OPINION

Decoding wartime travel —
Bots vs Humans

Navigating the uncertainties of wartime travel more people may opt for lightning fast options-crunching ‘agentic’ booking. Yet, autonomous bots have been known to hallucinate. Are human travel agents better?

by Vijay Verghese/ Editor

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Gone are the days of simple backpacking. The complexities of travel planning in wartime as itineraries and costs change in unpredictable ways, could push people towards 'agentic' AI booking solutions over normal online search patterns or human travel agents/ photo collage: Vijay Verghese

ONE of the most awkward adjectives to explode onto the travel lexicon in recent months is the word ‘agentic’. It is borrowed from psychology and psychiatry and refers to the capacity of an autonomous bot to examine and evaluate options in order to execute specified goals.

This is in much the manner of a human agent processing and booking a complex hotel and airline itinerary, though you might simply be typing irate or delighted messages to an inanimate string of code lurking in the super-cooled wires of some cloud computing network.

Agentic AI offers a smorgasbord of features that theoretically leaves any human agent in the shade. Think highly personalised solutions matching your habits and history; a growing understanding of your personal context with long-term memory; real-time flight tracking and rebooking in case of delays; 24-hour multilingual conversational support through various chat platforms including WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger; and even occasional hallucinations. Sounds fun.

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While only a fraction of current actual travel bookings are made by agentic AI, it is estimated that travellers conduct a huge portion of their research and planning using metasearch. With the Iran War making a pig’s breakfast of travel and adding daily to uncertainties, this trend will only grow. But there is great hesitancy when it comes to bookings. This boils down to trust. How do you place your faith in a faceless bot? And who is responsible if your holiday falls apart when it’s tripping on the digital equivalent of weed or LSD?

{with the on-off West Asia standoff making a pig’s breakfast of travel and adding to uncertainties, the trend towards metasearch will only grow...

There are documented instances where an eager-to-please AI agent has suffered a hallucination and fabricated an experience stitching together bits and pieces of random information to create a cosy fit for the client’s request. In at least one case, the AI agent sent its American clients to a fictitious resort in Costa Rica — something that came to light only when the party had flown across and driven all the way to the stated address.  Another AI agent sent hikers in Peru off on a wild goose chase to a non-existent ‘sacred canyon’ when a human guide would have saved them much time and misery.

A human agent — an endangered species in tech-savvy Asia — who knows you and the family is light years away from some random messaging on a keyboard. In a recent article in Medium, Aaron Blevans posed this dilemma to a bot: “I am overwhelmed. Please look at my calendar, my bank account, and my emails, and optimize my life.’ The article’s headline summarised the plot: “I Asked an AI Agent to Plan my Vacation and It Tried to Launder Money in the Maldives.”

Yes, things can get wild at times. A simple overlooked fact is that the agent, while putting on its best bedside manner and chat, has to earn a commission for its employer. This is the fundamental purpose of any business. Blevans concludes: “If an AI Agent books you a table at a local mom-and-pop diner, the AI company makes $0. If an AI Agent books you a room at a Marriott via an affiliate link, the AI company makes 5–10%... We aren’t building ‘Digital Butlers’. We are building ‘Digital Double Agents’.”

AI agents work well in the digital world talking with large company back ends but utterly fail when faced with analogue processes. They also work in a linear fashion and stumble when faced with abstracts, like visas, nationality issues and transits, family seating on a flight or adjoining family rooms at a hotel.

Among the AI assistants to get your trip set up are Layla (layla.ai/), a chatty and personable bot that uses humour to build familiarity but does not do bookings; the experimental Romie from Expedia who “roams with you” as a conversational personal assistant, building, sorting, and booking itineraries; Mavis, introduced early 2026 by Malaysia Airlines to help with its customer service; Wonderplan (wonderplan.ai/), the AI trip planner; iMean (www.imean.ai/), strong for complex multi-city multi-person itineraries with variables; MindTrip for itinerary planning; and TripIt (www.tripit.com/web) another powerful and visually attractive complex itinerary planner.

I randomly asked iMean for a flight and mid-range itinerary for two to Bali, one flying from Hong Kong and one coming in from Mumbai mid-May, and it tossed up an instant list of hotel choices (largely decent picks in Sanur and Nusa Dua) and two flight bookings — a direct service on Hong Kong Express and an IndiGo flight from Mumbai with an onward connection from Singapore.

I turned to Layla: “For a romantic three-night holiday for two from Hong Kong mid-May what would you suggest is best mid-range from Palawan, Phu Quoc and Phuket?” After a moment came the reply: “Ah, the classic ‘I want romance but I don't want to sell a kidney’ dilemma. Since you're flying from Hong Kong in mid-May, we have a few things to juggle: flight times, monsoon seasons, and your ‘mid-range" sanity.’ This about sums up Layla’s pally tone that encourages further exploration — but stops short of bookings.

Layla continued: “El Nido and Coron are breathtaking, but getting there from HK usually involves a transfer in Manila (which is its own kind of adventure)…” Layla felt Phuket would be wet and opted for Phu Quoc as the “sweet spot and great value for money”. It also felt Phu Quoc was the more romantic as it is far quieter than Phuket. It is spot on with these observations — all culled from the web of course. There were no hallucinations in our conversations, just flippant observations with deep dives into business travel, meeting planning, and popping the question on some remote Philippine sandbar.

I ended our conversation by enquiring: “Hi Layla, fancy a date in the Maldives?” After a moment’s thought along came the cheeky reply: “You certainly know how to sweep a travel bot off her virtual feet! While I can't exactly feel the sand between my toes (or the humidity in my circuits), I'd love to help us ‘plan’ this romantic escape.”

Humour aside, when it comes to miscalculations or egregious mistakes, accountability is an issue with agentic bots. Complex problems that suddenly emerge may be beyond AI’s ability to manage especially, say, if it involves a phone call to speak with a human to resolve an issue. That analogue crossover will result in serious meltdown, especially if the back-end operator is a young lad in Bangalore practising his  Scottish accent. I always remember when decades back my Hong Kong travel agent called me in Paris to alert me of an airport terminal change. Perhaps it was due to irate farmers and roads blocked with cabbage. It saved the day — and my business trip.