Success for travel brands depends entirely on the guest experience. Measurements of success - like repeat bookings, brand loyalty, and customer lifetime - are a direct reflection of how a customer feels when on a flight or visiting a property.
Looking to deepen customer loyalty, some travel brands have expanded the definition of guest experience to include the moments before and after the physical journey or visit itself. How can we provide value to guests throughout their entire engagement with our brand? How do we ensure consistency and delight before, during and after a singular experience?
As companies across the globe embrace and employ artificial intelligence, travel companies have pounced on its potential. Amperity recently surveyed 800 U.S. travel industry professionals to gauge the state of AI in travel. Our survey found that four in ten travel companies (41%) already use AI daily or several times a week, and 96% expect to sustain or increase AI spending over the next 12 months. The promise is clear: 54% believe AI will help improve customer loyalty, and 57% say it will increase customer lifetime value.
However, many travel brands are hesitant to use AI in the customer-facing applications that actually drive the greatest customer lifetime value (CLV). Only 35% of survey respondents’ companies are currently using AI in front of customers. Our survey data shows that customer data platforms (CDPs) will be the key to unlocking AI’s full potential - turning fragmented guest data into personalized, revenue-driving experiences. As we’ll see, companies with CDPs are twice as likely than those without CDPs to be taking full advantage of AI in their organization.
Why hotels and airlines are holding back on AI
Before travel brands can optimize their AI investments, it’s helpful to understand what challenges are standing in the way of meaningful AI adoption.
In the State of AI in Travel 2025 report, Amperity asked what are the biggest challenges travel organizations face when scaling AI initiatives, and found that the challenges most frequently cited were the high cost of AI tools (41.3%), limited technical expertise (36.4%), and lack of integration across systems (32.6).
The three greatest pain points all indicate why AI investments haven’t yet reached customer-facing applications. Customer-facing applications are, by nature, resource-intensive and have higher stakes. They inform millions of touchpoints across the customer journey and directly impact travel brands’ measurements of success - a good online experience could determine whether a guest books a visit, if they’ll book again in the future, and whether they have a positive perception of the brand.
A misstep with a customer-facing application isn’t just a failed pilot - it risks brand trust and lost bookings. It’s no wonder many executives hesitate to put AI in front of customers without confidence in their data foundation.
Since customer-facing applications have so many touchpoints, the cost of adopting AI can quickly add up to expensive AI bills. Marketing and IT teams need to closely coordinate and all depend on a strong customer data infrastructure.
Without the right customer data platform (CDP), travel brands are left with siloed data that produces poor outputs, erodes ROI, and creates expensive AI “science projects.” With a CDP, the same initiatives become repeatable, reliable, and revenue-generating.
Laying the groundwork for innovation with CDPs
It’s no surprise that companies with a strong CDP are ahead of the competition when it comes to utilizing AI. Travel brands with a customer CDP are twice as likely to use AI in guest-facing applications (50% vs 19%), and nearly five times more likely to have full adoption across multiple business units (19% vs 4%).
Why is this? CDPs solve for the greatest challenges cited by survey respondents in terms of scaling AI. By definition, CDPs provide AI integration across systems and lay the groundwork for customer data to flow precisely where it needs to. CDPs simplify the need for technical expertise, meaning IT teams no longer need to take care of data analysis requests - the CDP offers insights readily.
Well-organized customer data, via a CDP, drives all AI use. When AI draws on trustworthy, identity-resolved customer information, brands see greater ROI from every action. Brands may differ on what AI use cases make the most sense for their business - but with a CDP, all can have confidence that AI outputs are reliable and actionable.
Once this foundation is established, brands will feel comfortable trusting AI in customer-facing scenarios. Hotels and airlines can count on outputs to be persuasive, personalized, and cost effective. As companies rapidly embrace AI as a force multiplier, the longer a company goes without a CDP, the further behind competition they’ll fall by neglecting this critical data foundation.
Turning AI into loyalty and revenue
The travel industry is investing heavily in AI, but investment alone isn’t enough. The winners will be the brands that put AI to work in guest-facing experiences - and that requires a solid customer data foundation.
CDPs give travel brands the confidence to move AI out of the back office and into the guest experience, where loyalty is built and revenue is secured.
Read the full State of AI in Travel 2025 report to learn more on how hotel and airline brands are currently using AI and customer data to shape their strategies this year and beyond.