Following Arabian Travel Market 2026, Breaking Travel News speaks directly with technology and travel industry leaders about how AI, data and digital infrastructure are changing the traveller journey, and why the next stage of travel technology will be judged by what it enables rather than the technology itself. Read more about the ATM trends here and watch all of the in-depth interviews here.
For Paul Dawalibi, CEO of Innovation City RAK, the most important question being asked at ATM was a simple one: what does the technology actually do for the traveller?
“Technology for technology’s sake is useless,” he told Breaking Travel News. “For them, it’s about having the most seamless, frictionless experience.”
That distinction is becoming increasingly important as destinations, airlines, hotels and travel platforms invest in AI and increasingly sophisticated digital systems.
The ATM Travel Trends Report found that 91 per cent of Middle East travel businesses are now piloting or operating AI, with 85 per cent reporting measurable cost savings. On the consumer side, 28 per cent of prospective Middle East visitors have used an AI chatbot to help plan a trip, compared with 12 per cent among travellers interested in other regions.
The technology discussion at ATM extended well beyond generative AI. It increasingly centred on how different systems connect across the journey.
Dawalibi described that journey as beginning when a traveller starts dreaming about a holiday and continues through searching, booking, airport security and the hotel arrival. AI can assist at the planning stage, while facial identification, smart gates and increasingly automated hotel check-in can reduce friction further along the journey.
The objective, he argued, is to remove the points at which a trip can become complicated.
“It’s understanding who owns that traveler, who owns that experience, who’s responsible, who’s accountable end to end,” he said, alongside identifying the pain points technology can remove.
The data underneath the AI
That emphasis on practical outcomes was echoed by Michael Toedt, CEO and founder of dailypoint, whose company works on the less visible infrastructure beneath the guest experience.
Toedt described dailypoint as a central data management platform, collecting information from systems across the customer journey from websites and booking engines to property management systems and guest surveys, and transforming it into a single body of guest knowledge.
For hotels, that addresses one of the persistent problems of increasingly fragmented technology environments: the guest may appear as several different profiles across different systems, making meaningful personalisation difficult.
Toedt argued that the industry has traditionally been too transaction-focused in its approach to IT, while the next step requires a shared understanding of the guest.
“Essential guest knowledge is not available,” he said, arguing that centralising that information provides the foundation for the newer generation of tools.
The implication is significant. AI may generate the visible interface, recommendation or automated response, but the quality of that output still depends on the quality and structure of the underlying data.
From more technology to better technology
That is also changing the way travel businesses think about technology investment.
Yulia Chutaeva, Head of Sales EMEA & APAC, Connect by Price Travel, interviewed at ATM argued that the industry had spent years pursuing more connectivity, more products and more rates, while the next phase is about understanding where the customer actually finds value.
“Technology, AI and correct data processing should help us to understand where the real value for the customer is,” she said.
That same interview highlighted another emerging tension: technology has to work across global platforms while still accounting for local behaviour.
The executive argued that global scale has to be combined with local knowledge, because even the most sophisticated technology cannot compensate for misunderstanding how travellers in different markets actually behave.
That question of local relevance also becomes increasingly important as AI changes how destinations are discovered.
Destinations have to become machine-readable
Catalina Carretero, Sales Director at The Data Appeal Company, told Breaking Travel News that one of the central conversations at ATM was how AI would change the way travel is arranged — and how destinations need to adapt in order to remain visible within those new models.
“The key point is how AI is going to travel, and it’s going to change travel arrangements,” she said.
For destinations, that means data is becoming part of the competitive infrastructure.
Carretero argued that tourism organisations need reliable, current data that allows them to monitor changing conditions and respond quickly. “Data is a must,” she said, adding that real-time information enables destinations to react “in a more informed and quicker way.”
That becomes especially relevant in a region where demand can shift quickly in response to geopolitical developments, airline capacity, travel advisories or changing traveller sentiment.
The human interface remains important
For all the discussion around automation, the interviews also suggested that the future of travel technology is unlikely to be about removing people from the experience altogether.
Toedt described individualised service as a growing expectation, while the wider hospitality discussion at ATM repeatedly returned to technology as an enabler of the human interaction rather than a replacement for it.
Dawalibi’s argument captures the wider direction of travel. The traveller does not need to know which database, sensor or AI model is operating behind the scenes. The value appears when the journey becomes easier, more responsive and less prone to failure.
That puts the Middle East in an interesting position. The region is investing heavily in airports, destinations, hospitality and digital infrastructure at the same time, allowing technology to be embedded across the travel journey rather than added as a single layer on top.
At ATM 2026, the conversation was therefore moving beyond the question of whether the travel industry will use AI. That question is largely settled.
The more consequential question is what happens when AI, data and connected systems begin to operate together, and whether they make travel meaningfully easier for the people using them.
