World Tourism Day 2026: AI can plan your holiday, but can it understand the soul of a place? |

Today, we are celebrating World Tourism Day 2026. It is the time when AI is telling people where to go, what to eat, what are the best attractions of the place and so on. Imagine telling an AI chatbot that you have five days, a budget of ₹50,000 and a preference for beaches, local food and within seconds, it can create a perfect itinerary. From hotels and attractions to restaurants, it can tell you everything.For a generation of travellers used to searching, comparing and booking everything online, this feels almost magical. But travel has always been about something that cannot easily be reduced to a list of attractions.But let’s ask real questions now. Can artificial intelligence AI tell you which lane in Varanasi feels different just after sunrise? Can it explain the feeling of a person when they take their first dip in the Ganges? Where does a particular chai and kachori stall in a mountain village mean so much to its regulars? Can an algorithm tell you to stay an extra day because the place has unexpectedly begun to feel like home?As the world marks World Tourism Day on September 27, these questions are becoming increasingly relevant. The official 2026 theme, “Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism,” looks at how AI and digital technologies are reshaping the tourism industry.Indians are already letting AI into their travel plans

India is emerging as an enthusiastic market for AI-powered travel planning. According to Agoda’s 2026 Travel Outlook Report, 33% of Indian travellers surveyed said they already use AI for travel planning, while 68% said they were likely to use it for their next trip. The uses range from finding attractions and activities to creating personalised itineraries and choosing destinations.Another 2026 Allianz Partners survey found that 82% of Indian travellers said they planned to use or had already used AI to plan vacations.Hari Ganapathy, CEO & Co-Founder, Pickyourtrail says,“Much of the conversation around AI in travel is focused on how it will change the product: better recommendations, smarter itineraries, more personalisation. I think its more fundamental impact will be on the economics of delivering all of that. AI will rewrite travel’s P&L before it rewrites the holiday. But that doesn’t make humans less important. It changes where the human creates value. AI can compare, coordinate and increasingly execute, while the travel expert moves towards judgment, reassurance and accountability.”The appeal is obvious. AI can reduce hours of research into minutes. It can compare options, adjust an itinerary according to a budget and suggest alternatives when plans change.That human validation matters because travel is rarely as predictable as an itinerary suggests.When the perfect itinerary meets real India

Take a road trip through the Himalayas. An AI system can calculate distances and suggest viewpoints. But it may not know that a road has become difficult after heavy rain, that a local driver recommends leaving before sunrise, or that a seemingly minor detour can turn into the most memorable part of the journey.Travel agent and traveller experiences are revealing this gap.In a recent Times of India report, 26-year-old traveller Khushboo Agarwal described using AI to plan holidays but eventually finding some recommendations “generic and vague”, particularly for lesser-known places.The part of travel that cannot be searched

Ask an AI for the best things to do in Jaipur and it can produce a perfectly sensible list: forts, palaces, markets, food and museums. The very generic list.But ask a Jaipur resident where to go when you want to understand the city rather than simply see it, and the answer may be very different.That knowledge is not necessarily available in structured databases because it comes from living there. This is perhaps the most interesting paradox of AI-powered tourism. The distinction is especially important in India, where travel often overlaps with food, family, faith, festivals, memories and relationships.Renuka Natu, Founder, Africa with Renuka says:

“Technology can tell us where to go, but human experience tells us why, when and whether we should go. AI is transforming the way we discover the world, but it cannot replace the insight that comes from having experienced a destination firsthand.When time is the ultimate luxury, travel is no longer just about finding the next place to visit; it is about making every journey count. Trends can influence what we discover, but human expertise helps us decide what is truly worth our time. In a world where every destination is merely a click away, true luxury lies in knowing which ones truly merit the journey.”For many travellers, the meaning of a place is created through encounters, the shopkeeper who remembers your order, the guide who tells a story passed down through generations, the stranger who helps when your car breaks down, or the local family that invites you for tea.The future may belong to both

The answer, therefore, may not be about choosing AI over humans or humans over AI.AI can handle the heavy lifting: researching destinations, comparing prices, translating languages, navigating unfamiliar places and building personalised itineraries. Indian travellers are already embracing many of these uses.Humans can add something different: context, judgement, local knowledge and the emotional understanding of why a place matters.Nikhil Sharma, MD and COO, South Asia, Radisson Hotel Group said,“We are now advancing into agentic commerce so AI assistants can complete bookings directly while we retain the guest relationship and loyalty. On the ground, our WhatsApp automation is live in more than 20 hotels and has already handled over 15,000 enquiries, proving that the best AI quietly removes friction so our teams can deliver genuine hospitality.”Perhaps that is where the future of travel lies

Let technology help you decide where to stay, what to see and how much it may cost. But once you arrive, leave a little room in the itinerary for the things no algorithm planned.Because AI might know a destination but experiencing it is still deeply human.