Skift Global Forum 2025 Expert Roundtable: The Travel Marketer’s Role in an AI World

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.

For all the hype around artificial intelligence, its role in travel is no longer theoretical. Airlines forecast demand, hospitality brands refine pricing, and marketers leverage predictive data to reach travelers at just the right moment. However, as AI takes on more decision-making, trust, transparency, and human oversight are emerging as travel’s new cornerstones.

At Skift Global Forum 2025, Betsy Vankula, Global Director of Travel Sales at StackAdapt, moderated a roundtable of travel experts who examined how AI is reshaping personalization, pricing, and marketing effectiveness across the sector.

AI is helping travel marketers move far beyond traditional audience segmentation. Instead of defining travelers by age, gender, or destination, brands are now using intent and behavior-based signals to tailor messages to why people travel, not just where they go.

From wellness-first retreats to multi-generational adventures and high-end culinary escapes, personalization now means connecting with motivation and mindset. Participants emphasized that successful brands use data responsibly to anticipate needs, respect privacy, and maintain relevant messaging throughout the customer journey.

The opportunity isn’t just conversion — it’s understanding who the traveler wants to become. Vankula highlighted that StackAdapt’s AI-powered audience modeling helps brands identify high-intent travelers upstream, deliver relevant creative at the right moment, and re-engage them through precise retargeting by connecting inspiration to booking with measurable impact.

AI’s predictive capabilities are now embedded across the travel economy. Airlines use machine learning to forecast leisure and business demand, adjust inventory, and optimize marketing spend.

However, automation has limits. Dynamic pricing can backfire when shifts feel arbitrary or excessive. “AI can suggest the move,” one participant said, “but it takes a human to know when a price change hurts trust.”

Roundtable participants emphasized a measured approach to automation, utilizing AI to accelerate testing, refine segmentation, and match last-minute supply with in-market travelers, while keeping humans in the loop for macroeconomic context, timely events, and brand guardrails.

StackAdapt’s single-stack platform was cited as a practical solution: connecting audience building, in-flight optimization, and post-campaign measurement to create a true closed loop of performance intelligence.

Transparency isn’t just an ethical choice in travel marketing, it’s a performance driver. Travelers want to know when AI is influencing what they see, and brands that clearly communicate how technology shapes recommendations or pricing tend to build stronger engagement and loyalty over time. AI should never replace empathy — it should scale it.

Participants agreed that the most effective use of AI enhances, rather than replaces, human connection. The travel purchase journey is emotional and involves high consideration. Credibility depends on demonstrating that automation supports relevance and personalization, rather than manipulation.

Marketers are using AI responsibly to improve audience accuracy, campaign efficiency, and creative testing while keeping oversight in place to protect brand trust. As data-driven personalization becomes standard, brands that demonstrate transparency in how they target, measure, and optimize will win both traveler confidence and long-term performance.

The group envisioned a near future defined by unified, real-time marketing systems connecting data, creative, and measurement in one stack. The goal: deliver the right offer to the right traveler at the perfect moment, while maintaining transparency at every stage.

As AI evolves, one truth remains: hospitality is, and always will be, human. The brands that blend intelligent automation with emotional intelligence will set the standard for travel marketing’s next era.

StackAdapt helps travel marketers apply AI responsibly by connecting intent, inventory, and impact in one transparent platform.

To learn more about StackAdapt, visit go.stackadapt.com/travel.

This content was created collaboratively by StackAdapt and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.