Outlook for summer travel 2026

This week I was a guest on CNBC’s Class Italy programme asked to comment on diverse areas such as the travel outlook for summer 2026, sustainability, the war in the Middle East and impacts of AI.

• How is the international tourism sector changing?

At an operational level, global travel and tourism is going through a new wave of transformation. First there was automation in the 1950s with the global distribution systems, low-cost carriers and online travel agents in the 2000s. Now the industry is being disrupted by the power of AI - Gen AI, large language models and more recently agentic AI. Over half of consumers are using Gen AI like ChatGPT and Gemini to create planning itineraries, with big tech players partnering with AI to integrate booking functionality in AI platforms.

At the destination level, over-tourism is a very real phenomenon where there’s an imbalance between demand and capacity – examples include honey pot destinations such as Venice, Barcelona, Tenerife – and many other top tier places globally. Where the balance has tipped and instead of benefits, there are issues such as over-crowding, resource depletion, lack of affordable housing, low wages, - that lead to anti-tourism sentiment in local communities, not surprisingly.

The impacts of climate change are impacting both tourism supply and demand. We see the trend towards coolcations, where recent Booking.com survey says 25% of consumers are choosing cooler climates when travelling. Shift from Southern Europe to Northern Europe for coolcations. Travellers are increasingly looking to travel outside of peak season – for a variety of reasons such as extreme weather, price and over-tourism.

• What are the specific characteristics related to different geographic regions?

Geographically, the main differences relate to the level of development of different regions, so we see developed regions such as Europe, North America and Australasia compared to emerging regions like Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East Africa.

Tourism demand is highly correlated with the economy, therefore the higher the disposable income the higher the propensity to travel. Not surprisingly, we see Europe as the largest inbound market thanks to the majority of intra-regional demand.. Asia Pacific is a growth region thanks to Northern Asian and Southeast Asian economies experiencing strong economic growth. Within regions, there are also groupings by topography, - coastal, nature/mountain, urban and rural where things like coastal erosion may be a common concern.

• With the war and rising fuel costs, the summer season risks being very volatile—how much will the impact of the war weigh on tourism?

In the IMF’s April World Outlook Report, 0.2ppts were knocked off global GDP, leading to a forecast of 3.1% in 2026, pointing to a global slowdown, with recession fears based on length and depth of war in the Middle East. The Middle East region saw the largest revision with an economic downgrade of 2 ppts to 1.9% growth.

For tourism, Oxford Economics forecasts a decline of -11 to -27% for inbound arrivals for the Middle East, where the region accounts for 7% of global arrivals, depending on length of crisis. Globally, it is therefore predicted that global arrivals will experience a lower rate of growth of 2% for 2026, leading to 1.5 billion arrivals. Value losses for the Middle East range from $34 billion to $56 billion losses according to Oxford Economics.

The big question is regarding the duration of the crisis due to the spill-over effects on oil supply, with IATA and the IEA saying that Europe may run out of fuel in 6 weeks, including jet fuel. The IEA reported that the war in the Middle East and subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz is the largest oil supply shock in history, with the largest monthly gain in prices in March 2026. This makes the economic outlook highly uncertain. Already airlines like Lufthansa have implemented mass cancellations of flights in order to cut capacity and raised prices as the price of jet fuel has doubled due to the crisis. Many airlines are well hedged but will be an issue for those that don’t have their fuel supply locked in at pre-war prices. However, there is the stark reality that fuel accounts for one third of airlines’ costs so prices will without doubt increase over the summer months and consumers will face more travel chaos than usual.

• How are sustainability trends and artificial intelligence changing international tourism?

Without a doubt, climate change and AI are having the biggest impact on international travel and tourism.

Booking.com’s latest Sustainability report reveals show interesting findings:

“43% of consumers plan to avoid crowds and 42% to travel off season where 85% of consumers say that sustainability is important or very important to them, once again highlighting the say do gap.”

Destinations globally are signing up to the Glasgow Declaration on Sustainable Tourism, where the aim is to declare their commitment to halve emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 if not sooner. We are seeing the importance of community tourism, for example, putting communities first. Here in Scotland, the SCOTO network has put pause on excessive tourism practices, rebalancing to put communities at the top table in decision-making. Other countries are going for net positive and regenerative impacts, for example, rewilding as seen in several European countries.

Driving equitable tourism is increasingly of concern – where Travel Foundation research shows that in regions like the Caribbean between 50% to 80% of tourism spending can leave the country, meaning that communities are not benefiting – instead international large corporations are.

Microsoft reported that 50% of consumers are using AI for travel and 72% expect AI agentic experiences where AI conducts tasks autonomously such as booking travel on behalf of a person. Yet, Booking.com says that less than 10% trust AI.