Permission to Exist: What Travel Really Needs to Ask Itself in 2030

Reflections on relevance, agency, and the future of an industry in transition.

The $500 billion+ online travel booking market was built on a simple premise: Travelers want to browse, compare, and manually coordinate their trips. That premise is becoming obsolete.

When Expedia and Booking.com launched as integrated apps inside ChatGPT this month, they acknowledged what the data has already started showing: Travelers are in the early phases of shifting from browsing to delegating. They're not saying "show me options"—they're demanding "handle this for me." The entire UX layer that OTAs spent decades perfecting becomes irrelevant when the user never sees it.

This structural change raises a question I've been wrestling with, one that comes from an unexpected place. As a father of three, I review school permission slips weekly for field trips, special activities, and events. Each slip grants access to something my kids otherwise couldn't do. Travel compan