From AI and automation to integrated booking ecosystems, technology is reinventing the way travel brands engage customers. This session brings together travel tech leaders to discuss personalisation, operational efficiency, platform connectivity, and the digital tools reshaping service.
We bring you excerpts from the panel discussion on the topic 'Connected Journeys: How Tech is Rebuilding Trust, Speed & Loyalty' taking place at TDM Global Summit Singapore 2025.
The session is being moderated by Edward Wright, CMP, regional vice president, Asia, Hospitality Hong Kong, Amadeus, Panellists include: Sanghamitra Bose, vice president traveller care, American Express Global Business Travel; Deepshikha Sehgal, head of lodging, round & sea - APAC, Sabre; Steven Hopkinson, SVP APAC, Shiji, Johnson Ong, regional director SEA (ex. Malaysia & Thailand) and Oceania, Trip.com Group
The travel industry has always been about connection—connecting people to places, cultures, and experiences. But in today’s digital-first world, that connection increasingly depends on technology. From AI-driven personalisation to integrated booking ecosystems, tech is not just a support tool—it’s the backbone of how we deliver trust, speed, and loyalty to travellers.
The panellists explored how innovations in automation, data, and platform connectivity are reshaping the traveller experience.
Personalisation & Trust
With AI-driven personalisation becoming the norm, Edward queried the panellists on how travel brands can ensure that these experiences feel authentic and not intrusive? How transparency in data usage can play a role in rebuilding traveller trust.
Trust is absolutely critical
Johnson said: "So whatever that we recommend to the guests, it is recommend to our users based on the information that actually the guests have acquired from us. So whatever we are giving back to them is actually based on the users' behaviour, their historical bookings. They have trusted us on our platform. You create something that when the next time you search for it, it's relatable to them and not a booker. And then we are going to give them the actual items that they can click on, not just giving them a list of like 10, 20 choices, but you know, based on accurate information and which are the ones that they can click on."
"And I think we want to respect, you know, when they sign up to us, make sure they are not interjected from the shop side. But all in all, I would say that they have trusted us with the information that we may go use again and we will do anything we need to do on their side. Trust is absolutely critical."
Make the journey simple...
Sanghamitra added: "The travel experience in the business travel space is largely covered by a strong framework. And that framework is defined by the client organisation in terms of their travel programme goals, their duty of care, their preferred supply of content, and what they want to basically drive with the programme as a policy. And so the ask for all business travel companies is how do you create a personalised, seamless travel experience for the traveller within this framework? Some of the areas that we focused in on and used AI for is to keep the journey simple, to make it seamless, to also use the data. So the good things that we've got great and protected personal travel profiles."
All of that together builds up that level of personalisation and simplifies the complexity which exists in business travel. And I think we've all probably heard the saying that GDS is dead and travel agents are no longer to stay with us. And of course, that is absolutely not the case post-COVID. Duty of care is becoming incredibly, incredibly important.
AI fuelling the growth of next-generation personalisation
Deepshikha added: "And when we talk about meaningful personalisation, they have to be built on accurate, extensive data. They have to be built on a foundational layer of privacy, you know, that the data is secured. And I think when, because your data, and you talked about, you know, the confidence and the trust of the end-user as well. When your data is as powerful as the tools that interpret it and as secure or as trusted as the systems that are holding it or are safeguarding it. So if your personalised or personalisation is built on all these factors, then meaningful personalisation becomes more of a value exchange than a privacy risk. And at least at Sabre, this is exactly the foundation that we're following."
"So recently we announced the launch of our agent AI, the MCP server, which carries 50 petabytes of data. And to put in context, 50 petabytes is actually all of the written work of humanity can be rewritten many times over in every language. So that's the depth of the travel data cloud that Sabre has. Then on top of that is a layer of what we call as Sabre IQ, which is our personalisation engine. And on top of that sits the Assurance IQ layer, where the data is transparent. The explainability is there. The context is there. And to all of these ecosystems, we apply anonymisation. We apply encryption and aggregation."
"So there is safety component and there is transparency. Because it's very important for the user to know they are able to and more willing to share more data. But the question is, what's in it for me? And as long as the partners are able to communicate the value clearly and able to cut through the noise and pass through all the options that are there, provide them the meaningful options, I think, you know, and travellers are more willing to share personal information. "
Talking about bottlenecks, Edward remembered the time when technology in hotels used to be servers locked in basements, never to be seen or maybe to be seen once in a blue moon. He queried Stephen on what happened in the last five years with regards to cloud automation and overall investment in technology.
Moving to the cloud is inevitable
Steven elaborated on what they are doing for the actual team members at the hotel. He said: "We've got a company called ReviewPro. It's all about online reputational management. But we've layered with AI, so therefore the hotel staff now have to respond in a very articulate manner. It doesn't auto-respond, but we don't think that's what hotels are meant for. It's about how do you help the teams to be able to take the responses coming in, to be able to respond in such a way which is articulate and is on message and related to the brand. So it's about helping the teams, but also multiple languages. So if I'm working at a hotel in Bangkok and I don't necessarily know English that well and somebody's put a review on booking.com or on Google or whatever, I want to be able to respond."
But now I can see it in my local language, I can respond in my local language and then put it back into English and give it back to the person who actually wrote the original response. So that's taking AI in a very real sense and helping the team members to actually be able to get that message across. So I don't want to hijack that, but when you talk about AI, I'll give you a real example of how we really help the hotels."
"And I think in terms of where we're moving cloud, everything we're seeing, everything is now moving to the cloud. Everything that we're doing, all our solutions are cloud-based. And obviously we've just done a recent deal with Amadeus on a global basis, which is taking what Amadeus is doing with their central reservation solutions, plugging it into our probably management solutions to be able to take everything to the next level, to make it really easy for the hotels to be able to deploy, understand what is happening at the CRS level, at the EMS level, get all that different points of sound in the hotel. Everything is cloud-orientated from that view. Clearly there's a lot of people who are still on legacy-based systems, and now they're going through that migration to get onto the cloud. It's inevitable that's where we're all moving."
2026 to see shift from Gen AI to Agentic AI: Planning to Bookability
Deepshikha added: " I think we will see 2026 is going to be that leap year where the travel industry will shift from GenAI to more GenTech AI or Agentic AI. GenAI has been more about the planning and the ideation stage. GenTech AI is going to be more about the execution stage. So today, if you go on any of the AI channels, you can do the searches. There will be recommendations. But what lacks is the bookability. And I think GenTech AI or Agentic AIis going to bridge that gap to bookability. But the big question is, are the systems, the hotels or the hoteliers are ready for it?
It's a similar change or a similar journey that the industry has gone through when it came from, when it adopted RMSs, revenue management systems. There was that fear, right, that the systems are going to overtake and there's going to be automation when people go out to the jobs. But the reality is technology has always become a co-pilot. The humans still stay in the pilot."
Edward queried Johnson on: "Are we going to have agents? Am I going to have an Android agent helping me go on a trip to connect my internet experience, whether that's on a ferry, plane, train? Is that where you see the setting?
Johnson said: "But right now, we are seeing that engaging with our trip genie, which is our travel planner and assistant AI. They are engaging us during the trip as well, asking real-time questions. And through it, because of the connectivity, the APIs are helping our partners. We are able to help them make reservations, whether it's restaurants, spas, hotels, flights. I think over the last six months, we have seen the usage of our trip genie. We are seeing more than 200% growth in the conversation. People are engaging us with over 200 countries. I think people are getting more and more comfortable using AI in their holidays and travel plans. And I think as an industry player, we need to keep it up in order to make it up, to catch up with the speed of our customer behaviour.
"And I think we've seen a lot of brands embracing everything from digital concierges. We're hearing now about Whisper. So when you actually go ahead and call a reservation agent, they'll be able to understand the intent, motion, and be able to prompt an upsell during the actual individual conversation all the way through automating the entire conversation automatically."
So technology and AI are your partners for growth, embrace AI but be selective!
