How evolving technology has impacted travel
The prediction that LLMs could disintermediate online travel agencies, removing them from the customer journey altogether, is not unique to our age. Every major shift in travel distribution has triggered the same expectation, and each time, OTAs have adapted, and disintermediation has not materialised.
At eDreams, for example, these waves of technological progress have consistently driven evolution and created opportunities to win greater market share.
The role of AI and LLM’s in the future of travel
Travel isn’t a simple digital purchase. It’s an operationally demanding system shaped by supplier rules, legal obligations, payment risk, financial guarantees, and customer protection expectations. It also depends on capabilities that are difficult to replicate at scale: IATA-linked sourcing and licensing requirements, disruption management when schedules change, and high-volume refunds and exchanges.
This is why “native AI booking” doesn’t yet exist as a standalone capability: discovery can be transformed quickly, but end-to-end fulfilment and servicing require deep operational infrastructure. In practice, AI platforms are more likely to shape discovery than take on the full responsibility of booking, ticketing, and customer care.
This pattern has already played out repeatedly. When search engines became the primary gateway to travel, many assumed intermediaries would fade. Instead, OTAs adapted quickly, building world-class performance marketing and conversion capabilities and turning search into a major growth channel.
When meta-search expanded, the concern shifted to commoditisation. OTAs responded by investing in pricing technology, inventory strategy, and user experience, staying central to booking even as comparison behaviour changed. The comparison layer expanded, but trust, service quality, and fulfilment still mattered.
When mobile and app ecosystems took over, the interface changed again. Far from weakening OTAs, apps strengthened direct customer relationships through always-on engagement, richer first-party data, and faster product iteration.
How Online Travel Agents are adapting to AI revolution
More recently, loyalty and subscriptions have made OTAs even more resilient by shifting the model from one-off transactions to long-term relationships. eDreams ODIGEO has led this transition: with 7.7 million Prime members, the company has built recurring revenue and direct customer relationships. Prime, together with our other proprietary products, is difficult to commoditise, and that matters as distribution evolves again. Higher lifetime value improves unit economics and enables us to compete more effectively for AI-driven demand in auction-based environments, just as OTAs previously learned to win in search.
LLMs are the newest shift in discovery and decision-making. Conversational interfaces may change how people search and decide, but someone still has to execute the booking and manage the journey. eDreams already handles 3+ billion searches monthly, using caching to reduce load on airline systems while keeping results fast and reliable. And AI advantage here isn’t only about scale—it’s also about product differentiation.
We have been an AI-first company for over a decade, starting with in-house fraud prevention in 2014 and embedding an AI-first operating strategy across teams in 2015. Our platform draws on deep backend integrations to create unique itineraries, including combinations across carriers and rail or flight, and offers flexible ancillaries like Price Freeze and Fare Plus that give travellers more control and value at the point of purchase.
This is also where operational AI becomes decisive. eDreams is using automation to improve service outcomes and efficiency, with 90% of customer interactions handled by AI and more than €5m in annualised customer service savings. That isn’t a future promise; it’s an example of AI already strengthening the fulfilment layer that new interfaces still depend on.
The future is bright
The OTAs best placed for the next wave will be those that invested early and continue to innovate, including with agentic AI. Internally, AI already accelerates execution at eDreams ODIGEO: more than 30% of new code is generated through AI, rising to 94% in the most advanced teams. This increases development speed, enables more experimentation, delivering up to five times more concepts, helping scale new initiatives without proportional increases in resources.
Crucially, resilience also means not being dependent on any single model or provider. eDreams designs its AI architecture to avoid reliance on one vendor and can switch models as the landscape evolves. And it applies AI not just to personalisation and productivity, but to trust and protection, using AI-driven fraud and abuse prevention to counter subscription abuse and scraping at scale.
Like other technological innovations before them, LLMs will reshape the front end of travel. But they won’t replace the operational infrastructure that makes travel work. The interface will change, but the need for trusted, capable intermediaries won’t. OTAs like eDreams have repeatedly shown, that the sector is more than capable of keeping pace with these changes.
About eDreams ODIGEO
eDreams ODIGEO is the world’s leading travel subscription platform and one of the largest e-commerce businesses in Europe. Under its four renowned online travel agency brands – eDreams, GO Voyages, Opodo, Travellink, and the metasearch engine Liligo – it serves millions of customers every year across 44 markets. Listed on the Spanish Stock Market, eDreams ODIGEO works with nearly 700 airlines. The business launched Prime, the first subscription product in the travel sector, which has topped over 8 million members. The brand offers the best quality products in regular flights, low-cost airlines, hotels, dynamic packages, car rental and travel insurance to make travel easier, more accessible, and better value for consumers across the globe.
