Executive Forecast 2026: What Really Matters in Travel Tech Now

March 4, 202631:1567 views

Summary

This executive panel at ITB Berlin 2026, moderated by Lea Jordan, brought together Chinmai Sharma (SVP & Global Head of Lodging, Ground & Sea, Sabre), Mark Rabe (CEO, Sojourn), and Andreas Nau (Partner, NAO Capital Partners) to debate the technology trends and capital flows that will define travel in 2026 and beyond. The session opened with a direct question on whether agentic AI has moved from hype to reality. Chinmai Sharma confirmed that on the B2B corporate travel side adoption is already underway, with large DMCs and agencies deploying agentic AI for workflow efficiency and personalization.

He estimated agentic AI currently contributes low single digits to overall bookings but predicted double-digit contribution within two years. Sabre's investment in Bry AI was cited as a live example: corporate travelers can speak naturally ('going to New York for four nights') and the system autonomously surfaces rates, handles duty of care, and completes the booking. On the B2C side, Mark Rabe pointed to Sojourn's Concierge AI product, already handling 90-plus percent of inbound hotel guest requests via chat or WhatsApp, with a Google Gemini voice proof-of-concept underway and Red Roof among the early flagship adopters.

Andreas Nau offered the capital markets perspective, noting that investors in companies like Booking.com and Expedia are pulling back not because performance is poor but because there is deep uncertainty about who the long-term winners and losers will be as AI restructures the value chain. He observed that smaller startups with one or two people can now test ideas at the cost of what once required enormous capital, creating a proliferation of new entrants.

On the question of overestimation versus underestimation, Andreas argued that the operational complexity of travel crisis management (citing Middle East disruptions requiring mass repatriation) is being overestimated as an AI-solvable problem in the near term, while true personalization—something talked about for years but never delivered, as evidenced by every user still seeing 'Welcome to Berlin, Brandenburg Gate' on major OTA landing pages—is being underestimated as an area where AI will finally deliver. Chinmai flagged that LLM usage for travel search is growing far faster than the industry appreciates, drawing a parallel to the speed of internet adoption. Mark reported that 40% of Sojourn's production code is now written by AI, up from zero recently, and that BDR outreach and optimization loops across 100,000 campaigns are fully automated—without any reduction in headcount.

The panel agreed that the middle infrastructure layer (live pricing, booking modification, policy enforcement, duty of care at scale) remains the hardest unsolved problem, and that suppliers who cannot build it themselves must partner with intermediaries. The rapid-fire closing produced sharp directional bets: Andreas doubled down on the 'connected trip' at the search and discovery layer; Mark doubled down on direct bookings and clean data infrastructure; Chinmai doubled down on agentic AI delivering double-digit contribution and urged suppliers to become 'discoverable' by LLMs analogously to traditional SEO. Mark's contrarian call to ignore influencer marketing (unless full ROI tracking is in place) and Andreas's call to ignore 'AI-first' as a marketing label—arguing it is table stakes, not differentiation—rounded out the session.

Key Takeaways

•Agentic AI contribution is currently in the low single digits for travel bookings but Chinmai Sharma (Sabre) predicts it will reach double digits within two years maximum.
•Sojourn's Concierge AI product handles 90-plus percent of inbound hotel guest requests automatically via chat or WhatsApp; Red Roof is the current flagship adopter, with a Google Gemini voice proof-of-concept now in progress.
•Sabre invested in Bry AI to enable fully autonomous corporate travel booking by voice: an employee says 'going to New York for four nights' and the system handles rates, duty of care, and booking end-to-end without human intervention.
•40% of Sojourn's production code is now written by AI (up from zero), BDR outreach is fully automated, and optimization loops run across 100,000 campaigns—yet the company is hiring aggressively, not cutting headcount.
•Andreas Nau (NAO Capital Partners) reported that LPs are being advised by banks to hold back investment capital and move into safer havens like US Treasuries because of deep uncertainty about AI's impact on travel value chains; despite this, large deals are still closing—citing Naboo (meetings/groups) receiving outsized funding relative to revenue, and a Canadian social media affiliate business proving its model.
•Chinmai Sharma warned that ChatGPT has publicly stated it will charge a 4% commission in a Shopify-style model for retail goods and has begun advertising, while Anthropic's Claude has indicated it will find an alternative monetization path—signaling that LLMs at the top of the funnel will extract a share of travel revenue regardless.
•Andreas Nau argued that because four or five major LLM providers are competing, the top-of-funnel layer will commoditize over time, potentially making distribution cheaper than today's 15–20% OTA margins, which could make travel cheaper overall and grow the total market.
•The panel identified the middle infrastructure layer—live pricing, real-time booking, modification, policy enforcement, and duty of care at scale—as the hardest unsolved problem in agentic travel, with Sabre's role described as providing 'the towers and satellites' while LLMs operate at the surface.

Transcript

But the question is where do we act upon right? So for that I love to put together these panels where we really get honest opinions from the people that actually take decisions in our industry and have a good viewpoint and can actually give good judgment. So um I hope you're curious as I am for the next session. We're going to have a lovely panel discussion. What will actually matter in 2026 in terms of travel technology? Where will the money move? Like that's always interesting, right? To look ...