helping them choose what to buy; only one in five would let it choose and pay on its own. Almost half want AI to plan a vacation — among the study's most ambitious uses.

The pattern. Comfort tracks stakes. People will take AI's nudge toward a brand they would not have picked (64%) and let it reorder everyday items when they run low (55%) — low stakes, reversible, easily undone. A vacation sits at the high end: chosen once, paid in a lump, lived with for a week. That is where the reluctance gathers.

The catch. The advertisers are not waiting for it to clear. 84% of the commerce media leaders Koddi surveyed would pay to appear inside AI recommendations and shortlists — a figure worth reading with its author in mind, since Koddi sells into exactly the market its report says everyone must enter. The behavior holds underneath the framing: the shelf they bid on now is the answer a model gives when a traveler asks where to stay. And the same leaders are funding measurement they do not yet have.

Why travel. A hotel stay is expensive, infrequent, and bound up with how a trip will feel — the kind of choice people want to feel responsible for. Koddi's Eric Brackmann framed the ceiling as consumers being "not ready to hand over complete control." Booking.com, a Koddi partner, has built its connected-trip strategy on being where the journey gets assembled. The read: travelers accept the assembly and keep the booking.

What it means for hotels. The question shifts. Less where a guest books, more whether the property shows up at all when a model builds its shortlist — and whether anyone can prove that showing up produced a stay. Acquisition cost has always been hard to read inside a P&L. An AI layer makes it harder, and the businesses connecting independent hotels to demand are now working out how to be seen there, and how to prove what being seen earns.

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