Tourism in 2046: the real issue won't be technology, but who controls trust, data and access to the traveller

Every time a new "future of tourism" report lands, the risk is always the same: a parade of scenarios stuffed with robots, flying cars and hotel rooms that read your mind before you even ask for a second pillow. Then reality reasserts itself — and reality is usually made of ever-shorter booking windows, rising staff costs, OTAs devouring margins and guests who change their minds three times before confirming a stay.

The report relaunched by PhocusWire, built from the Leadership Exchange between Phocuswright and ITB Berlin, tries to do something more useful instead: not to imagine the future as a gadget showroom, but as a rebalancing of power. And the underlying message, to my mind, is very strong: the tourism of 2046 will be shaped less by technology itself and far more by who controls trust, data and access to the traveller.

As a hotelier and consultant, I find this a far more interesting lens than the usual slightly infantile enthusiasm for AI. Because it puts its finger on the exact place where we'll actually be playing out the future: not so much on the ability to use new tools, but on the distribution of value among platforms, brands, territories, suppliers and travellers.

The four big questions that actually matter

The report, as summarised by PhocusWire, is structured around four central questions:

• who will own trust in 2046;
• where value will concentrate in an AI-native travel industry;
• whether travel will become a right or a privilege;
• whether the market will tend towards consolidation or fragmentation.

Even just stopping there, there's a lot to work with.

Because these are questions that don't only concern 2046. They already concern 2026.

Trust becomes more precious precisely as it becomes harder to govern

This is perhaps the most important part.

According to the report, the spread of AI-guided booking journeys risks making the chain of accountability more opaque. If a trip is suggested, assembled and possibly even booked by an intelligent agent, who guarantees that the data is correct, that the content is reliable, that sources are up to date, that the price is genuinely the best — or at least a fair one?

Tourism has always run on trust. First in the printed guidebook, then in the physical travel agency, then on review portals, then on the big marketplaces. Now the question shifts to another level: how much do we trust systems that don't merely show options, but begin to decide for us which ones deserve attention.

I see this shift already in my own work. Guests arrive more "pre-oriented" than ever. Sometimes they've already built a mental map of the property, the territory and even their service expectations, assembled from reviews, content, AI and comparison engines. The problem is that this initial picture doesn't always match reality. And when the chain of trust fractures, it's usually the operator on the ground who pays first.

Value migrates towards whoever controls data and interfaces

The report states clearly that AI is increasing efficiency across the entire travel ecosystem, while simultaneously redistributing power. Control is shifting from traditional intermediaries towards whoever owns the data, the intelligent agents and the direct relationships with the traveller.

That sentence deserves to be pinned up in a lot of hotel and DMO (Destination Management Organisation) commercial offices.

Because it describes perfectly what is already happening:

• Google is trying to transform itself from search engine into decision engine;
• OTAs are investing ever more in AI, customer journey and personalisation;
• Meta is stealing attention from Google in the inspiration phase;
• the big tech players are working on protocols and interfaces that could make the transition between searching, choosing and buying invisible.

If in 2005 the advantage lay in owning inventory, and in 2015 in being better than everyone else at buying traffic, by 2046 it may lie in being able to orchestrate the relationship with the customer across the entire travel cycle, before the customer even really knows what trip they want.

For hotels and destinations this opens an enormous question: if we don't control at least a significant share of the relationship with our guests, we risk becoming nothing more than the last executive link in a value chain built elsewhere.

Personalisation, yes — but in whose interest

Another important thread in the report concerns personalisation. AI and first-party data will allow the discovery phase to be compressed and will push more and more decisions towards automated interactions.

Put like that, it sounds wonderful. And in part it is. Because a more personalised travel journey can reduce friction, errors, wasted time and information overload.

But here the same question keeps coming up — one we should ask ourselves far more often in tourism: who really benefits from this personalisation?

If personalisation helps me find the right trip, great.

If it makes everything simpler, even better.

But if it mainly serves to funnel me into pathways optimised for the margin of large operators, then we're looking at something very different indeed.

We're already seeing this in loyalty programmes, in conversational advertising, in recommendation engines and in AI systems that don't simply list possibilities, but begin to construct priorities.

That's why I keep thinking that the future of tourism isn't just about AI adoption, but about the transparency of its logic.

Will travel still be a right, or will it become ever more a privilege

The report also touches on a theme I find very interesting and perhaps rather less discussed in travel-tech circles: the possibility that travel, from an increasingly accessible good, may become more selective again — for economic, political and environmental reasons.

The signs are already there:

• geopolitical tensions redrawing flows;
• visa systems and border controls becoming ever more selective;
• rising transport costs;
• growing pressure from climate policies;
• debates about overtourism, quotas, access controls, tourist taxes and restrictions.

The rhetoric of unlimited, ever-easier travel that characterised the years of peak tourism globalisation is showing obvious cracks.

This doesn't necessarily mean less tourism. It means a more regulated, more stratified, more unequal tourism.

And Italy is going to have to be very careful here. Because while it can benefit from premium flows and a still very strong international appetite, it also risks becoming a destination that is properly accessible only to those with the time, the money and the tools to navigate complex systems.

Consolidation or fragmentation? Probably both

One of the more interesting insights in the report is that AI could produce two apparently opposite effects simultaneously:

• lowering barriers for small operators and new entrants;
• while concentrating power in the hands of those who control data, distribution and intelligence infrastructure.

It's a dynamic I know well from close up. On one hand, today a small hotel, a DMC (Destination Management Company) or a winery has access to tools that were unthinkable ten years ago: CRM, generative AI, automation, booking engines, digital content, international distribution. In theory this is an enormous democratisation.

On the other hand, those same small operators often remain dependent on:

• a handful of large visibility platforms;
• a handful of advertising ecosystems;
• a handful of intermediation systems;
• a handful of environments where AI decides what to show and to whom.

The risk of 2046 is not a world where small players can't exist. It's a world where they can exist, but inside rules written by someone else.

The report says the next three years are the real critical window

This is one of the most important lines in the PhocusWire summary: even though the scenarios look twenty years out, the report underlines that many of these changes are already underway and that the next three years will represent a decisive window for action.

This, to my mind, is where the real value of the document lies. It doesn't use 2046 for futurology — it uses it to force us to look at the present with greater honesty.

Because if we wait to understand the new equilibrium once it's already consolidated, we'll arrive too late. And in tourism, those who arrive late rarely catch up for real.

What this means for Italian hotels and destinations

From where I sit, I see at least five very concrete implications.

1. The direct relationship with the guest becomes even more precious

Not because OTAs will disappear, but because in an ecosystem dominated by agents, AI and platforms, every space of proprietary relationship will be even more strategic.

2. Data needs to be sorted out, now

Anyone without at least a minimal clean, coherent and usable data infrastructure risks being unable even to engage properly with the new distribution and personalisation ecosystems in the next cycle.

3. Destinations need to become "sources of truth" again

If trust is fragmenting, territories have an opportunity. They can become a reliable, up-to-date and legible reference point within the information ecosystem, rather than limiting themselves to generic promotional campaigns.

4. The tourism product needs rethinking in terms of accessibility and relevance

Being desirable isn't enough. You also need to be bookable, comprehensible, storytellable and integratable into new AI-guided travel journeys.

5. More governance is needed, and less automatic enthusiasm

AI is an enormous lever, but without rules, transparency and the capacity to maintain oversight, it risks feeding dependencies and imbalances rather than reducing them.

In conclusion, the tourism of 2046 — if the Phocuswright-ITB report is right — will be defined not so much by the tools we use or the gadgets that surround us, but by a much simpler and much more political question: who will have the right to decide what is trustworthy, what is relevant, and who the traveller reaches first.

And that, when all is said and done, is a question that already concerns the present.

For those of us who work in hospitality and destination management, the task is not to chase every new technological fashion. It's to understand where power is shifting and how to avoid handing a monopoly over trust, relationships and access to a handful of big players.

Because the tourism of the future, even more than being a question of innovation, will be a question of governance. And that's where, truly, we have far more at stake than it might appear.