Tour Operators

The direct answer: Activities are where AI travel planning is strongest at the top of the funnel and weakest at the bottom — and that combination quietly redirects tour operators’ demand into commission channels. Among travelers who use AI for travel planning, the single most common use is discovering activities and restaurants (65%), ahead of finding destinations (56%) and building itineraries (55%) (TakeUp AI Research, April 2026). Meanwhile, only 17% of travelers have used AI to book an activity, even though 69% have used AI to plan or book a trip overall, and one in three trip-planning sessions now starts with AI (GetYourGuide/Arival research, 2026). That is the 65/17 gap: AI answers decide what travelers do, then hand the transaction to whatever bookable link sits closest to the recommendation — usually a marketplace taking 20–30% commission (Samba HQ OTA commission tracker, August 2026). For an operator, the strategic response is not to fight AI discovery — it is to be the named business in the answer and to make your own site the path of least resistance from that mention to a confirmed booking. ...

The short answer Tripadvisor and Viator are now travel data sources inside the AI assistants themselves — and the booking click lands back on their commissionable pages. On April 23, 2026, Tripadvisor announced that its apps are available inside Anthropic’s Claude: travelers ask for hotel or activity recommendations, the assistant sifts millions of Tripadvisor reviews and ratings, surfaces photos, ratings and review summaries in the chat, then hands the traveler off to Tripadvisor or Viator to book (Tripadvisor Mediaroom, April 23, 2026). The same announcement confirmed existing partnerships with OpenAI and Perplexity, plus an expanded Tripadvisor experience on Amazon’s Alexa+ that generates personalized itineraries from Tripadvisor’s content library. ...

The short answer When a traveler asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for “things to do” in your destination, the AI almost certainly cannot see your Viator or GetYourGuide listing — because both marketplaces keep those pages out of AI crawlers. Viator’s robots policy, current as of February 2026, excludes product listings, pricing and availability, and user-generated content including reviews, ratings and Q&A from AI crawling (as documented in a September 2026 marketplace comparison by Uncompromised Travel). GetYourGuide’s policy, updated July 2026, opens its destination and attraction pages to assistants but keeps listings out — and explicitly asks AI assistants to send travelers to the live page for prices. ...

The travel industry just hit a tipping point. Over 50% of US leisure travelers now use AI for trip planning, according to the latest Travel and Tour World data. For tour operators and destination management companies (DMCs), this isn’t just a trend to monitor — it’s a fundamental shift that determines your survival in 2026. While OTAs scramble to integrate AI features and maintain their 20-25% commission structures, a massive opportunity has opened for direct bookings. The question isn’t whether AI will disrupt the tour operator industry. It’s whether you’ll lead the disruption or become invisible to it. ...