Future of Tour Operators – How AI-Driven Transformation is Redefining Business + Industry Leadership
Summary
This panel discussion at ITB Berlin 2026 tackles the existential challenge facing traditional tour operators in an AI- and platform-driven era. Moderated by Dr. Markus Heller, the session features Boris Raoul (CEO and Group CTO of DER Touristik), Dr. Patrick Andrae (co-founder and CEO of HomeToGo), Benjamin Jacobi (Managing Director of TUI Deutschland), and Norman Ladig (Regional Manager DACH at Booking.com).
Boris Raoul opens with a keynote framing the core tension using the concept of FOBO — Fear of Becoming Obsolete — arguing that traditional tour operators risk irrelevance if they fail to transform. He points to two major German tour operator brand exits in recent years where, despite the employee impact, customers barely noticed the departure, signaling a dangerous lack of brand stickiness. Raoul draws a sharp contrast between DIY platforms (e.g., Airbnb, HomeToGo) and 'sync' tour operators (those who bundle trips). DIY platforms benefit from higher customer purchase frequency, modern tech stacks, data-first architectures, and agile development cycles — enabling them to allocate 70-80% of IT capacity toward growth and innovation. Tour operators, by contrast, spend 50-70% of IT resources just maintaining legacy systems. DIY platforms have also attracted significantly more CapEx investment and developer talent.
Despite this disadvantage, Raoul argues tour operators have a structural moat: their 'orchestration' role when disruptions occur. When flights are cancelled or itineraries collapse, a packaged tour operator bears legal and operational responsibility — whereas DIY-assembled trips break down like virtual interlining, leaving customers stranded. He also highlights DER Touristik's 400+ specialists with 20-30 years of destination knowledge as an asset that can be encoded into proprietary LLMs, creating a competitive edge in the emerging agentic AI era.
Benjamin Jacobi (TUI) frames the challenge as the 'iceberg model': while distribution modernization is visible, core operations — inventory management, capacity planning, knowing exactly where customers are in a crisis — happen below the surface and must remain robust. TUI is pursuing both legacy system renovation and agile distribution innovation simultaneously. Jacobi also highlights AI use cases across pricing, forecasting, capacity management, and even food waste reduction in TUI hotels, where AI scans returned food to dynamically adjust next-day menus based on guest nationality and preferences.
Dr. Patrick Andrae (HomeToGo) describes running up to 100 simultaneous A/B tests and deploying code multiple times daily. He reveals HomeToGo launched an 'AI Mode' search product in 2023 — before Google adopted the same name. Their AI-powered customer support chatbot now delivers 85% fewer escalations versus their previous external chatbot, with measurable NPS and CSAT improvement. Andrae argues AI is structurally beneficial to tour operators because it multiplies demand discovery channels, and operators with unique, regulated inventory become harder to bypass in an agentic world.
Norman Ladig (Booking.com) reports that Booking sold 68 million flight tickets in the past year — growing over 30% — as part of its 'connected trip' strategy combining accommodation, flights, rental cars, and attractions. Booking is actively testing agentic AI capable of automatically rebooking flights, resolving disputes, processing payments, and upgrading stays mid-trip — all without requiring the customer to re-enter payment details. Internal AI tools have already reduced inbound customer service volume by approximately 10%, with agents pre-briefed by AI context before picking up calls.
The panel concludes with broad consensus that the tour operator model can survive and compete — but only if management shifts from a product-driven to a customer-data and e-commerce-driven mindset, and if legacy infrastructure is modernized to support agile, AI-native workflows.
Key Takeaways
- •Boris Raoul introduced the concept of FOBO (Fear of Becoming Obsolete) as the defining challenge for tour operators, noting that two major German tour operator brands exited the market in recent years and customers 'barely missed' them — signaling a crisis of relevance.
- •DIY platform operators allocate 70-80% of IT capacity toward growth and innovation, while traditional tour operators spend 50-70% of IT resources just maintaining legacy systems — a structural disadvantage that compounds over time.
- •Tour operator IP is largely owned by third-party vendors, limiting the industry's ability to build proprietary technology and attract engineering talent capable of accelerating AI adoption.
- •Patrick Andrae revealed that HomeToGo launched an 'AI Mode' search product in 2023, before Google adopted the name, and currently runs up to 100 simultaneous A/B tests while deploying code multiple times daily.
- •HomeToGo's internally built AI chatbot delivers 85% fewer customer escalations compared to their previous external chatbot solution, with confirmed improvements in NPS and CSAT scores.
- •Booking.com sold 68 million flight tickets in the past year, representing over 30% growth year-on-year, as part of its connected trip strategy integrating accommodation, flights, rental cars, and attractions.
- •Booking.com is testing agentic AI capable of automatically resolving travel frictions — including rebooking flights, modifying arrival dates, processing payments, and upgrading rooms — without requiring customers to re-enter payment details.
- •Booking.com's internal AI tools have reduced inbound customer service volume by approximately 10%, while also pre-briefing human agents with AI-generated context before they handle each case.
- •Benjamin Jacobi (TUI) described an AI use case in TUI hotels where food returned to the kitchen is scanned by AI to determine guest preferences by nationality, dynamically adjusting the next day's menu to reduce food waste and improve sustainability.
Transcript
I'm the CEO of the DTO organization in Germany in Austria and I have also a parallel role. I'm also the group CTO of the whole um Dto group and um as Marcus didn't shared his presentation so I didn't know what to expect. So um I will take some of these pieces and u to work it into my presentation. First of all, have you ever heed about um the acronym FOBO? Yes, I think everyone knows FOMO is the fear of missing out and the new one is FOBO, which means the fear of becoming obsolete. And that's ex...
