New York and Las Vegas Face a New Tourism Race as AI Travel Planning Starts Driving Real Bookings

Written By: Jishnoo Banerjee

Jishnoo Banerjee

A published author with over 9 years of experience in writing, poetry, and novel creation. Starting out on social media, Jishnoo gained recognition for engaging content in both English and Bengali. With a strong background as a news content writer, Jishnoo now contributes to a prestigious global travel magazine. Known for blending creative writing with journalism, the work seamlessly combines artistic expression with insightful reporting across different platforms.

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August 27, 2026 00:23 GMT+5:30

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Artificial intelligence is moving deeper into the way Americans plan and purchase travel, creating a potentially important shift for destinations, hotels, attractions and other tourism businesses competing for visitor attention.

Research from Deloitte shows that generative AI is no longer being used simply as an experimental tool for producing holiday ideas. Travellers are using it to compare accommodation, investigate destinations, build itineraries and identify restaurants and activities, with a significant proportion subsequently acting on those recommendations.

Deloitte’s 2025 summer travel research found that 16% of travellers planned to use generative AI for travel planning, double the 8% recorded in 2024. When baby boomers were excluded, adoption among younger generations increased from 10% to 21%.

The commercial implications are particularly important. Among travellers who used generative AI, 45% used it to research or recommend accommodation, and more than four in ten users who sought accommodation recommendations went on to book a property suggested through their AI-assisted research.

For major US tourism markets including New York, Las Vegas, Orlando, Miami and Los Angeles, the development creates another competitive arena. Destinations increasingly need to consider not only how prominently they appear in conventional search results and social media, but also how accurately and attractively they surface when travellers ask conversational AI systems where they should go.

AI Travel Planning Doubles in a Year

The speed of adoption is one of the most significant findings.

Deloitte’s research showed planned generative AI usage for summer travel increasing from 8% in 2024 to 16% in 2025.

Among Gen Z, millennials and Gen X combined, adoption rose from 10% to 21%.

That indicates that AI-assisted travel planning is spreading beyond a relatively small group of technology enthusiasts.

Generative AI Travel Adoption

The numbers demonstrate that travellers are using conversational AI at several stages of the journey rather than for one narrow purpose.

Hotels Are Already Feeling the Booking Impact

Accommodation provides one of the clearest examples of AI moving from research into commercial behaviour.

Deloitte found that 45% of travellers using generative AI for trip planning used it to research or recommend accommodation.

More significantly, 43% of those users booked lodging that had been recommended through their Gen AI research.

That conversion from recommendation to purchase changes the importance of the technology.

An AI assistant suggesting a hotel is no longer merely providing information. Its recommendation can potentially influence where tourism expenditure ultimately goes.

For hotels, this means digital visibility could increasingly extend beyond conventional search-engine rankings and online travel agency listings.

Accurate property descriptions, reliable pricing information, strong reviews, clear amenity details and consistent information across digital platforms may become increasingly important as AI systems help travellers evaluate competing properties.

Destinations Are Also Being Selected Through AI

Hotels are only part of the change.

Deloitte found that 44% of generative AI travel users employed the technology for destination research and recommendations.

Approximately 41% used it to identify activities and attractions, while 40% used AI to create travel itineraries.

Travellers also used the technology for restaurant recommendations and other components of their journeys.

This creates a new digital pathway between destinations and potential visitors.

A traveller might previously have typed “best US cities for a three-day holiday” into a conventional search engine and opened several websites before making a decision.

The same traveller can now ask an AI assistant to recommend a destination based on budget, interests, preferred weather, travelling companions and available time.

The AI can then narrow the options, explain the differences and potentially build an entire itinerary.

How AI Can Influence a Complete Journey

The expanding role of generative AI can be seen across multiple stages of travel.

• Destination discovery: identifying cities, beaches, national parks or international destinations matching personal preferences.
• Accommodation: comparing hotels and finding properties suited to budgets or specific needs.
• Itinerary creation: organising activities into daily schedules.
• Restaurants: identifying places to eat according to cuisine, price and location.
• Attractions: suggesting museums, entertainment, tours and experiences.
• Transport: helping travellers understand airport transfers, public transport and connections.
• Budgeting: estimating likely costs and comparing alternatives.
• Booking decisions: influencing which recommended products travellers ultimately purchase.

This ability to connect multiple parts of a journey is one reason AI could become particularly influential within tourism.

New York Faces a New Form of Destination Competition

New York has traditionally benefited from extraordinary global recognition and enormous digital search interest.

AI does not remove those advantages, but it can change how potential visitors compare New York with alternatives.

A traveller asking for a cultural city break might receive several destinations rather than simply seeing a page of search results dominated by the most heavily marketed cities.

Similarly, someone planning a family holiday, luxury weekend, food trip or shopping break can ask increasingly detailed questions and receive recommendations tailored to those preferences.

For New York tourism businesses, the challenge will be ensuring accurate and useful destination information remains widely available across the digital ecosystem from which AI-supported travel tools obtain information.

Las Vegas Could Benefit From Highly Personalised Recommendations

Las Vegas presents another interesting example.

The Nevada destination combines hotels, entertainment, restaurants, nightlife, conventions, sports and attractions within one concentrated visitor economy.

That gives AI systems a large range of experiences to combine into personalised itineraries.

A traveller can ask for a three-day Las Vegas trip built around concerts rather than casinos, a luxury food weekend, a family itinerary or a convention trip with evening entertainment.

This level of personalisation could make AI particularly useful for complex destinations offering many different types of experiences.

At the same time, businesses that are poorly represented or inaccurately described online risk becoming less visible during AI-assisted planning.

Orlando Could See AI Simplify Complex Holidays

Orlando has a different opportunity.

Central Florida holidays can require substantial planning because travellers may need to coordinate theme parks, accommodation, dining reservations, transport and rest days.

Generative AI can potentially simplify that process.

Instead of researching every component separately, families can ask an AI assistant to organise several days according to children’s ages, budgets and preferred attractions.

The technology can also help explain practical questions surrounding transport distances, schedules and neighbourhoods.

For Orlando’s tourism economy, easier planning could potentially reduce some of the complexity associated with major theme-park holidays.

However, AI-generated information needs to remain accurate, particularly when prices, opening hours, reservation requirements and attraction availability can change.

Miami and Los Angeles Have Similar Opportunities

Miami and Los Angeles could also benefit from more personalised travel discovery.

Miami combines beaches, nightlife, cruises, food, arts and international culture. AI tools can help visitors identify which parts of the destination best match their interests rather than treating the city as one uniform tourism product.

Los Angeles presents an even stronger planning challenge because attractions and neighbourhoods are spread across a vast metropolitan area.

An AI-generated itinerary can potentially organise activities geographically and help travellers avoid inefficient journeys between distant attractions.

In both destinations, accurate information about transport and location is critical.

A recommendation can look attractive in isolation but become impractical if an AI tool fails to account for distance, traffic or operating schedules.

Search Engines Are Not Disappearing

The rise of conversational AI does not mean traditional search engines, online travel agencies or social media will suddenly disappear from travel planning.

Travellers frequently use several information sources during the same journey.

A person might discover a destination through social media, ask an AI assistant to compare hotels, check reviews through an online platform and then book directly with an airline or hotel.

The important development is that AI is becoming another influential layer within this process.

It can potentially shorten the distance between a broad question and a specific travel recommendation.

Instead of manually comparing dozens of search results, travellers can ask increasingly complex questions and receive a condensed response.

Trust Will Become Critical

AI-assisted travel planning also creates risks.

Travel information changes constantly. Hotels close or rebrand. Restaurants change opening hours. Airlines modify schedules. Attractions introduce reservation requirements. Visa rules change.

AI recommendations therefore need current and reliable information.

Travellers should verify time-sensitive details before purchasing non-refundable products or making important journey decisions.

For tourism businesses, this creates another incentive to maintain accurate information across official websites and recognised distribution channels.

Outdated or inconsistent information can become more damaging if automated systems reproduce it during travel planning.

What Tourism Businesses Need to Prepare For

The rise of AI-assisted travel research could require destinations and tourism businesses to rethink aspects of digital marketing.

Important priorities may include:

• maintaining accurate and structured destination information;
• publishing detailed information about tourism products;
• keeping opening hours, locations and amenities current;
• clearly communicating what makes an experience distinctive;
• maintaining strong traveller reviews and reputation;
• ensuring information is consistent across trusted platforms;
• producing useful content that answers real traveller questions.

Traditional search visibility will remain important, but tourism organisations may increasingly need to consider what could be described as AI discovery visibility as well.

The question is no longer simply whether a traveller can find a destination through search. It is whether an AI-supported planning tool can understand that destination well enough to recommend it appropriately.

Younger Travellers Could Accelerate the Shift

Generational behaviour suggests AI travel adoption has considerable room to expand.

Deloitte’s later 2025 holiday research found overall planned generative AI usage for holiday travel rising to 24%, compared with 16% in 2024 and 8% in 2023.

Millennials led adoption at 31%, closely followed by Gen Z at 30%.

The progression is significant because younger generations are becoming an increasingly large share of the American travelling public.

As these travellers become more comfortable using conversational AI for everyday decisions, travel planning could become a natural extension.

AI Is Moving Closer to the Transaction

The biggest change is therefore not simply that travellers are experimenting with artificial intelligence.

They are acting on what it tells them.

When more than four in ten travellers seeking accommodation recommendations through generative AI subsequently book one of those recommended options, AI becomes commercially relevant to the tourism industry.

For destinations such as New York, Las Vegas, Orlando, Miami and Los Angeles, that creates a new competition for attention.

Hotels, restaurants and attractions face the same challenge.

Travel discovery is no longer confined to guidebooks, travel agencies, conventional search engines, online travel agencies or social feeds. Conversational AI is becoming another gateway through which consumers decide where to travel and what to buy.

The next stage could be even more consequential as AI platforms move beyond recommending products towards comparing prices, assembling itineraries and facilitating transactions.

For the tourism industry, the message is increasingly clear: AI travel planning is moving from curiosity to measurable consumer behaviour, and the destinations that understand this shift early could gain an important advantage in the next generation of digital travel discovery.