AI is beginning to reshape the travel industry as organisations move from experimentation to large-scale deployment, writes Melissa Stonehouse, director, travel sellers UK & Ireland, Scandinavia and Benelux, Amadeus. While the technology offers major opportunities to improve efficiency, personalisation, and customer experience, it also brings real risks that must be carefully managed. Many AI systems remain probabilistic, meaning they can produce different outputs for the same input, which is problematic in a sector that depends on accuracy, security and reliability.

Travel is highly regulated, with near-zero tolerance for errors in areas such as pricing, ticketing, identity, and airport operations. Risks include cybersecurity threats, biased recommendations, data privacy issues, and inaccurate outputs.

Strong governance, compliance frameworks, and ethical safeguards are therefore essential. Organisations must balance innovation with responsibility, ensuring transparency, accountability, and oversight are built into AI systems so value can be delivered safely and at scale.

Will the risks of AI in the travel sector outweigh the rewards?

Many of us will have by now taken the first steps toward the deployment of AI in our organisations. This transformative technology is front of mind from the boardroom right down to the check-in desk, with questions being asked about how to maximise the opportunity.

While I have no doubt the prospects for AI in travel are bright, there is also a note of caution to be sounded. Many AI tools remain probabilistic, giving variable answers to identical questions, meaning we must be careful in how they are deployed in an industry which relies on certainty.

Ours is a highly regulated industry and has a near-zero tolerance for error. Availability, pricing, ticketing, passenger identity, and airport operations all demand accuracy, security, and resilience.  AI is progressing toward this level of scale, and while that future is coming, today we operate in a world that demands fully proven reliability.

Technology can move fast, but trust cannot. Governance, compliance, and security take years to build and moments to lose. The next step is understanding the risks as AI scales, and how to harness its value without introducing new ones.

Forewarned is forearmed

What challenges might we encounter as we work to implement AI? Cybersecurity is one of the most serious. AI integrated into booking platforms can be vulnerable to prompt injection or adversarial inputs, for example, potentially exposing system behaviour or bypassing safeguards in booking and payment flows.

There is also risk of bias and discrimination. A recommendation engine may surface higher fares for certain regions based on historical patterns rather than fair, real-time pricing. Elsewhere, data privacy is an area of concern. AI assistants handling customer queries could unintentionally expose booking details or passport information if controls are not tightly enforced.

Similarly, when summarising internal documents, AI may inadvertently reveal proprietary pricing models or future route plans. And then there are hallucinations. A chatbot might confidently provide incorrect information about delays or lounge access.

In a sector like travel, these risks cannot be ignored. They need to be proactively managed through strong governance, compliance, and clear policy frameworks.

Use of AI must be underpinned by strong governance

Effective governance is essential to enforce control, accountability, and reliability in autonomous systems, helping us to manage the risks outlined above. At Amadeus, we run an AI Compliance Program, an enterprise‑wide initiative designed to ensure alignment with the EU Artificial Intelligence Act and other emerging regulations. We are an early signatory of the AI Pact, an initiative which promotes early adoption of EU AI Act principles, and fosters ethical AI development, regulatory readiness, and active engagement across in the AI ecosystem.

This type of compliance is fundamental to the safe use of AI. It enables innovation while safeguarding public safety, fundamental rights and societal trust. We have built and deployed a comprehensive Responsible AI Compliance framework that serves as the foundation to ensure the ethical, secure, and legally compliant use of AI across all functions worldwide.

For organisations, particularly those operating at enterprise scale, looking to deploy AI effectively and responsibly, establishing this kind of governance is not optional. Centralised oversight, empowered to understand and manage AI risks end‑to‑end, is critical to achieving both regulatory compliance and sustainable innovation.

Enabling innovation with guardrails

Of course, risk management must be carefully balanced with the need to innovate and respond to ever-evolving traveller expectations.  Enabling rapid adoption without compromising on rigour requires AI compliance processes designed to scale, supported by intuitive technology, standardised workflows and clear accountability. Amadeus’ Responsible AI framework applies a risk-based and agile approach to support the rapid upscaling of AI use, while maintaining high standards of safety, privacy and ethics.

By giving use case owners clear guidance, guided inputs, and streamlined evidence capture, this approach helps teams complete robust compliance assessments efficiently and consistently. This ensures that informed, risk-based decisions can be made quickly, even as the volume and complexity of AI use cases grow.

To ensure these guardrails translate into consistent, enterprise‑wide execution, this governance framework is complemented by an AI Office. The AI office is a cross-functional team responsible for driving the execution of AI strategy, aligning AI initiatives with business objectives, and operationalising responsible AI at scale, pushing safe, scalable, and impactful adoption of AI across our business. By providing central oversight and coordination, it enables the safe, scalable, and impactful adoption of AI across the organisation.

Transformative change

The promise of AI, and the tangible benefits already emerging, are significant, but so are the responsibilities that come with it. In a complex, regulated industry like travel, scaling AI safely requires more than technical capability and experimentation; it demands trust, governance, and long-term thinking.

Across the travel industry, these principles are increasingly shaping how AI is designed, deployed, and managed. By embedding responsibility into innovation from the outset, organisations can ensure AI delivers real value at scale.

This is how the industry will support customers more effectively, improve the traveller experience, and help build a more resilient and sustainable travel ecosystem.

As director, travel sellers UK & Ireland, Scandinavia and Benelux, Amadeus, Melissa Stonehouse leads commercial relationships with travel sellers across three of Europe's most dynamic regions.

Melissa brings over two decades of Amadeus expertise to the position, having spent 20 years as a Global Account Director before stepping into her current leadership role. Her deep understanding of the travel technology landscape and long-standing customer relationships make her a trusted partner to travel agencies and sellers across her markets.

A passionate advocate for the travel industry, Melissa combines her professional dedication with a personal love of travel, bringing firsthand appreciation for the experiences her customers work hard to deliver every day.