Travel commerce is being rewired in real time. AI agents are entering the booking path. GDS surcharges keep climbing. New EU rules under the Digital Markets Act are reshaping rate parity. Payments infrastructure is being rebuilt from the ground up.
These shifts are usually treated as separate stories. They aren't. Distribution, payments, AI, and retailing are converging into a single commerce stack - and the companies that understand the whole picture, not just their slice of it, will set the terms for everyone else.
The question isn't whether distribution is changing. It's who controls the new stack, and who gets left behind.
This November, Skift convenes decision-makers from across the travel commerce spectrum for a focused half-day summit built around the tensions defining the next chapter of distribution.
Who Attends
The Summit brings together the people who actually set distribution and commerce strategy: airline VPs of retailing and distribution, hotel CROs and distribution leads, OTA strategy and product heads, GDS product and strategy executives, travel fintech founders and operators, and the PE and VC investors funding the disruption.
Agenda Themes
The Agentic Booking Path: When AI mediates the booking, who owns the customer relationship?
Build vs. Wait: Should you build direct capabilities now, or wait for the channel chaos to settle?
Betting on Payments: Which payments infrastructure is worth committing to for the next five years?
The State of NDC: Where does adoption actually stand, and who's capturing the value?
The Regulatory Rewrite: How do the DMA and rate-parity rules reshape who controls distribution in the EU and beyond?
The Investor View: What do the people funding this disruption think is worth building?