Most travel marketers are still optimising for a world that no longer exists. They’re chasing clicks, harvesting demand through performance channels, and treating brand investment as a cost rather than an engine.

But Matthew Gardiner, fractional marketing leader and growth partner to travel brands and destinations, says it’s time the industry had a radical rethink about how discovery, trust, and conversion actually work in 2026.

Matthew was my guest on Flipping the Playbook. He’s has led global marketing functions inside FTSE 100 companies including International Airlines Group (owner of British Airways and Iberia) and he shared how AI is collapsing the traditional travel funnel, why brand and performance are not competing strategies, and what separates the marketing teams that will thrive from the ones that won’t.

https://youtu.be/D-zlEX78E_o

Discovery is becoming a conversation

For decades, travel planning followed a predictable path: inspiration, research, comparison, booking. That linear journey is being disrupted faster than most brands have adapted.

“The biggest shift in the last couple of years has been that discovery is becoming more conversational,” Matthew said. “AI is starting to compress that and change that journey quite dramatically.”

Travellers are no longer typing “flights to Rome.” They’re asking nuanced, context-rich questions: what’s the best place for a four-day trip with kids in October, where it’s warm and not too crowded? The old battle was online travel agencies versus direct. The new one is completely different.

“The funnel is collapsing into this conversation with AI,” Matthew said. “And whoever owns that conversation owns the booking.”

What it takes to be recommended by AI

Being visible inside AI-led journeys requires three things: clarity, credibility, and structured content. Brands need to know exactly what they stand for, because vague positioning won’t surface in response to specific questions. Credibility is built through signals from across the web – reviews, media coverage, creator content – which makes PR investment more commercially important than ever. And content needs to be organised in a way that machines can easily interpret.

But will AI favour large established players or open doors for smaller specialists?

“AI can surface niche specialists much more effectively than traditional search does,” Matthew said. “Someone asks ‘best eco lodges in Costa Rica’ – AI doesn’t necessarily default to the biggest brand. It’s looking for the most relevant one.”

The danger, in Matthew’s view, is not being small. It’s being generic.

The biggest friction point is confidence, not inspiration

Travel inspiration has never been more abundant. The problem comes immediately after.

“Once travellers move from dreaming to booking, suddenly they are faced with an overwhelming number of options,” Matthew said. “Which airline, which hotel, which platform, which itinerary.”

The role of travel marketing has shifted as a result. It is no longer just about sparking desire. “A booking happens at a moment when inspiration turns into confidence,” he said. “The brands that win are the ones that move from simply inspiring to guiding travellers through a choice.”

Trust, he argues, is not built through a single brand message but through a stack of signals working together – professional creative, brand reputation, payment security, flexible booking policies. One pattern he has observed firsthand is how powerfully context shapes conversion. When travellers encounter bookable options embedded within the content that originally inspired their trip, conversion rates can increase dramatically.

“The recommendation is embedded in the story rather than just interrupting it,” he said.

When conversion needs to improve without touching price, his instinct is to look first at decision friction.

“Travel bookings are often incredibly complex – lots of tabs, comparison sites, unclear policies, hidden fees. Every moment of uncertainty reduces the chance of a conversion. The best brands are usually the ones that make a decision feel easiest,” he said.

The brand versus performance trap

Many travel marketing teams treat brand and performance as competing priorities. Matthew believes that framing is itself the mistake.

“They are two parts of the same growth engine,” he said. Performance channels can work well, “until they don’t. You can only harvest so much demand until the field runs dry.”

Decades of IPA research show marketing effectiveness is maximised at roughly a 60/40 split between brand and short-term activation. Yet Matthew said at a recent Chartered Institute of Marketing Travel Industry Group panel, most travel brands were spending just five to ten percent on brand. The standout exception was resort holidays specialists, Sandals, whose marketing director framed brand not as an isolated cost but as what Matthew called “an ecosystem multiplier” – one where improved brand health makes performance channels measurably more efficient.

For CMOs struggling to prove brand’s commercial impact, Matthew points to a few reliable early indicators: share of search, direct traffic, brand search volumes, and conversion efficiency across paid channels. When he led marketing for IAG’s cargo business, he tracked customer perception of the network’s global reach – a metric that, as brand investment grew, shifted visibly and translated directly into stronger commercial conversations.

The teams that will adapt

Looking ahead, Matthew said he sees three things separating leading travel marketing teams from the rest.

First, they will understand how to show up in AI discovery, ensuring their content and product data is visible inside AI engines.

Second, they will invest in owned audiences and communities – loyalty programmes, creator ecosystems, customer groups – reducing dependency on paid platforms.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, they will build cultures of experimentation.

“The pace of change right now means that no one has the perfect playbook,” he said. “The teams that win will be the ones running small tests, learning quickly, and sharing their learnings well.”

His underlying message is consistent throughout: AI is not replacing marketers. The fundamentals – understanding human motivation, telling compelling stories, building trusted brands – still matter enormously. What is changing is the toolkit.

“The competitive advantage isn’t about budget, it’s not about technology,” he said. “It’s going to be about adaptability.”

Listen to the full conversation between Matthew Gardiner and Reza Moaiandin on the Flipping the Playbook podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Watch on YouTube.