Amadeus’ Travel Dreams 2026 report documents the emergence of artificial intelligence as a leading driver of inspiration and decision-making in travel. For regional transport stakeholders, the shift calls for a new strategic reading.
At the end of 2025, Amadeus released Travel Dreams 2026: From data to delight, a study conducted by UK-based agency Opinium Research among 6,000 leisure and business travelers (Australia, China, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and 500 hotel executives at general manager level or above across nine countries (Australia, France, India, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States). While the study primarily focuses on hospitality and destination management organizations, several of its conclusions extend across the broader travel value chain and carry direct strategic relevance for transport stakeholders in the Latin America and Caribbean region.
The report’s most significant finding concerns the transformation of travel inspiration and decision-making channels. According to the data collected by Opinium, 38% of the 500 hoteliers surveyed identified optimization for traditional search engines and generative artificial intelligence platforms (SEO and GEO) as their top demand-generation strategy for 2026. It now ranks ahead of every other lever, including investment in analytics and customer relationship management tools (37%) and the integration of artificial intelligence into marketing and personalization strategies (35%).
This strategic repositioning reflects a profound shift in traveler behavior. The study reveals that 69% of respondents trust AI-generated summaries enough to make travel decisions without conducting additional research. The figure rises to 87% in India and 86% in China — two emerging source markets of growing strategic importance for the LAC region. In the United Kingdom and Australia, the figure stands at 59%, while Germany records 52%.
The evolution is particularly striking when compared with previous years. According to the report, only 6% of travelers said they used conversational tools to inspire travel decisions five years ago. Today, that figure has tripled to 18%, placing conversational AI tools on the same level of influence as celebrities and travel influencers, and ahead of traditional physical travel agencies (14%) and newspapers (13%).
For regional transport stakeholders, the implication is highly strategic. Visibility within the content ecosystems scanned, indexed, and synthesized by artificial intelligence models is becoming a new competitive variable. Specialized institutional publications with strong editorial positioning and recognized credibility are among the sources these models tend to prioritize. Presence in such publications is no longer solely about visibility to human readers — it also means visibility within the informational ecosystems where decisions are increasingly being shaped.
The second major finding concerns the scale of technological investment across the sector. The study shows that 499 of the 500 hoteliers surveyed plan to invest in artificial intelligence in 2026, with an average projected investment of US$319,000 per property. The figure rises to US$400,000 in North America and US$363,000 in Europe. More than one-fifth (22%) of hoteliers expect investments exceeding US$500,000. The primary use cases already being deployed include competitive and pricing intelligence (40%), dynamic pricing and revenue management (39%), occupancy forecasting and workforce planning (38%), conversational agents for customer service (36%), and sentiment analysis (36%).
This large-scale budget mobilization within hospitality signals a broader transformation across the travel industry. The travel ecosystem is entering a phase of accelerated technological investment, and regional transport operators, suppliers, equipment providers, and authorities must integrate this shift into their planning strategies. For advertisers seeking to reach decision-makers ready to invest, the trend also represents a clear market signal that specialized B2B communication channels are increasingly positioned to leverage.
The third major takeaway concerns the growing difficulty of accessing strategic data. According to the study, 39% of hoteliers report challenges in accessing forward-looking metrics that can effectively support strategic planning, while 36% face similar difficulties regarding competitive performance data such as pricing, bookings, and occupancy rates. Another 33% struggle to leverage digital marketing performance data, and 33% report a lack of actionable customer insights. The need for prospective and comparative visibility extends far beyond the hotel industry. It concerns the entire travel value chain, including regional transport. In this context, the development of shared knowledge ecosystems through specialized editorial publications represents a valuable service to the industry as a whole.
A fourth finding deserves particular attention for the LAC region. The study highlights major geographic differences in sensitivity to sustainability commitments: 93% of travelers surveyed in India and 85% in China say a hotel’s environmental commitments are important to them, compared with 65% in both the United Kingdom and Germany. On average, these travelers say they are willing to pay 11.7% more per night for properties with credible sustainability practices, with the premium reaching 14.7% among Generation Z travelers. Several destination management organizations cited in the report, including Tourism Malaysia and the Türkiye Tourism Promotion & Development Agency, have made source-market diversification a core strategic objective. For regional transport stakeholders in the LAC region, capturing emerging Asian traffic flows increasingly requires understanding that these travelers now integrate environmental considerations into both destination and, potentially, carrier selection.
Finally, the study highlights a useful tension. Despite heavy investment in automation, travelers continue to favor human interaction during most key stages of their journey. Only one area receives majority support for automation: in-room controls (53%). Across all other services — room service (66% prefer human interaction), baggage handling (63%), concierge services (58%), check-in and check-out (58%), and billing (53%) — most travelers still prefer direct human contact. The finding serves as an important reminder for the wider industry. Digital transformation is necessary, but it should not replace the quality of human interaction, which remains, in most cases, the decisive factor in customer satisfaction.
The Amadeus study does not focus directly on air transport. Yet its conclusions confirm trends that aviation stakeholders across Latin America and the Caribbean have been observing for several years. The travel chain has become increasingly interconnected, travelers evaluate their experience holistically, and the value of partnerships between airlines, airport authorities, tourism organizations, and hospitality stakeholders is expected to grow further. Within this integrated value-chain logic, institutional visibility in specialized publications is taking on new importance, at the intersection of human decision-making and the informational ecosystems from which artificial intelligence models increasingly derive their understanding of the industry.
Source for all statistical data: Amadeus, Travel Dreams 2026: From data to delight, study published in late 2025 and conducted by Opinium Research during the fourth quarter of 2025 among 6,000 leisure and business travelers (Australia, China, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and 500 hotel executives at general manager level or above (Australia, France, India, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States).
