36%
51%mid-2024
General search as the most-used travel research resource
Is AI replacing search engines for travel research?
General search engines fell from 51% to 36% as the most-used resource for researching travel, between mid-2024 and late 2025.
15 points apart
The sharpest measure on this site of search losing its place as travel's front door. Read what it counts: the share naming general search as their most-used resource, not search traffic. Search did not shrink by fifteen points — it stopped being the first stop for fifteen points' worth of travellers. Phocuswright's later and better-specified study, The AI Surge (March 2026), describes the same movement without putting a number on it: AI platforms are "nearing parity with general search" for travel product research.
Source
- Reference period
- Geography
- United States
- Evidence type
- Survey
- Sample
- Phocuswright consumer research, stated in the preview of Travel Innovation and Technology Trends 2026
- For comparison
- mid-2024: 51%
- Last checked
Method
Phocuswright, Travel Innovation and Technology Trends 2026, report preview. The figure appears only in the preview; the full report sits behind Open Access, and neither sample size nor fielding dates are disclosed. The preview names its US consumer base once, for the adoption figure in the same paragraph, and does not restate it here. It is the only Phocuswright document that quantifies the decline — The AI Surge, from the same publisher, gives the direction but not the number.
Related indicators
69%
63%Gen ZMillennials using AI as often as social media for trip planning
63%
Gen Z using AI as often as social media for trip planning
25%
Travellers who received outdated or inaccurate AI travel information
24%
14%influencersAI assistants as a trusted travel planning source
40%
Travellers who discovered a destination via AI
29%