Sabre Hospitality’s president laid out some of the myths in the travel industry, particularly when it comes to AI, in a session this afternoon at ITB Berlin 2025.
Scott Wilson, who was speaking on ‘Myth and Reality: Navigating Change in Travel and Technology’, began by saying that assumptions were a person’s windows on the world. These, he said, often need scrubbing or the light refuses to enter.
Wilson said that there is a fallacy that the airlines and hotels within the industry no longer need direct intermediaries.
He said: “The industry takes all the complex things and brings them to a place where the consumer can make their decision. What happens in travel is way more complex than happens in a supermarket. When you have complexity, the natural course is to try and figure out how to bring simplicity. It’s the role of an intermediary to do that.”
Twelve years ago, he said, people would look at an average of 38 pages before making a decision. That number, he claimed, had risen to 277 by last year.
“This amount of information,” he said, “is a burden on consumers. The answer is in finding a personalised approach so that each individual thinks they’re getting the best information for them.”
However, he said that personalised digitalisation is still ‘tough’. “We’ve been doing it for twenty years,” he said.
There was, however, sunlight.
He said: “AI is coming at the right time. We’ve been collecting data on consumers for 20 years. Now, the ability to turn that into action has finally been unlocked. AI can take this information, understand it, then apply nuance and subtlety. This makes it a unique moment.”
The problem is power. The rise of AI means a precipitous increase in the power being used, with predictions that that this will rise 165% by the end of the decade. A position that does not sit well with sustainability goals. Wilson pointed out that while 50% of consumers say that sustainability is important to them, only 10% factor it into any decisions.
He concluded: “The burden is going to fall on suppliers to integrate it into the decision. It needs to be built in and not bolted on. That seems unfair, but it is our responsibility and it should be our privilege.”
