Breakfast and Registration

Summit Welcome + The Say-Do Gap in Travel AI

Rafat Ali opens the Summit by confronting the gap between where travel companies say they are on AI and where they actually are.

ACT I: OPERATIONS: Build the Stack

Which of These Five Tensions Is Your Organization Actually Stuck On?

Seth Borko presents Skift's latest research on the five tensions defining AI execution in travel — and asks the room to weigh in live.

The Stack You Have Won't Scale What You're Building

Hilton's SVP & CIO and Air Canada's Chief Digital Officer share what it actually takes to rebuild a company's tech infrastructure for AI at scale — the decisions made, and the ones they'd revisit.

How Hotels Stay Visible and Drive Bookings in an AI-First World

Ask Me Anything: How Are Leaders Using AI to Solve Real-World Problems?

Marriott and Google Cloud go beyond strategy to show what production-grade AI infrastructure actually looks like — with live audience polling throughout.

Networking Break

Debate: Should AI Agents Control the Customer Journey?

A structured debate on where to draw the line between AI autonomy and human oversight — with audience votes at the start and close to see if the room changes its mind.

How Agentic AI Is Solving The Billion-Dollar Hold Queue

What Startups Are Solving That Others Won't

Three founders building in the gaps incumbents won't touch, presenting live products and facing real questions from investors and the audience.

ACT II: IMPLEMENTATION: Run the Business

What to Scale, What to Stop, and Who Decides?

1. Expedia's Chief Product Officer shares the framework her team uses to decide which AI bets get funded, which get killed, and who in the organization makes that call.

Lunch + Roundtables

Roundtables: What We Heard

A quick debrief on the sharpest questions that surfaced across the roundtables and what the room will be listening for in the afternoon.

The Scaling Decision Nobody Warned You About

IHG and Evolve share the specific failures and instrumentation gaps that only revealed themselves after AI moved from pilot to operating function.

Building the Booking Layer for an AI-Native Travel World

Should You Be Deploying Agents Now or Are You Already Late?

Sierra and Amadeus share the signals they watch to know when an AI system is performing, drifting, or about to fail — before it costs them customers.

The AI Ownership Problem Nobody Has Solved Yet

TUI examines what happens to accountability when responsibility for AI is distributed across every function in the organization.

Networking Break

Are You Operating AI or Just Deploying It?

Booking.com's Interim CTO explores what it takes to move AI from project to the system the business actually runs on.

ACT III: REVENUE: Drive the P&L

Does AI Know Your Hotel Exists?

What Investors Are Actually Funding in Travel AI

Three active investors score the AI bets they believe in — and the ones they've walked away from — using a live scorecard format.

Data Lessons from Deploying Consumer-Facing AI

Breaking down what a large-scale consumer AI deployment actually taught her about data, trust, and what it means to have a defensible edge.

AI + Revenue: Why Architecture Is Essential

Rafat Ali sits down with Mews CEO Richard Valtr for a candid conversation on what Mews has built, where operators are falling behind, and why the biggest AI opportunities in travel are still wide open.

Closing Remarks

Reception