The perfect travel agent seems real: handles everything, never errs, never asks you to “confirm later.” You say when and where you want to go, and in seconds, flights, hotels, tours, insurance—everything—is booked. But who does this “agent” really work for?
Today, AI helps us plan. Tomorrow—sooner than we think—AI agents will act directly on commerce platforms. They’ll stop just suggesting and start deciding, executing, and buying.
Imagine telling an AI: “We want to go to Japan in April.” Instantly, it returns a complete package: flight, hotel, train passes, tours, insurance. Everything looks fine. You click “Confirm,” and the money is debited.
What we don’t notice is that the decisions are no longer entirely ours. The flight might land at a cheaper airport. The hotel might be less central but easier for the provider to fill. Insurance may appear by default. These “nudges” aren’t new—we’ve long faced them in supermarkets, streaming platforms, and ticket purchases. They work because convenience and cognitive fatigue make us accept them.
Now, the process is active. The AI agent decides for us continuously. Undoing or changing a plan is hard work, so we move forward, often unconsciously.
Who decides what’s best? Regulators and legislators try, but laws differ globally. A decision made by an AI in Lisbon, New York, or Tokyo may follow entirely different rules. Europe focuses on preventive regulation, the U.S. on reactive courts, China on control.
Traditional agencies sold upgrades or excursions clearly—we knew when a sale was happening. With AI, sales blend into the plan, invisible, optimized, and hard to reverse.
The AI agent is the ultimate concierge: efficient, omnipresent—but its loyalty is rarely to us.
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