It appears that one-third of travellers today use AI to book their vacations and make related purchases: these and more insights are revealed by the latest Adyen research on hospitality and travel sectors.
Adyen’s 2025 Hospitality and Travel Report illustrated a growing AI adoption amongst consumers and their increasing demand for hospitality businesses to integrate product search and transaction functionalities directly into their booking platforms.
Out of 40,000 consumers surveyed in 27 countries, 34% said they use AI to find travel destinations, displaying an increase of 74% compared to 2024. Gen Z (59%) and Millennials (48%) remain the most frequent users, but AI usage to redefine travel experience notably surged most among Boomers, rising by 106%, and Gen X, up 91%.
Two-thirds of Boomers say AI helps them filter out overwhelming content. Moreover, 70% of travelers across all age cohorts find social media frustrating due to the overload of ads, sponsorships, and influencer posts. Therefore, AI is stepping in to simplify the process, with 69% saying it offers faster travel inspiration than any other source.
Phil Crawford, Global Head of Hospitality at Adyen, noted that AI is becoming essential for guests seeking quick, personalized trip ideas, especially during the summer season, and that hotels are starting to invest in response to this rising demand.
While consumers increasingly think of AI use for travel discovery and purchases as a necessity, they are increasingly expecting businesses to use AI to improve travel and hospitality services. Hospitality providers are noticing this shift, with 44% saying AI search tools that help guests make booking decisions will reshape the industry in 2025. An additional 40% believe AI-driven automation that personalizes the guest experience will play a key role in transforming the sector.
At the same time, 71% of merchants report that having separate systems for online and in-person payments makes it hard for hotels to manage operations and reconcile smoothly. This critical issue prevents hospitality players from creating a seamless customer experience since payments act as the link between AI-powered discovery and the complete guest journey, from booking to check-out. Adyen is addressing this by building unified platforms that make transactions easier for both merchants and guests. Besides, Phil Crawford added that more hospitality businesses are now integrating AI into their platforms to make the payment process smoother for guests.
The AI use is accelerating not only in product discovery and payments. Fraud continues to be a major issue, with 38% of accommodation providers seeing a sharp rise in payment fraud attempts over the past year. Therefore, the industry adopts AI to enhance personalization and fraud prevention efficiency.
Secure payments are becoming essential to building trust. Thus, Adyen Uplift, a unified AI‑powered payments optimization suite, includes Protect, an AI-based fraud prevention tool that helps businesses cut down manual risk rules by an average of 86%, allowing real guests to book with less hassle. The platform streamlines the full payment process, from checkout to fraud prevention and payment method routing, within a single pipeline, powered by Adyen’s extensive global transaction data of over $1 trillion.
