At the 2026 TravelDaily Conference, Amir Amidi, Managing Partner for Travel and Hospitality Program and GOAL Program at Plug and Play, delivered a presentation titled “From Pilot to P&L, How AI Rewrites Travel Economics?”
He argued that the travel industry is entering a critical phase of AI adoption. What companies really need to focus on is not how new AI is, but which technologies can already deliver tangible improvements in revenue, costs, operational efficiency and personalized services.
Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, Plug and Play has approximately 70 offices worldwide, including five in China. The company invests in startups while also helping large enterprises identify emerging technologies that address real business challenges.
With the development of large language models and other technologies, the barriers to accessing new technologies have fallen significantly. “AI is everywhere,” Amidi said. In his view, the key question is no longer whether AI technology is available, but which applications can genuinely transform the way large enterprises operate.
This is particularly relevant to the travel industry.
Citing industry research, Amidi noted that approximately 80% of travel suppliers reported pursuing some form of AI initiative. Meanwhile, research by BCG suggests that airlines could potentially improve their operating margins by around five to six percentage points through the adoption of appropriate AI technologies.
For Amidi, AI's real significance lies not in its status as an industry buzzword, but in its demonstrated ability to create value in sectors that rely heavily on data and human labor.
Across the travel value chain, from airline revenue management and airport operations to hotel pricing, customer service, marketing and loyalty programs, there are numerous tasks that involve processing data, forecasting demand and executing repetitive processes.
The key question, therefore, is which AI capabilities that have already been validated in other industries can be replicated in travel.
In the first phase, companies asked whether they had AI. In the second, they focused on whether AI could be integrated into business workflows. As the industry enters the third phase, the most important question will be whether AI can make a measurable difference to the bottom line.
For an industry that has long relied on labor, physical assets and data-driven operations, this may mark the starting point of AI's true transformation of the economics of travel.
