Beyond traffic and scale, travel’s new growth playbook takes shape

More than 1,900 journey trade professionals gathered in Shanghai on September 22-23 for the 2026 TravelEvery day Conference, bringing collectively leaders from OTAs, lodges, airways, cruise traces, TMCs, locations, journey expertise corporations, cultural tourism companies and funding establishments. Key decision-makers from journey corporations accounted for 85.1% of attendees.

Held on the Shanghai International Convention Center beneath the theme “Change,” the two-day occasion explored how the journey trade is navigating a market the place the outdated formulation of traffic acquisition, fast enlargement and scale-driven growth are not sufficient.

Senior executives from throughout the worldwide journey trade joined the occasion, together with:

* Jane Sun, CEO of Trip.com Group
* Drew Pinto, Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue & Technology Officer of Marriott International
* Kent Zhu, CEO of Accor Greater China
* David Sun, General Manager of BTG Hotels Group and Chairman & CEO of Homeinns Hotel Group
* Nong Xia, President of Development for Greater China & Mongolia at Hilton
* Fabien Blondet, Senior Vice President, R&D at Amadeus
* Suzanne Neufang, CEO of GBTA

Across three main boards — the principle TravelEvery day Conference，Hotel Marketing Conference and Business Travel Conference — discussions spanned tourism consumption, hospitality, company journey, distribution and AI. Despite the breadth of matters, a number of frequent threads emerged.

From traffic to worth

Inbound tourism supplied one instance.

In a dialog titled “From Viral Buzz to Lasting Value: Turning Inbound Tourism Interest into Tangible Growth,” Trip.com Group CEO Jane Sun and TravelEvery day CEO Charlie Li mentioned how rising worldwide curiosity in China might translate into incremental demand.

As inbound journey continues to realize momentum, the trade is transferring past customer numbers. The larger query lies in encouraging longer stays and larger spending, whereas enabling lodges, sights, transportation, retail and different components of the tourism ecosystem to seize extra of the worth generated by worldwide demand.

That leads naturally to a different query: what must be constructed past traffic?

Tongcheng Travel CMO Zhiwei Bai explored how stronger digital infrastructure and vacation spot service capabilities may also help flip short-term consideration into sustainable tourism consumption.

Together, the 2 discussions mirrored a broader shift available in the market. Attracting vacationers is just the start. Destinations and journey corporations more and more want the merchandise, infrastructure and providers to retain them, serve them and in the end convert demand into worth.

AI strikes nearer to the core of the enterprise

AI supplied one other main thread working by way of the convention.

The dialog has moved shortly past what generative AI can do. The extra urgent query now’s whether or not it might produce measurable enterprise outcomes.

Amadeus Senior Vice President, R&D, Fabien Blondet examined how trusted information, ecosystem integration and deployment at scale have gotten important to making use of AI throughout journey.

The dialog moved additional into the working layer with Emerging Travel Group (ETG) CEO Felix Shpilman, who joined VariFlight Global Managing Director Joseph Xia to look at how AI might reshape journey distribution, from stock aggregation, demand-supply matching to customer support and operational effectivity.

Plug and Play Managing Partner Amir Amidi pushed the query additional: how does AI transfer from pilot tasks to profitability?

Taken collectively, these highlighted classes present how the function of AI in journey is altering.

AI is not merely a front-end software for search, suggestions, customer support or content material era. It is more and more changing into a part of the working infrastructure of journey companies, connecting demand, provide, distribution and execution.

The subsequent stage of competitors might due to this fact be much less about who has probably the most superior AI mannequin and extra about who can embed AI into actual workflows and flip that functionality into measurable outcomes.

Hotels transfer past the size recreation

The resort sector revealed a parallel transformation.

As China’s resort market matures, the dialog is shifting from enlargement pace and room rely towards property-level effectivity, differentiated merchandise, proprietor returns and deeper buyer relationships.

Senior executives from Hilton, IHG and Shangri-La mentioned how worldwide resort teams are localizing merchandise for Gen Z and rising cultural-tourism demand. Accor Greater China CEO Kent Zhu examined what comes subsequent for worldwide resort teams in China as competitors strikes “beyond scale, beyond luxury.”

Chinese resort teams have been asking related questions from one other path: after years of fast enlargement, what capabilities will outline the subsequent stage of growth?

Technology is accelerating that transition. Fliggy CTO Dr. Alex Chen explored how agentic commerce and AI-native journey might reshape journey discovery, suggestions and transactions, whereas Delonix Group CTO LingHang Meng examined how resort AI can join visitor requests with precise service execution.

The identical seek for new working fashions extends past China. NUMA Group Founder & CEO Christian Gaiser examined digital alternatives arising from structural modifications in Europe’s resort market, whereas GBTA CEO Suzanne Neufang introduced a worldwide and Asia-Pacific perspective on the financial and technological forces shaping company journey.

A worldwide trade searching for its subsequent growth mannequin

The breadth of corporations represented in Shanghai mirrored how extensively these questions are being felt.

Global gamers together with Marriott International, Accor, Hilton, IHG, Shangri-La, Amadeus, GBTA, Mastercard, American Express Global Business Travel, BCD Travel, MSC Cruises, Warner Bros. Discovery, Emerging Travel Group and Plug and Play joined main Chinese journey and hospitality corporations together with Trip.com Group, Tongcheng Travel, Fliggy, Meituan, BTG Homeinns, H World Group, Jin Jiang International, Atour Group and Dossen International Group.

They represented totally different components of the journey ecosystem, however the challenges mentioned over the 2 days more and more converged.

Traffic nonetheless issues, however traffic alone is not sufficient. Scale stays vital, however creating worth after attaining scale is changing into extra important. AI is transferring into the core of the journey enterprise, however expertise itself is just not the vacation spot.

From inbound tourism and hospitality to distribution and company journey, the trade is transferring towards a growth mannequin constructed more and more round worth, effectivity and execution.

For journey corporations, the problem now’s to show expertise, provide and evolving shopper demand into sustainable enterprise worth.

That, in the end, was what “Change” meant on the 2026 TravelEvery day Conference.

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