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Travel beyond 2027 will be less about demand and more about confidence, according to new research from News Corp’s in-house research and insights unit, the Growth Distillery.

Speaking at News Australia’s Travel Upfront in Sydney last night, the fourth of five sessions in the publisher’s Beyond’27 intelligence series, Growth Distillery general manager Leigh Lavery said the travel sector was entering a new phase where the booking decision is shaped well before a consumer ever opens a booking engine.

“Beyond 27, travel is no longer a demand story; it’s a confidence story, and a contest for memory that starts long before the booking,” Lavery said, pointing to a “permacrisis” of global uncertainty and cost-of-living pressure now shaping traveller behaviour.

The unit’s data shows 59 per cent of Australians have altered travel plans this year because of fuel prices, with 16 per cent opting for closer destinations and 13 per cent changing their mode of transport. The market is also splitting on spend: one in five Australians expect to spend less on travel, while three in four plan to maintain or increase their outlay.

Confidence as the new product

The Growth Distillery’s first projection is that an existing trust gap in travel will widen into what Lavery called a “trust crash” as AI-generated and synthetic content scales, leaving travellers questioning not just where to go, but what and who to believe.

Three in four consumers say they wish they could find the right travel option more quickly and easily – but easier planning is not the same as more believable planning. Nearly a quarter of people globally rarely or never trust AI-generated information, seven in 10 double-check what AI tells them, and a third find it impersonal.

That gap is fuelling demand for human expertise: two in three travellers want a travel agent involved in at least part of their planning, and one in four say they are more likely to use an agent because of AI. Growth Distillery behavioural data also found travellers who become confident in a trip read more than four times as much travel editorial during the dreaming stage as those who remain hesitant.

AI compressing the funnel

The second projection is that AI will compress the travel funnel and flatten brands reliant on performance marketing, as AI tools average out options and commoditise propositions that rely on winning the last click.

Six in 10 travellers say they would consider using AI in the middle of the journey – split between researching and evaluating – but only one to two in 10 turn to AI during the dreaming phase, the point at which a destination first takes hold in a traveller’s mind. Lavery argued this makes the dreaming stage the biggest remaining opportunity for brands to build memory before automation takes over the middle of the funnel.

A shifting high-value audience

The Growth Distillery’s third projection concerns the sector’s most sought-after cohort: travellers aged 55 and over. ABS projections point to more than a million additional Australians in this age bracket by 2030 – nearly one in three Australians – translating to an estimated AU$10 billion-plus in incremental travel spend on current patterns.

However, Lavery cautioned that headcount overstates the opportunity. Outright home ownership among over-55s has fallen four percentage points since 2020 to 53 per cent, while the share still paying a mortgage or rent has risen four points to 43 per cent, meaning the financially free segment of this cohort is shrinking.

The research also challenges assumptions that this audience is tech-shy. Under-55s are more than three times as likely to use AI for travel planning as over-55s today, and twice as likely to consider using it in future – a cohort that will age directly into the 55-plus bracket. Lavery said tomorrow’s high-value older traveller would be digitally fluent and comfortable delegating logistics to AI, but not the dreaming or decision-making stages of a trip.

“The machine plans, but trusted environments convince,” Lavery said, adding that the window to shape this audience’s preferences ahead of AI use “is opening now”.

Lavery said travel brands would increasingly compete not just to be found online, but to be remembered – with confidence and memory needing to be built upstream, long before a booking or an AI prompt begins.