Last week, Google quietly changed everything. Tucked inside a number of AI announcements at Google I/O was something that should make every travel executive sit up.
Last week, Google quietly changed everything.
Tucked inside a number of AI announcements at Google I/O was something that should make every travel executive sit up:
“Agentic checkout” — where Gemini 2.5 completes purchases inside search, without a website, booking engine, or checkout page.
Let that sink in.
No form. No funnel. No handover.
Just an agent.
Booking on your behalf.
Directly from Google Search.
If you're a tour operator, OTA, airline, or hotel group; this isn't just a UX innovation.
It’s a seismic shift in who controls your customer, your data, and your distribution.
And the implications are massive.
For decades, travel companies have been obsessed with optimizing the booking path:
Now imagine all of that becoming obsolete — because the AI made the booking before the user ever saw your site.
No loyalty sign-in.
No upsell.
No contact details.
Just a cold, efficient API call in the background — from Google's assistant to your backend.
Not overnight. And that is exactly why we need to move now.
Agentic checkout currently works best in low-stakes, commoditized transactions — t-shirts, books, earbuds — where price and availability are enough to trigger a decision.
But travel is next — and it is complex:
These are not handled in a single API call.
But they will be, once infrastructure catches up. And when it does, whoever owns the standardization and transaction layer will control the future of travel agentic commerce.
And that is why the travel industry must act now — not later.
Because the real question is not “When will Google AI start booking trips?”
It is: What infrastructure will travel companies rely on when they do?
And here lies the opportunity.
At Chain4Travel, we believe this is not a threat; it is a wake-up call to build what comes next.
With Camino Network, managed by a travel industry consortia, we have designed open-source infrastructure for an AI-powered future of travel:
Trust between travelers, agents, and suppliers must be machine-readable; and decentralized.→ Who is this agent? Who is the traveler?→ Is this booking allowed for this identity?
Forget third-party processors.→ Payments settle instantly via stablecoins or CBDCs→ Refunds happen automatically→ Loyalty becomes interoperable, and tokenized
Built for the agentic era of travel.
→ Real-time messaging → Offers, bookings, and modifications in one unified format→ Fully traceable, on-chain transactions with programmable trust
Rebooking rules, refund conditions, and pricing logic must be on-chain and transparent.→ AI Agents need to understand and trust the rules before booking→ Disputes and ambiguity disappear
When an AI books on behalf of a user, who gets credit?→ Camino ensures suppliers always know the true source of demand
→ Commission payments are made fairly and transparently→ CRM systems can extend into the agentic layer
If Google controls search, conversation, and checkout — who owns the booking?
You might still be in the backend, but unless you can verify identity, capture value, and prove origin, you are just an invisible endpoint in someone else’s network.
This is not a UI update.
It is a distribution revolution.
And the real question for the travel industry is:
Will we lead the next era of commerce? Or just integrate with it?
