The number of Americans using AI to plan their vacations is soaring, with travelers are showing growing trust in their AI travel agents, and increasingly making purchases after AI steers them to a flight, hotel, or other travel option, according to new data from Adobe released today.
“Travelers are turning to AI-powered chat services and browsers to construct nuanced itineraries, identify unique experiences, and locate relevant promotional offers,” and then clicking on the AI-recommended brand websites to book their trips, Adobe reported.
AI Traffic To Travel Sites Up 119%
Travel planning is undergoing a seismic shift, according to Adobe’s data. AI traffic to travel sites was up 119% year-over-year in July. AI travel traffic is up 1,822% since Adobe began tracking it in October, 2024, a growth rate the Adobe report described as “staggering.”
More significantly, conversion rates from AI traffic are now almost equal to the rate for non-AI traffic, according to Adobe. A year ago, in July, 2025, many consumers were using AI for travel research, but conversion rates were 47% lower than non-AI directed traffic. This July, AI conversion was just 1% lower than non-AI driven traffic. Conversion rates measure the percentage of website visits that result in a purchase.
Based on that trajectory, conversion rates are likely to increase, meaning “the value of, and the stakes of this type of traffic coming into travel becomes even higher,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights, said in an interview about the report.
Adobe’s data, which is drawn from analysis of direct transactions online, covering over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, also found that consumers who come to a travel site from an AI source have 21 percent higher engagement, spend 67% more time on the website, and have a 42% lower bounce rate, – the measure of visitors who leave a site after viewing a single page.
Consumers Are Choosing AI As Their Travel Agent
In addition to it analysis of the online data, Adobe surveyed 5,000 U.S. consumers about their AI use and found that 84 percent of respondents said using AI for travel planning improved their experience.
The speed at which consumers are gravitating toward AI for purchasing decisions, both in travel and overall retail, is astonishing, Pandya said.
“Everything we’re looking at is all in the span of less than two years,” he said. “It’s pretty astounding to see this level of adoption.”
While it was expected that AI would become a popular research tool for consumers “the pace that it has moved at has been what’s really struck us,” he said.
“It’s indicative of where the consumer is at, and where the technology is at, in order for it to meet the expectations of the user,” Pandya said.
A key factor in the growth is the increasing trust consumers have in AI, with more consumers saying they belief the information from AI is accurate.
Overall Retail AI Traffic Up 62%
For overall retail, AI traffic to U.S. retail sites was up 62% year-over-year in July. Compared to October, 2024, it was up 1,219 percent.
In July traffic from AI sources continued to have a better conversion rate than non-AI traffic, at 60 percent higher – the 11th consecutive month when AI-driven conversion was higher.
Despite the importance of AI in driving purchases and bookings, many travel sites and retailers have AI visibility gaps, according to the Adobe report.
An Adobe diagnostic tool, the AI Content Visibility Checker, can analyze a web page and identify what LLM’s (Large Language Model AI chatbots and browsers) can’t read. The AI Visibility Checker assigns a homepage a score out of 100%, with a score of 50% for example, meaning half of a page’s content is not readable by AI machines.
AI Visibility A Problem For Travel And Retail Sites
Across the U.S. travel sector, the average AI visbility score for hotel homepages was 71%, meaning over 25% of the content on these homepages was not optimized for LLMs.
The score for cruise lines was 70%, with 64% for car rental services, and 42% for airlines.
“While the travel sector has often focused on rich visual content to inspire travelers, the data shows that the importance of having detailed text-based content that can be easily read by machines,” Adobe reported.
For overall retail, the the homepage visibility score was 61%, meaning nearly 40% of homepage content is not fully readable by LLMs.