A new white paper shows how travel companies can ensure their offerings remain visible throughout an AI-driven customer journey.

The growing use of artificial intelligence in travel planning is fundamentally changing the mechanisms of digital visibility in the tourism industry, as the German Travel Association (DRV) points out in its latest white paper, “Agentic AI and Visibility in the Travel Industry.” More and more travelers are using AI-powered systems to find inspiration, compare offers, and make decisions. The guide, developed by the DRV IT Committee, now outlines the implications of this trend for travel companies—and how they can position their offerings to remain visible even within AI-based decision-making systems.

“In the future, the question will no longer be simply: How good is my ranking on Google? But: Is my offer even understood and recommended by AI?” explains Nicole Ludwig, Chair of the IT Committee at the DRV. “This creates a completely new form of digital visibility for the travel industry. Companies must learn to present their offerings in a way that makes them discoverable, interpretable, and usable by AI systems.”

While companies are already using artificial intelligence in many internal processes—such as analyzing demand, automating service requests, or optimizing prices and quotas—a second trend is emerging in parallel: consumers are increasingly using AI themselves as a tool for travel planning. AI-powered language models, known as large language models, and AI assistants aggregate information from various sources, evaluate it, and suggest suitable offers to the user. In doing so, they take on tasks that were previously handled by search engines, comparison sites, or personal advisors.

For tour operators, destinations, travel agencies, and tourism service providers, this represents a fundamental shift in digital logic: visibility will no longer be driven solely by marketing budgets or traditional search engine rankings. Rather, what will be decisive is whether offers are understood, categorized, and integrated into recommendations by AI systems.

The DRV white paper focuses specifically on this trend. It explains how commercial large language models are transforming the customer journey and what technical and strategic prerequisites companies must establish to remain relevant. In doing so, it presents a step-by-step framework—ranging from a basic presence in the knowledge spaces of AI systems, through structured discoverability in real-time data sources, to technical interoperability for AI agents and automated transactions.

The aim of the publication is to provide practical guidance to companies in the travel industry. Depending on size, resources, and strategic objectives, it outlines concrete measures that organizations can use to secure and further develop their visibility in an increasingly AI-driven travel economy.