If someone attempted to predict what travel would look like twenty years later in 2005, they would probably not have dared to predict half of what we consider to be a given today. The evolution of the travel industry over the past twenty years resembles a narrative of technological acceleration, economic restructuring, and profound changes in traveler behavior. From the online revolution and the explosion of smartphones, to the digital economy of payments, the rapid growth of global air transportation, and now the dominance of Artificial Intelligence, tourism has undergone five revolutionary shifts. The new OAG report maps five major shifts that have marked the industry with impressive data: Online, Mobile, Payments, Supply, Scale.
The findings leave no doubt: the travel world of the early 21st century no longer resembles anything like the digitally accelerated reality of 2025 — while that in turn is preparing to hand over the baton to the new dominant force: AI.
To understand where the industry is going, we must first understand how it got here.
Thus, OAG records five key shifts that shaped travel between 2005 and 2025 and then analyzes the ten bets that will shape the next 20 years.
The five travel trends that have defined the last 20 years in travel
The first big shake-up came with online.
The OAG graph (page 3) accurately shows the “turning point”:
* In 2005, only 19% of bookings were made online.
* By 2025, the online share will rise to 72%, leaving just 28% for offline bookings.
The entrance of OTAs, meta-search platforms, and digital price transparency have changed the balance. The model became more competitive, more flexible, and more vulnerable to changes in demand.
2. The smartphone: the fastest adoption technology in history
The second reversal was mobile.
The OAG shows that the smartphone was the fastest adopted technology in human history:
* From 40 million devices (2007) → to 5.3 billion in 2025.
* It reached 70% penetration 132 times faster than electricity
Traveling became mobile-first: from bookings to boarding passes, e-wallets, real-time rebooking, and airline apps.
No tool has changed travel as much as the smartphone.
In less than a generation, it became the ultimate hub for every traveler:
* Reservations
* Check-in
* Boarding pass
* Maps
* Movements
* Payments
* Translations
* Customer service
3.The digital payment revolution: From the till to the tap
The third major change was in payments.
* In 2014, only 34% of transactions were digital.
* In 2024, the share reaches 66%.
* By 2030, it will reach 79%.
The “explosion” of e-commerce, wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay), buy-now-pay-later solutions, and fintech platforms have unleashed demand, broken down geographical barriers, and made the journey more economically simple — especially for younger generations.
The introduction of e-wallets, fintech solutions, contactless transactions, and digital gateways has made payments not only easier but also instantaneous.
Travelers now:
* pay for rooms and flights with digital wallets,
* make cross-border transactions without friction,
* They pre-purchase activities online,
* They use buy-now-pay-later options for their vacations.
Tours & Activities, the last major unexplored sector, will only reach online penetration of <50% in 2025; it is the "last online front" of tourism.
4. Air travel offer doubled: Flights, seats, destinations
The fourth major revolution is about giving.
According to page 7, over the past 20 years:
* Flights increased by 37%.
* Available positions +91%.
* The unique pairs of cities connected by an air route +89%.
The world has indeed become smaller.
The "explosion" came from:
* low-cost carriers
* the involvement of Middle Eastern state-owned airlines,
* the entry of new airports,
* the growth of Asian markets.
Three factors played a decisive role:
Air travel has not only become more common; it has become more complex, more compact, and more global.
5. The era of scale: The massive acquisitions that created the behemoths
The fifth trend is scale.
* Booking bought Kayak, Agoda, Rentalcars, Momondo, HotelsCombined, Etraveli.
* Expedia acquired HomeAway, Travelocity, Orbitz, Trivago*.
* Tripadvisor bought Viator, LaFourchette, etc.
This is a twenty-year period of unprecedented power accumulation.
The new generation of companies — such as Mews, the travel-tech unicorn — confirms that the scale is accelerating even more through acquisitions (page 10).
The new era: Artificial Intelligence – the greatest technological leap in the history of travel
The OAG section on the "AI Era" (p. 11-16) describes a technological explosion that eclipses all previous ones.
AI surpassed metaverse, NFTs, and every other trend
The fastest application adoption in world history
ChatGPT reached 100 million users in 2 months.
TikTok took 9.
Netflix… 120
By 2025, 72% of companies will be using AI in core functions: up from 50% in 2020 → 88% in 2025.
By 2025, the majority of travelers will use AI for their travel planning
In travel planning with ChatGPT or similar applications:
* "Yes, often" increased by 45% in one year.
* "No, I'm not interested" fell 50%.
What does all this mean for travel over the next 20 years?
OAG's 10 predictions summarize the future:
Over the last 20 years, we have seen:
* The collapse of the offline model.
* Transforming the mobile into a "travel gateway".
* Digitalization of payments.
* Doubling the global air travel supply.
* The concentration of power in a few giants.
* And now: an Artificial Intelligence that will take over the entire travel workflow.
It took 20 years for everything to change — and just two years of AI to rewrite everything from scratch.
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