Expedia Group's Unpack research shows how cultural conversations can become both a mainstream travel behavior and a strategic opportunity.

Unpack combines Expedia Group's first-party data, global research, and social listening to turn early signals into a forward-looking view of 2027. Join Amanda Maltos, Vice President of Communications, and Brandon Ehrhardt, Vice President of Marketing, for a fast, practical read on what's coming next, including:

• Emerging traveler behaviors moving curiosity to demand
• What the durability of the "Set-Jetting" trend teaches us about spotting and acting on early signals
• Where shifting traveler priorities create pressure and opportunities to pivot
• How this research can meaningfully shape your marketing, product, partnerships, and traveler experience

Brandon Ehrhardt
VP of Marketing, Expedia Group
Amanda Maltos
VP of Partner Communications, Expedia Group

Presented by:

AI agents can now take a trip from a text message to a confirmation email. Propellic tested Instinct and Meta’s Muse with booking requests for hotels, flights and tours, surveyed the people already using them, and watched travelers book with them, to answer a question every travel company now faces: when an AI agent makes the transaction, who gets the booking?

Brennen Bliss, founder and CEO of Propellic, shares the findings from Propellic’s new report, Agentic Travel Booking in Meta’s Muse and Instinct, and connects them to The State of AI Visibility for Travel in 2026, from the first search to the confirmation email.

Brennen Bliss
CEO, Propellic

Presented by:

Gant Travel's customer experience transformation didn't happen all at once. It began with voice, expanded to chat, and most recently added email to Talkdesk—creating a unified platform for customer engagement. In this fireside chat, Gant Travel COO Vic Pynn shares how a close partnership with Talkdesk and an open, flexible technology platform allowed Gant to build what made sense for its business, at its own pace. Hear how bringing conversations and customer context together has simplified operations, better supported a global workforce, and helped Gant prioritize travelers when it matters most. Vic will also look ahead to what's next as Gant and Talkdesk continue to evolve the partnership and explore new opportunities with AI and automation.

Michael Klein
Industry Marketing Director, Talkdesk
Victor Pynn
COO, Gant Travel

Presented by:

Every booking triggers a chain of payments across acquirers, banks, and virtual card providers, and the cash that should be available to pay suppliers is often stuck somewhere in between. For OTAs, that gap means pre-funding, credit lines, and costly short-term financing. Adyen and Visa will unpack where working capital gets trapped between pay-in and payout, and what OTAs can do to solve for it.

Victor Gaarenstroom
Global Head of Travel & Mobility, Adyen
Simon Thompson
Global Business Development Director, B2B Travel, Visa

Presented by:

For travel advertisers, trust is becoming a critical growth strategy. Join this discussion on how brands are strengthening advocacy and building more resilient partnership marketing strategies beyond the walled gardens.

Natalie Creed
Senior Director of Client Service & Business Development, Rakuten Advertising
Todd Latter
Senior Manager, Paid Media, Paisly
Alonso Velarde
Head of Sales & Supply, Rakuten Travel

Presented by:

Cancelled flights, overbooked rooms, missed connections. Post-purchase is where loyalty is made or lost, and it arrives at scale and without warning — which makes it the hardest problem in travel messaging, not the easiest. Sanjay Bhatia, Head of Industry - Travel & Auto at Meta, and Craig Goodfriend, North America Enterprise Sales Lead at Meta, will walk through how clients design for these high-friction moments: proactive notification versus reactive support, what a traveler will tolerate from automation and where they need a human, how a resolution flow stays trustworthy when the news is bad, and how the thread that handled the booking becomes the fastest path to a rebooking. Attendees will walk away with best practices on disruption-moment messaging and escalation logic to keep trust intact.

Sanjay Bhatia
Head of Industry - Travel & Auto, Meta
Craig Goodfriend
North America Enterprise Sales Lead, Meta

Presented by:

Join UATP and ConnexPay for a dynamic fireside chat on the growing role of virtual cards in shaping the future of travel payments. From enabling seamless supplier payments and improving operational efficiency to supporting richer traveler experiences and ancillary revenue opportunities, virtual cards are creating value across the travel ecosystem. While challenges around acceptance and economics remain part of the conversation, industry leaders are finding new ways to leverage virtual payments as a strategic advantage. Learn how innovative payment models can help unlock stronger partnerships, smoother customer journeys, and new distribution opportunities.

Paul Swanston
VP, Global Sales, UATP
Colin Temple
Head of Direct Sales Americas, ConnexPay

Presented by:

In May 2026, a flight-shopping agent went live — not a demo, a real product. This session brings together the technology, distribution, and payments partners behind it for a candid look at what it takes to build agentic commerce in travel.

The panel unpacks the hard calls made along the way: how to handle open-ended traveler queries without letting costs spiral, where to draw the line between agentic flexibility and deterministic reliability, and how trust gets earned — by travelers, and by the systems working together behind the scenes.

Six months post-launch, panelists share what the data shows about how people are searching and buying through agents today, and where the biggest opportunities for improvement lie.

A grounded, lessons-learned conversation from teams shipping agentic commerce in production, not just announcing it.

Judy Reeves
Product Leader for Agentic Commerce, PayPal
Brad Johnson
VP, Product Management, Sabre
Andy Moss
CEO and Founder, Mindtrip

Presented by:

Agentic commerce in travel has taken its first small steps: one flight, one hotel booking. The trips that matter most to travelers and suppliers, such as a two-week Argentina–Chile journey, a family safari or a private-jet weekend, are still sold through calls, emails, and days of back-and-forth.

Mindshare is building a marketplace where every supplier, Commodity (OTA) or Complex (Tour Operator/DMC), is represented by its own AI agent, trained on its product and negotiating within the rate structure it already uses. Travelers, starting with 1.5 billion cardholders across 160 reward programs, will describe the trip they want. Supplier agents then assemble and price the itinerary and hand it off for booking.

The Mindshare founders walk through a complete OTA and complex-travel booking, from first prompt to confirmed trip, and share:

• How a supplier agent is built, trained and handed over to the supplier
• Where agents can and should negotiate, and where they must not improvise
• What changes for hotels, tour operators, DMCs and advisors when demand arrives through agents
• The road from a curated launch to an open marketplace in 2027

What comes after search? We believe it is Discovery, Collective Intelligence and Negotiation.

Michael Culhane
CEO & Co-Founder, Mindshare

Presented by:

Travel has spent 2 years piloting AI. Travelers have moved on, asking AI assistants to plan, book, and build their itineraries. Now brands must move from chatbots that answer to agents that act. This session will discuss how top travel and hospitality brands are putting agents into production in weeks, and what to plan for as you evolve your AI strategy during turbulent markets, cost pressures and growing your business at scale with personalized, tailored offerings.

Doug Karmazin
VP of Solution Engineering, Salesforce

Presented by:

Hotel distribution is being reshaped by rising acquisition costs, a battle to own the traveler relationship, and AI changing where travelers discover hotels. Drawing on new EY-Parthenon research, including surveys of 1,000+ US travelers and 460 hotel owners, operators and brands, plus in-depth industry interviews, this session explores what OTAs really contribute to hotel economics, who controls demand today, and where owners and travelers say the channel mix is heading. Carolina Lacerda, Executive Director at EY-Parthenon, is joined by Tim Hentschel, CEO of HotelPlanner, for a candid conversation on channel economics, loyalty and the next booking interfaces, from AI assistants to voice. Attendees will leave with practical pivots to measure distribution value, compete for AI-era discovery and turn first stays into lifetime value.

Carolina Lacerda
Executive Director, EY-Parthenon
Tim Hentschel
CEO, HotelPlanner

Presented by:

AI is reshaping every part of hospitality, from operations and revenue management to marketing, distribution and guest engagement. The bigger question is where human judgment still creates the greatest competitive advantage.

NYU professor and Google Higher Education AI Fellow Dr. Richie Karaburun argues the winners will pair people and AI to make better decisions, deliver better service and drive better business outcomes. Using the "centaur" model of human plus machine, this masterclass offers a practical framework for applying AI without sacrificing the human experiences that define hospitality. Attendees will learn:

• Which hospitality workflows suit AI and which require human judgment, creativity and empathy
• How the centaur operating model works across operations, revenue management, sales, marketing and guest experience
• How leading organizations are redefining hiring, training and leadership for an AI-enabled workforce
• The most common AI implementation mistakes, from over-automation to lost brand authenticity, and how to avoid them

Dr. Richie Karaburun
Clinical Associate Professor, New York University

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