What Is Versus What If In The Travel Industry?

The travel industry is obsessed with the idea of innovation. Everywhere you turn, there’s a new app or service promising to revolutionise the way we travel. This is great. I like folks who try to innovate but scratch the surface, and you’ll find that most of these so-called "innovations" are simply variations on the same tired ideas. We’re stuck in a loop, trying to innovate based on what we already know rather than what we haven’t yet imagined. And therein lies an issue.

I had and have high hopes that the introduction of AI would open up new thinking. We are still at the pre-breakfast tea stage, so it still has a long way to go, but so much of the default with it is to make what is more efficient.

In its relentless pursuit of data-driven perfection, the travel industry has lost its sense of imagination. We’re now living in a world where every decision is governed by algorithms driven by data points that push us towards incremental improvements rather than radical change. The result? A series of minor tweaks masquerading as major innovations, all designed to make travel marginally more convenient but rarely transformative.

The Tyranny of Data

Data is a travel industry gospel. Every tech company in the travel industry, from booking platforms to airlines, is worshipping at the altar of big data. They’re pouring billions into collecting, analysing, and interpreting data to predict what travellers want before they even know it themselves. While logical and still not fully exploited, this approach has fundamental flaws.

Data can only tell you what has already happened. It can only make decisions based on patterns from the past. This is fine if you’re trying to optimise a current process—like predicting the cheapest time to buy a flight ticket—but it’s useless if you’re trying to come up with a groundbreaking innovation. Significant innovations rarely arise from looking at what is; they emerge from shouting from the top of the mountain, "What if?"

The tech giants in travel are playing it safe. They’re letting the data lead them by the nose towards marginal gains rather than bold leaps. But they fail to realise that data-driven decisions are, by their very nature, backward-looking. Yes, the better they are, the more they can predict, and AI is a prediction god, but they’re designed to minimise risk and innovation—true, disruptive innovation—requires the courage to embrace risk. If you want to minimise risk in our AI future, then video 58 and the database with it from MIT is for you

The rest of the videos in that document are a shortcut to a 75-hour plus AI thinking and knowledge crash course.

The Illusion of Progress

Let’s look at some of the so-called innovations in travel. I am picking on airports for no other reason than I seem to spend so much time in them and they have so much room for true innovation. Self-check-in kiosks, digital boarding passes, facial recognition at passport control—all of these are hailed as game-changers. But are they really? These are not innovations; they’re optimisations. They make the existing process a bit smoother and a bit faster, but they don’t fundamentally change the airport experience.

I am very interested in a radical rethinking of what travel could be rather than what it is. Where are the wild ideas that challenge our very conception of what it means to move from one place to another? Instead of asking, “How can we make check-in quicker?” we should ask, “Why do we need check-in at all?” Instead of tweaking the booking process, we should be questioning why it exists in the first place. What if travel wasn’t about tickets, airports, or even planes as we currently know them?

Instead of exploring these possibilities, the travel industry is trapped in a safe, data-driven innovation cycle. It’s obsessed with solving the problems we already understand rather than exploring the problems we haven’t yet encountered. This is why true innovation in travel feels so elusive—because we’re looking in the wrong place.

I get it. No one likes to look a fool, and many of the great brains in travel are in jobs, and those jobs do not allow those great brains the freedom to explore true game-changing innovation because so much of it will seem crazy and just be wrong. People do not like being wrong. Weirdly, people like to say they are experienced, and to be experienced means being wrong a lot of the time.

The Leap of Imagination

The great innovations of history didn’t come about through logical deduction. The invention of the aeroplane wasn’t the result of a series of incremental improvements on existing modes of transport. Did the Wright brothers invent the aeroplane by analysing horse-and-cart data? It was a leap of imagination, a willingness to ask, “What if we could fly?” Christopher Columbus did not set sail because some algorithm told him there might be a new continent out there. These innovations and discoveries weren’t the logical next step based on existing data; they were bold leaps into the unknown.

The travel industry desperately needs—leaps of imagination and a willingness to ask, “What if?” What if we could teleport? What if we could explore the world without ever leaving our homes? What if travel wasn’t about getting from point A to point B but about experiencing different realities entirely? What if travel was a positive to the environment rather than a negative? What if every child was to travel for a year before working?

These aren’t questions that data can answer. They require creative thinking, the kind that comes not from analysing what has been but from imagining what could be. The travel industry needs to stop fetishising data and start embracing the creativity of thought and imagination. More than ever before, in my time in travel, due to AI, we must stop trying to innovate based on what we already know and start exploring the possibilities of what we don’t yet understand.

Embracing the Unknown

The future of travel won’t be shaped by optimising the existing processes; bold, imaginative leaps into uncharted territory will define it. But this requires a fundamental shift in how we think about innovation. It means acknowledging that while very valuable in some contexts, data-driven decisions are not the be-all and end-all. They are tools, not visionaries.

The travel industry needs to stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Companies outside travel are taking huge scale risks, and those outcomes will impact our industry. We must stop obsessing over how to make the current system slightly better and start imagining how to create an entirely new one. This requires a shift from logic to imagination, from what is to what could be. I do not say this lightly, as my brain works in a logical step-by-step fashion, and I have to beat it up to think differently. It is not easy. It is hard.

Until our fantastic industry embraces this mindset, we will continue to be bombarded with so-called innovations that are little more than digital upgrades to a fundamentally outdated system. True innovation will remain elusive and happen elsewhere, and the travel experience will continue to feel like a slightly more efficient version of the past rather than the bold, imaginative future that guests, the places they visit, and the people who receive them deserve.

So, a wee challenge: Stop obsessing over how to make your travel experience or service 10% more efficient. That is going to happen over time anyway. Instead, start asking and thinking about the big, bold, imaginative questions that you have no answers for.

I know time is the most valuable thing you all have, so I am not asking you to stop doing what you do in your travel business. Try the 70%, 20%, 10% rule: Spend 70% of your time doing whatever you can to improve your core business. Spend 20% of your time on aligned associated activities that help with your core business. Spend 10% of your time on true "What If" innovation thinking and doing.

I love to have discussions with what-if thinkers and doers in the travel industry.

Pete