There's a stretch of road in Hanoi's Old Quarter I used to walk past every day. Before 2020, it was lined with travel agencies. Busy ones. Tourists stopping in, staff pointing at maps, decisions being made over counters.
Then COVID closed most of them. Tourism recovered strongly. Vietnam hit a record 21.2 million international arrivals in 2025, the highest figure ever recorded, up more than 17% on the pre-pandemic peak.
But many of the agencies didn't come back. The shopfronts became cafes or sat empty. The business of travel had shifted, and a much larger share of it had moved online.
This wasn't unique to Vietnam, or to the pandemic. The pandemic accelerated something already in motion.
Between 2019 and 2024, global offline travel bookings fell from $729 billion to $610.5 billion. Over the same period, online travel agency bookings grew from $279 billion to $382.5 billion. The shift was structural. The pandemic made it faster.
Physical travel agencies haven't disappeared. For many travellers, especially for complex or high-value trips, the in-person conversation still matters. But the balance has changed significantly.
More of the journey now starts online, and for a growing number of travellers, it ends there too. The website has taken on a much bigger share of the job that a shopfront used to do: inspiring someone, answering their questions, building enough trust that they book. The difference is that a shopfront gets foot traffic by being in the right location. A website earns every visit.
That's a different kind of challenge. But it's also a more scalable one. A well-built website with a strong search presence works around the clock, across time zones, without the constraints of a physical location.
When I look at travel and tourism websites, a few patterns come up regularly. Not across every site, but often enough that they're worth naming:
The booking flow: Many travel sites have their booking engine hosted on a separate subdomain. The moment someone decides to book, the URL changes and the visual design shifts. The visitor made a decision, and the first thing that happens is an experience that feels like a different website. That friction costs bookings.
Navigation built around an older model of the business: Sites still leading with "find an agent" as the primary call to action can work well for the right audience. But when that's the default front door for everyone, the site isn't built for the majority of visitors who want to research and decide for themselves. Both models can coexist; it's about making sure the site serves each type of visitor well.
Content depth: A page that describes a tour in a few sentences and shows a handful of photos isn't giving someone enough to decide. It functions as a brochure. A brochure can build awareness, but it rarely converts someone who arrived ready to compare options and book.
Each of these has a practical path forward. The booking flow can be made continuous. Navigation can reflect how people actually arrive and what they're looking for. Content can be expanded to do real work earlier in the decision process. When travel businesses address these, the impact shows up in both search rankings and conversion rates.
Just as most travel businesses had adapted to the shift toward online, the starting point for discovery moved again.
AI tools are now a mainstream part of how people plan travel. The platforms driving this shift include ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Copilot, and Perplexity and the numbers reflect how quickly this has become normal behaviour:
1 in 3 US travellers now uses AI tools to plan or experience trips
37% trust generative AI recommendations enough to act on them
Generative AI use in trip planning tripled between 2023 and 2025
Only 16% of global hotel supply is currently visible in AI search results across the major AI platforms
Over half of first-page travel keywords triggered a Google AI Overview by end of 2025, correlating with organic click-through drops of 15-25% for sites not appearing in those overviews
The good news is that the foundations are familiar. Showing up in AI search builds on the same principles as good SEO: structured content, clear information, a site that answers questions well.
What showing up in AI search specifically requires:
Content that is readable as text, not buried in PDFs or communicated through images
Destination and experience pages with enough depth to be cited as a useful source
Consistent, accurate information across your site so AI systems can verify what they find
Meta content and structured data that clearly describes what each page is about
Travel businesses that are well-positioned for the next few years tend to have two things working for them: a website that carries its share of the discovery and booking journey, and a search strategy that covers where people are actually looking, which now means both traditional search and AI.
Neither requires starting from scratch. It starts with understanding where the current experience has room to grow and what to prioritise.
If you're thinking about either, we'd love to have that conversation. Get in touch with the Paved Digital team.
Digital Strategist
Mia is a digital strategist with a strong interest in technology, data and AI. She works across content, platforms and performance to turn complex digital concepts into practical, results-driven marketing strategies.
Stay informed with the latest company news, industry trends, and digital innovation tips.
Adobe Commerce now comes in three options - PaaS, SaaS, and Optimizer. Each one suits a different business, and the differences go deeper than pricing. Here's how to tell them apart and figure out which one is actually right for you.
Most ecommerce teams believe they need more data to make better decisions. In reality, the signals that drive growth are already in their analytics. Here are the reports that matter and where to find them.
