Autonomous agents will have the ability to oversee the booking process for travelers which will also mean use of their digital IDs. These IDs have primarily been controlled by travelers themselves, leaving many to wonder what verification processes will look like and how this will change travel booking and how companies operate.
In the fifth and final installment of Phocuswright's The New Age(nts) Trend Series—which aligns with its Travel Innovation and Technology Trends 2025 report—Mike Coletta, senior manager of research and innovation, facilitated a discussion about the future of generative AI, autonomous agents and digital ID in travel, and how the industry must adapt.
The potential for digital ID
The panelists all pointed to associated benefits of digital ID for travel, with Jamie Smith, founder of Customer Futures, noting that it can both improve customer experience and reduce instances of fraud.
“This idea that the only 360-degree view of the customer is the customer starts to really make sense when I can bring my preferences, my history and my verifiable identity with me,” Smith said.
“Identity is starting to not just be a really interesting way for businesses to add value, personalize and so on, but it also starts to smooth the experience.”
Some of the concerns with AI agents, however, are digital trust, verifiable credentials and counterparty trust, which Chain4Travel is hoping to address through the Camino Network.
In addition to providing trust infrastructure, connectivity, wallet authentication and digital payments, the blockchain-based network is aimed at helping “distinguish between good and bad bots” in an agentic world.
“We can do so by identifying a good bot by the delegated identity that he has from a traveler, and then on the other side, we have a lot of agentic searches right now, so the look-to-book ratios might explode, and we already have a mechanism in place for the Camino Network where you can monetize as a supplier on the search traffic,” Anke Hsu, chief growth officer at Chain4Travel said.
“Blockchain is the trust layer that we need in the agentic world,” Hsu said.
Responding to change
The future of global distribution systems is also top of mind. Current systems are fragmented and require multiple integrations, but an agentic AI landscape will necessitate open standards, decentralized networks and open-source implementations, which Open Travel Alliance is working to establish.
It will also require them to become more flexible and consistent and veer away from the custom code they use to connect with different suppliers, according to Stu Waldron, executive director of Open Travel Alliance.
“There’s going to be some interesting discussions on who’s going to pivot and for example, looking at music and video, who’s going to be a Circuit City and not make it? Who's going to be a Best Buy and at least survive? Or who’s going to be an Amazon that saw the opportunity, came in from nowhere and zoomed to the top?” said Waldron.
With shifts in discovery and search, online travel agencies (OTAs) will also need to respond. As Smith pointed out, AI advancements will allow travelers or their AI agents to discover travel via their digital identities and decentralized networks, without the middleman.
“There are some discussions around how OTAs will evolve, how suppliers will evolve because, in theory, you can have direct relationships between agent and suppliers,” Hsu said.
Practical advice for implementation
Coletta also asked the panelists for their thoughts on what travel businesses should be doing in the coming years to implement things like digital identity, agentic AI, open infrastructure and open standards.
For Hsu, practicality is key, and she encouraged stakeholders to identify a pain point or an area of opportunity and explore how that use case could be implemented.
According to Waldron, it’s vital for industry players to “join the conversation” and get involved with organizations addressing ongoing trends.
“I believe we’re in a fair amount of agreement; this is going to be driven by open source. And so, there’s multiple conversations going on trying to set the direction and sort out: What is our journey over the next two to three years? What should we do sooner? What can we do later? Find those conversations, get a seat at the table, get a membership in some of the various organizations, but don’t just sit there and what to see what happens.”
Smith reiterated that organizations are going to face challenging adjustments, and “learning by doing” can help stakeholders feel more prepared.
“Start now; it’s going to take longer than we think, but we’ve also got that extra challenge where every week, every two weeks, something pretty astounding comes out that we didn’t have two weeks before. The sand is shifting under our feet, and I think trying to feel your way through it isn’t the way to do it. I think building experiments, prototyping is the way to get going.”
Additionally, Smith recommended speaking to experts rather than relying on LinkedIn or reading ebooks to stay up to date.
Watch the full discussion below:
The convergence of GenAI with digital identity: Phocuswright's New Age(nts) Trend Series Part 5
Tags: Anke Hsu, Chain4Travel, Artificial intelligence (AI), Stu Waldron, Open Travel Alliance
