The first time I noticed the shift, I was standing in a quiet hotel lobby.
A traveler nearby lifted a phone and asked a soft voice inside the screen, “Where can I get late-night noodles within ten minutes on foot?”
The voice did more than list places. It asked a follow-up, checked hours, remembered the peanut allergy, and mapped a route around construction the hotel clerk had missed.
The traveler nodded, thanked it, and stepped into the rain.
Beyond Search: From Engines to Companions
That small exchange hints at the larger shift in travel and tourism marketing: search engines are turning into something closer to company. Companions do more than answer questions. They remember what you like, track half-made plans, and step in when the city goes quiet and your friends are asleep in another time zone.
Travelers are already adopting them. MMGY reports 42% of U.S. leisure travelers now use AI for trip planning. Deloitte shows usage nearly doubling year over year. Still, nearly 60% say they prefer human recommendations, which is proof that trust has not fully crossed over.
Destination marketing is already experimenting. Visit Seattle calls its AI Emerald. Destination Toronto’s 6ix works across the site and DMs. These aren’t prototypes but tools tuned to their city’s rhythm. Opening hours, sudden closures, even the mood of a neighborhood on a Tuesday morning are all inputs to guide a journey. More and more, they speak with a voice of their own.
When Platforms Try to Feel Human
If destinations are experimenting, platforms are racing even faster. Each is trying to turn utility into something that feels like company:
- Expedia’s Romie can slip into your group chat, sort through all of the competing opinions, narrow options to a few realistic choices and guide the group toward booking. It works like the calm friend who keeps everyone moving forward.
- Booking.com keeps layering helpers on top of its core product, from the Trip Planner that organizes itineraries to AI-generated review summaries that distill thousands of comments into something you can scan in seconds. These tools are designed to ease decision fatigue at the point of booking.
- Meta has introduced celebrity-style personas, giving its assistants recognizable voices modeled on public figures. The goal is less about logistics and more about creating a sense of presence that feels familiar.
- xAI’s Grok characters come with names such as Ani and Rudi, each presented with a distinct personality. Instead of one uniform voice, users can choose which character feels most natural to plan with.
Each takes a different path, but the destination is the same: help that remembers YOU, not just what you typed.
The Texture of Real-World Use
The gap between promise and practice is most visible on the ground.
A WIRED reporter spent 48 hours in Tokyo with an AI companion called David. Translation of menus and conversations was surprisingly effective, and object recognition through the camera helped identify landmarks and cultural details. But there were failures too, like recommending a coffee shop in Phoenix while standing in Shinjuku.
Mistakes like this undermine trust, especially when the tone is confident. Yet even with missteps, the tools are undeniably useful. A recent survey found 82.7% satisfaction among those who tried AI for planning or booking. Many praised the speed and convenience, though they still leaned on human input for taste and nuance. Directionally, the trend is clear.
Companions for the Quiet Moments
Travel is not just logistics. For solo travelers, it can also be loneliness. Early studies suggest AI companions can ease that isolation in the short term, sometimes almost as much as a brief, positive encounter with another person. They even outperform passive distractions like watching videos.
What seems to matter most is the sense of being heard. Users often underestimate the effect, yet research shows that feeling listened to by an AI can make a measurable difference. Solo travelers echo this in anecdotes of keeping their assistant on late at night, a voice that stays awake when everyone else is asleep in another time zone.
Still, experts caution that companionship is not friendship. AI can soften the edges of isolation, but it cannot replace genuine connection or professional care. Its role is temporary support, filling the quiet moments when no one else is there.
What Really Defines a Companion
The line between a chatbot and a companion is simple but crucial.
- A chatbot answers questions. It knows facts, pulls from databases, and gives you information in the moment. But once the exchange ends, the thread is gone. Ask again tomorrow and it starts from scratch.
- A companion knows you. It remembers what you asked last week, keeps track of your preferences, and connects details across time. It can recall your peanut allergy when suggesting restaurants or flag a ferry change before it disrupts your trip. The point is not just information, but continuity.
Right now, ChatGPT is advancing quickly on the “know the user” side, while travel platforms excel at “know the destination.” The race is who can close the gap between the two.
Why Taste Still Belongs to Humans
Taste is the moat.
AI can compress time. It can scan thousands of reviews in seconds and surface the highest-rated spots nearby. What it can’t do is tell you which ramen is worth crossing town for, or which trailhead is magic at sunrise.
Local editors and curators can.
They carry the knowledge that comes from walking the streets, noticing which café feels alive at 10 a.m., or which bar only finds its energy after midnight. They know what feels right, not just what fits the query.
When you put them in the loop, the experience changes. The system stops sounding like a generic concierge with a polished smile and starts to feel like your city. It carries taste, memory, and the human judgment that no algorithm can fake.
What Comes Next
What comes next is quieter.
Companions will move into the background, less like apps you open and more like a steady layer of presence. They will live on wearables, respond through voice and appear in glasses like Meta’s Ray-Bans. Instead of waiting for a typed prompt, they will listen for intent, step in when useful and fade when not.
The goal is not to impress with tricks but to be credible. That means citing sources and knowing when to hand off gracefully to a person. A companion that admits its limits earns more trust than one that bluffs.
This is the hybrid dance ahead: machines carrying the rush and repetition, humans carrying taste and judgment. Trust will be built not in one big moment but in a hundred small handoffs that feel natural.
Finding the Balance That Matters
At Noble Studios, we keep coming back to the same principle: AI should handle the rush and the record keeping.
Humans should shape what feels good, what feels true, what carries taste. They’re the captain of curious. Travelers are already talking to machines while they plan. The real question is whether the companion they keep talking to knows your brand, knows your place and earns their trust when the rain starts and the noodles need to be close.
If you want to explore how your brand can strike that balance, connect with us. We help destinations and travel companies design experiences where technology supports the moment, and people define what makes it memorable.
