Travel once began with guidebooks, recommendations from friends, and hours comparing flights and hotels. It now often begins with an algorithmically selected video. AI can turn that spark into a complete itinerary within seconds, matching destinations, budgets, interests, and even a traveller’s mood. The same system can also decide which places never appear on the screen.
Fahd Hamidaddin, founding CEO of the Saudi Tourism Authority and president of the TOURISE Summit, describes that tension clearly. AI can act as a compass that expands possibility, he argues, but it can become a cage when opaque recommendations repeatedly steer people toward predictable, commercially convenient choices.
The next shift is from recommendation to action. Agentic travel systems could rebook a flight after bad weather, move dinner reservations, and reorganise an itinerary before the traveller reaches the airport. Logistics would fade into the background—but only if the agent remains accountable to the person whose money, time, and memories are at stake.
Travel is especially sensitive to this balance because its best moments are not always efficient. A detour, an unfamiliar neighbourhood, or a conversation that disrupts the schedule can become the reason a journey is remembered. An optimiser trained only on convenience and predicted satisfaction may remove precisely that productive uncertainty.
Personalisation Can Reveal a Wider World
Curated platforms can introduce travellers to destinations that rarely appear on traditional top-ten lists. That may distribute visitors away from crowded hotspots and toward local guides, artisans, festivals, and small businesses. For a traveller, a recommendation connected to a genuine interest can feel less like advertising and more like discovering a doorway that would otherwise have remained hidden.
Saudi Arabia sees this as both cultural and economic infrastructure. Hamidaddin highlighted AlUla, Diriyah, desert experiences, and artisan workshops as examples of places and activities AI could surface. He expects AI to contribute $135 billion to the country’s GDP by 2030, with tourism playing a central role. The more meaningful measure, however, is whether local communities share the value and visitors encounter culture beyond a polished digital summary.
An Agent Can Help—and Quietly Take Control
Hyper-personalisation depends on extensive information: searches, clicks, past trips, budgets, locations, and preferences. Those signals can reduce planning friction, but they can also create a narrowing feedback loop. If a system learns that someone prefers familiar food or premium hotels, it may stop showing the unexpected options that make travel transformative.
The stakes rise when an agent books or cancels rather than merely suggests. Travellers need to know when AI is acting, which priorities it is following, and whether commissions or commercial partnerships affect the result. Consent should be explicit, controls easy to find, and major changes reversible. An overnight rebooking may be helpful; an unexplained cancellation of a once-in-a-lifetime reservation is not frictionless travel.
Trust Must Travel With the Technology
Hamidaddin wants the TOURISE Summit in Riyadh to bring governments, businesses, and technology leaders together around shared standards. His priorities include bias audits, clear explanations, genuine opt-in choices, control over personal data, accessibility, workforce training, and systems that promote cultural diversity rather than flatten it.
Those principles can be tested in practical ways. A booking engine can show why it recommended an option, disclose sponsorship, offer alternatives outside the inferred profile, and ask before spending or changing plans. It can also make a human support route visible when disruption becomes emotionally or financially significant.
AI could make travel more spontaneous by handling the tedious parts. Yet the best companion does not decide what a journey should mean. It creates room for discovery, helps when plans collapse, and then steps back—leaving the traveller with the final word.
