India’s travel market cools in 2025, eyes fare-driven rebound
India’s travel market grew just 1% to $41.7 billion in 2025 (down sharply from 10% growth in 2024), as air travel was hit by operational disruptions at IndiGo and Air India while car rental surged on road-trip demand.
Online bookings rose 4% to $24 billion (57% penetration) even as offline fell 2% to $17.8 billion, per Phocuswright’s India Travel Market Essentials 2026 report. A rebound is expected in 2026 (13% growth to $47.2 billion), driven partly by higher airfares amid a jet-fuel cost crisis that prompted the government to pledge up to ₹10,000 crore in fuel price-stabilization support, forcing IndiGo (which posted a ₹2,394 crore FY26 net loss) to end its widebody leasing experiment and Air India to trim international routes, both airlines now under new CEOs (Willie Walsh and Tewolde Gebremariam, respectively). Growth is projected to moderate to 7% in 2027 and roughly 8% annually thereafter, reaching $59.1 billion by 2029 with online penetration at 62%. Meanwhile, OTAs (MakeMyTrip, Ixigo, Cleartrip, EaseMyTrip) and suppliers (Air India, IndiGo, IRCTC) are expanding into each other’s territory, and AI-driven trip-planning tools from both startups (30 Sundays, Scapia) and incumbents (MakeMyTrip’s Myra 2.0, Ixigo’s TARA) are reshaping how travelers book.
Trip.Biz launches “Agent ONE” AI suite to cut booking time by 90%
Trip.Biz, the business travel arm of Trip.com Group, unveiled Agent ONE at its Transform 2026 summit in Singapore (200 attendees from travel, procurement, finance and HR), positioning it as a fix for global travel-program “leakage” caused by fragmented legacy TMCs, digital-only platforms and in-house programs — none of which, per GM Eugene Tan, deliver both consistency and depth. Agent ONE comprises four specialized AI agents: a Planning Agent that converts natural-language requests into policy-compliant recommendations; a Booking Agent that cuts average booking time from ~45 minutes to 2 minutes (a 90% improvement) via conversational booking; an Approval Agent that reduces approval wait times from over an hour to under 3 seconds by auto-approving low-risk requests; and an Insight Agent that generates full leakage/savings analysis reports in under 7 minutes versus roughly a week using legacy tools. Trip.Biz says its unified platform model already delivers a 90% SLA compliance rate and 80%+ satisfaction score across the APAC region it serves, and Agent ONE is now live globally across all Trip.Biz-supported markets.
Cloudbeds and Klook team up to widen hotel distribution
Cloudbeds has launched a two-way integration with Klook, the Asia-Pacific experiences and travel-services platform (strong presence in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines), giving Cloudbeds hotel customers automated, synchronized distribution of rates, availability and bookings through Klook’s ecosystem, which bundles accommodation with experiences, attractions, transport and other travel essentials. The partnership aims to help hoteliers reach new international demand and capture more reservations without added operational complexity, with Cloudbeds’ VP of Partnerships Sébastien Leitner framing it as expanding where properties can be discovered, and Klook’s VP of Hotels Emma Lee noting it lets properties tap travelers already booking their broader trip on Klook while keeping channel management simple.
WTTC, JATA and Tourism EXPO Japan sign MOU
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA) and the Tourism EXPO Japan (TEJ) Executive Committee have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen Japan’s global tourism connections through knowledge exchange, research collaboration, joint events and closer public-private engagement, with WTTC set to participate in Tourism EXPO Japan. The deal comes as Japan’s travel and tourism sector hit a record $343.1 billion contribution to GDP in 2025 (8.1% of GDP, up 4.6% versus 1.1% economy-wide growth), making it the world’s fifth-largest travel and tourism economy; international visitor spending reached $63.3 billion (up 8.8% year-on-year and 74.9% above 2019 levels), making Japan the seventh-largest market for international visitor spending, up from 15th in 2019. The MOU, signed by WTTC’s Gloria Guevara, JATA’s Yuji Hara and TEJ’s Eijiro Yamakita, also aims to support AI adoption, digital transformation and destination stewardship as Japan manages rapid visitor growth alongside local community needs.
F1’s Sepang and Singapore races drive hotel booking surge
Consecutive Formula 1 race weekends in Sepang (2-4 October 2026) and Singapore (9-11 October 2026) are driving major hotel demand across Southeast Asia, with Trip.com data showing bookings up more than 200% year-on-year in Sepang and over 80% in Singapore, drawn mainly from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan. About a fifth of race-period bookers included both destinations in a single trip, and average stays lengthened (Malaysia: one to two days; Singapore: two to 2.5 days), while average daily rates jumped roughly 27% in Malaysia and 44% in Singapore versus typical October weekends. Trip.com’s Edmund Ong said the back-to-back races are fueling multi-city, event-led travel across the region, with the year’s longer trip lengths pointing to the growing appeal of pairing major sporting events with broader regional tourism.
