Artificial-intelligence agents are moving beyond travel discovery and could soon become the primary gatekeepers of bookings, payments and itinerary management, a panel at JAPEX 2026 heard. The shift signals a fundamental change in how hotels, destinations and travel brands must present their inventory to remain visible to customers who increasingly delegate purchasing decisions to AI assistants.
The discussion took place during the second panel on the opening day of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association's premier trade show, held at Moon Palace Jamaica from September 14-17. Titled 'Agentic Commerce and the AI Booking Journey', the session examined how Jamaica's travel and hospitality sector can respond to the rise of agentic commerce. Dr Carey Wallace, executive director of the Tourism Enhancement Fund, moderated the panel.
Panellists included Kristopher DaCosta, marketing manager at the Jamaica Tourist Board; Andre Campbell, senior manager for learning programmes and innovation at Sandals Corporate University; Paul Simon, chairman and CEO of Rockhouse; and AI strategist Dean Challis, managing director and head of media and innovation for EMEA.
What agentic AI actually does
Before the panel, Challis delivered a presentation titled 'Agentic Commerce: The Next Travel Shift' in which he defined the technology in practical terms. Unlike traditional AI systems that answer questions, agentic AI uses virtual agents capable of planning ahead, using tools, taking actions, correcting mistakes and learning user preferences over time.
"Regular AI just answers questions, but agentic AI is like a smart helper that figures out all the steps needed to finish a big goal from start to finish," Challis said. "Just like a person uses apps, agentic AI can open calendars, check maps, look up prices, and use calculators to get real work done. Instead of just telling you what to do, it can actually click the buttons, buy the tickets, or send the emails, once you give it permission."
He added that the systems adapt when problems arise. "If something goes wrong, like a road being closed or a flight being sold out, it doesn't give up; it finds a new way to solve the problem automatically. Over time, it learns your favourite things, routine, and habits so it can make decisions that fit you best without needing to be told every time."
The discovery phase is already disrupted
Challis argued that agentic commerce is likely to become the travel industry's next major disruption. Generative AI has already become commonplace in travel discovery. Citing Booking.com's 2025 Global Sentiment Report, he noted that 60 per cent of consumers have used AI to plan and travel, 91 per cent are excited about the technology and 89 per cent want to use AI in future travel planning.
AI assistants have overtaken bloggers and social-media influencers as a more trusted source of travel information. For travel brands, the implication is clear: companies must pay closer attention to how their brands appear within AI environments, including rankings, visibility, advertising placements and the customer experience delivered through those platforms.
For professionals working across sales and hospitality operations, understanding these shifts has moved from optional to urgent. AI for Hospitality Courses are beginning to address the practical skill gaps that emerge as booking workflows change.
From search to transaction without leaving the chat
The impact extends beyond discovery. Challis said agentic commerce is taking on a greater role throughout the customer journey, including autonomous itinerary planning, proactive disruption management, direct transactional execution and continuous personalisation. These systems can assemble flights, hotels and activities from a single natural-language request, monitor weather and flight disruptions and automatically rebook reservations, and complete transactions without redirecting users to third-party websites.
To illustrate the potential, Challis pointed to a case study involving Radisson Hotels Group, which operates more than 1,000 hotels worldwide. The company partnered with Accenture to develop a ChatGPT-enabled travel-discovery application that combines conversational AI, live pricing, personalised recommendations and direct booking functionality. Travellers can search for hotels, access real-time rates and receive recommendations tailored to their preferences within a single conversational interface.
"Generative AI reframes hospitality commerce as a unified, personalised customer journey architecture," Challis said. He noted that 70 per cent of travellers now prefer making bookings through an online virtual assistant. Radisson's platform brings together conversational discovery, live rates and direct booking in one experience.
A new class of gatekeeper
The development points to the emergence of AI assistants as the intermediaries that influence purchasing decisions. Hotels, airlines and destinations will need machine-readable inventory, transparent policies and strong digital credibility to remain visible within AI-driven ecosystems. The practical work of making booking systems legible to machines - not just humans - is becoming a competitive requirement.
Sales teams that understand how AI Agent Courses function will be better positioned to ensure their inventory surfaces when an AI assistant builds a traveller's itinerary. The technology rewards structured data, clear pricing and policies that agents can interpret and act on without human intervention.
Why this matters for hospitality and events sales professionals
When a traveller asks an AI assistant to book a four-star resort in Montego Bay with a beachfront restaurant and a conference room for 40 people, the properties that appear in the response will be those whose inventory, pricing and policies are machine-readable. Sales teams cannot rely on relationship-building alone if the first point of contact is an algorithm. The immediate priority is auditing how your property's data appears in AI-driven search environments and ensuring your booking systems can accept direct transactions from agentic platforms - because the gatekeeper is changing, and it does not attend networking events.
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