Only 35 percent of hotel and airline brands currently use AI to enhance guest interactions and just 12.5 percent are ready to scale those efforts across their organizations. Conversely, nearly all respondents—96 percent—plan to maintain or increase AI investments over the coming year.

“While travel brands are investing in AI, they’re hesitant to put it in front of guests,” said Tony Owens, Amperity’s CEO. “The challenge isn’t vision—it’s connection. Without a unified view of the customer and reliable access to quality data, AI can’t consistently deliver the personalized experiences travelers expect.”

Widespread, yet shallow

About 80 percent of travel companies use AI in some capacity, primarily in marketing, customer support and sales, rather than in direct guest interactions. However, training and readiness lag, with 36 percent of respondents reporting no formal AI training, making safe deployment in real-world guest interactions challenging. Data fragmentation also limits AI’s effectiveness for personalization, with 58 percent of companies reporting incomplete or fragmented customer data.

Companies with a customer data platform report higher daily AI use at 54 percent versus 28 percent, more guest-facing deployments at 50 percent versus 19 percent and broader adoption across business units at 19 percent versus 4 percent. Centralized data is key to expanding AI’s reach and impact across operations.

Momentum grows despite gaps

Nearly all travel professionals—96 percent—expect AI spending to rise or hold steady over the next year. The report outlines a path from pilots to production-ready AI, including unifying first-party guest identity across touchpoints, productionizing data preparation workflows, prioritizing guest-facing use cases with clear metrics and closing training and governance gaps with role-based enablement.

Derek Slager, Amperity’s co-founder and CTO, said AI only delivers real value when it runs on unified, privacy-safe data.

“When identity is resolved with precision and profiles stay current across every system, brands can safely bring AI closer to their guests—delivering more personal, meaningful experiences with confidence,” he said.

A recent study by Florida Atlantic University found that hotels must rethink how they build and maintain loyalty as AI systems increasingly make travel decisions and bookings. The rise of AI agents will complicate hotel loyalty management.