A few weeks ago, as I planned my trip to join WIT’s 20th Anniversary Celebration, my inbox was littered with the usual barrage: multiple confirmation emails for each trip element and no single journey umbrella document. Each came from a different brand, with a different reference number, in a different format.
For twenty years – actually, long before WIT was started – we’ve been promised all this would disappear. Travel was supposed to become connected. Seamless. Effortless. Yet in 2025, the real question isn’t whether seamless travel will arrive – it’s who gets to own it, and, crucially, who gets the bill.
The airlines’ OneOrder dream: Own the ledger, own the passenger
Airlines are banking on IATA’s OneOrder — a sweeping initiative fusing their fragmented systems into a single, unified “Order” record. It sounds elegant: one document to replace PNRs, e-tickets, EMDs. But the aim isn’t just simplicity. It’s a hard push to take back control from intermediaries and pull traveller data back into airline silos. Transforming these legacy systems isn’t just a software update. It’s a multimillion-dollar re-architecture — and that cost is baked into higher fares, more restrictive policies, or the illusion of streamlining. The traveller may never see a line item, but rest assured: the cost of “order” always finds its way downstream.
OTAs: Selling convenience – but never for free
Online Travel Agencies parade the “Connected Trip.” Flights, hotels, cars, and tours morph into an apparently unified journey, sometimes fixed in real-time by conversational AI. The catch? That seamless experience depends on enormous engineering, countless integrations, and cloud infrastructure — all justified by convenience. The “free” connected trip is paid for through inflated hotel rates, hidden fees, or a deluge of targeted advertising. OTAs recoup costs via commissions and supplier fees. In this model, convenience always carries a premium, however invisible it seems. And do we trust?
Google: The all-seeing aggregator
Google Travel has the best view of the chaos, reading user emails and tracking travel intentions. Yet it doesn’t commit to fix or service anything; it simply monetizes knowledge about these intentions. The service remains passive — Google knows your flight is delayed but won’t rebook it, knows a hotel is nearby but won’t hold it. The cost here isn’t obvious. Free tools are subsidized by personal data, quietly traded for convenience. The traveller pays, but in privacy rather than hard currency.
The rise and fade of TripIt
TripIt once tamed chaos by building simple, consolidated itineraries from emails. But after SAP’s purchase, innovation dried up. The decline proves that even the best solutions vanish if no one has a business reason to care. Again, travellers are left with less, not because the tech failed, but because someone decided it wasn’t worth the investment.
Enter AI: Promise and peril
Could AI finally bridge these divides? There’s real potential. AI-driven trip planners now automate itinerary assembly, spot missed connections, and nudge suppliers to rebook or adapt on the fly. Agentic technologies could one day power a true “digital twin” of every journey, acting on behalf of travellers across providers. But even the most advanced AI cannot override an industry gridlocked in competition over ownership — of data, of loyalty, of profits. AI might make the pipes smarter, but when every force is pulling for its own gain, the consumer never truly wins.
These initiatives are admirable – but not designed for the traveller
Don’t get me wrong. The engineering and ambition behind OneOrder, Connected Trip, and even Google’s trip aggregation are impressive. These initiatives push boundaries and force everyone to level up. But the reality is that the core conflict between airlines, OTAs, and tech platforms won’t disappear with better technology. The current crop of innovations may streamline some pain points, but as long as the industry remains a battleground, the end-user experience ranks as a distant second.
What would true progress look like?
Lasting change will require a neutral, truly interoperable orchestration layer – one living with and controlled by the traveller, not locked in by the supplier. Perhaps it’s a reinvention of TripIt, a future Apple Wallet pass, or a startup’s AI orchestrator. But at the very least, such systems would give travellers real choice and transparency about costs and data — something missing today.
Final boarding thought
So, who truly owns the order, and will I trust it? Airlines claim it through fulfillment, OTAs through orchestration, Google through intent, and the traveller is left patching together the pieces, usually paying for “order” through their wallet, their privacy, or both. Until industry players put the traveller at the center — not as a revenue stream, but as the true owner of their journey — the cost of connected travel will always add up where it hurts most.
