When I booked my flight to Croatia this year, I spent weeks tracking prices and juggling layovers before finally redeeming a year’s worth of credit card points plus $280 for an economy seat. It was exhausting and as I clicked “book,” I couldn’t help but wonder whether artificial intelligence had already shaped what I paid.
AI has quietly infiltrated nearly every part of the travel experience. It’s setting flight prices, inspecting rental cars for dents, blocking Airbnb guests deemed risky, and even monitoring the air in hotel rooms for smokers. For travel companies, AI has become the ultimate cost-cutting tool. For travelers, it’s a more complicated companion a smart but unpredictable algorithm that could either save you money or silently inflate your bill.
Ari Lightman, professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, says the lack of transparency makes this tricky. “Are they doing it in your best interests or their best interests?” he asks. “Sometimes, they don’t match.”
That question became very real this summer when Delta revealed that it was using generative AI to set prices on 3% of its US flights, with plans to expand to 20% by year’s end. Lawmakers immediately raised concerns that Delta could use AI to find each passenger’s “pain point” the maximum price they’re willing to pay. The airline denied using personal data for individualized pricing, clarifying that its system adjusts fares based on aggregate route demand, sometimes lowering prices as well as raising them.
Delta’s AI-driven system builds on the long-standing practice of dynamic pricing, where fares fluctuate with time and demand. But now, thanks to AI, those shifts can happen faster and more precisely than ever before. “The more data it has, the more it learns,” Delta President Glen Hauenstein told investors. “We’re really excited about it.”
That’s not exactly music to travelers’ ears. Customers already resent dynamic pricing on platforms like Ticketmaster and Uber. The difference is that airline tickets are often major expenses with limited alternatives. “Now we’ll see prices flip not daily, not hourly, but on a minute-by-minute basis,” said Richie Karaburun, professor at NYU’s Tisch Center of Hospitality.
Even when the price isn’t the problem, AI is still watching. Rental giant Hertz now uses UVeye, an AI vehicle scanner, to inspect cars for scratches and dents with laser precision. The company says it eliminates the inconsistencies of manual checks, bringing “objectivity and transparency” to the process. Hertz claims that more than 97% of nearly one million scanned cars had no billable damage, though it hasn’t disclosed how often the system flags damage incorrectly.
Meanwhile, Airbnb has used AI to curb house parties, analyzing booking patterns based on factors like guest age, length of stay, and distance from the property. The company says this has reduced US party reports by 54% since 2020 but it also admits that legitimate travelers can get mistakenly blocked. Guests who believe they were wrongly flagged must contact support to resolve it.
For many travelers, AI has become a double-edged sword guarding against abuse, but occasionally punishing innocent users.
Still, some travelers are using AI to fight back. Tools like Mindtrip create personalized itineraries, Gondola searches your inbox for travel rewards, and Kayak’s ChatGPT assistant helps find flight deals. Expedia has also embraced AI with a virtual customer service agent that handles over 140 million interactions a year and an Instagram-powered itinerary generator.
But AI isn’t a perfect travel planner. In a 2024 YouGov survey, 47% of travelers under 35 said they were comfortable using AI for trip planning but by mid-2025, that number dropped to around 35%. The reason: trust. A study by SEO Travel found that 90% of AI-generated itineraries contained errors from recommending closed attractions to suggesting activities at impossible hours. Some travelers have even followed AI guides to nonexistent locations, including phantom mountain trails in Peru.
“The models are only as good as the data they’re trained on,” said Andy Frawley, CEO of data firm Data Axle. “You need clean, standardized data for AI to actually work.”
Despite those flaws, AI could still improve travel in the long run. Frawley imagines a future where AI truly personalizes travel by matching budgets and interests. “If I’ve got $5,000 to spend, who can capture most of that budget?” he said. “That’s where AI can make a real difference.”
For now, though, the line between innovation and intrusion is thin. AI may optimize airline profits and reduce corporate waste, but it also risks eroding trust in industries that depend on human experience and emotion. “A bad experience has ripple effects on the entire vacation,” says Lightman. “A delayed flight, a rental car dispute they can ruin everything.”
AI might one day make travel smoother and smarter. Today, it’s just as likely to make your vacation a little more expensive and a lot less human.
