For millions of Americans, travelling for the holidays is an annual ritual. Thanksgiving dinner with the family, Christmas at home, or a New Year's reunion with relatives. Unlike planning a summer vacation, where choosing a destination and exploring different experiences can be part of the enjoyment, travelling home is often a practical necessity. The destination is already decided, the dates are dictated by family commitments, and finding affordable flights during one of the busiest travel periods of the year can be stressful.
This makes travelling for the holidays an interesting test case for agentic commerce. When you already know where you need to go, when you need to arrive and how much you're prepared to spend, the prospect of delegating the booking process to AI becomes particularly appealing. Rather than spending hours comparing fares and monitoring availability, travelers could authorize an AI agent to find and purchase an option that meets their requirements.
According to our new US consumer research, 48% of respondents rank unexpected fees as their main reason for abandoning a travel purchase. While this sensitivity to hidden costs may come as little surprise, another finding presents an apparent contradiction. Despite autonomous AI purchasing still being in its infancy, 40% of travelers said they would be comfortable allowing AI to make purchases without approving each transaction. If travelers are so concerned about unexpected costs when booking travel, why are so many open to allowing AI to spend on their behalf?
The answer may lie in the distinction between making a purchasing decision and carrying it out. Travelling home for the holidays offers an interesting example of how consumers might be willing to delegate the latter while retaining control over the former.
When the destination is already decided
There's a significant difference between trusting AI to find the best flight and trusting it to pay for one. While 71% of respondents said they'd be comfortable allowing AI to search for flights, hotels and other options, this drops to 52% when asked if they'd be happy for AI to book their travel after approval and to 40% when asked about purchases made without their approval. These findings suggest that while travelers are open to AI taking a more active role in their bookings, their comfort declines as it assumes greater responsibility for completing purchases.
Travel companies are already responding to this opportunity by developing AI agents designed specifically for their industry. Expedia Group, for example, has introduced AI-powered tools across its platforms, including a Hotels.com agent that helps customers discover and compare accommodation using conversational searches and real-time pricing information. These vertical-specific agents can draw on travel inventory, availability and booking information to help customers navigate the choices involved in planning a journey. As these capabilities develop, the next opportunity is to move beyond helping travelers find suitable options towards executing purchases on their behalf, within the conditions they've established.
The characteristics of travelling for the holidays help explain why this next step could appeal to some consumers. Someone travelling to see family in Chicago for Thanksgiving doesn't need AI to suggest alternative destinations or build an itinerary of things to do. They need to arrive before Thursday afternoon, ideally without spending more than a predetermined amount or taking several connecting flights.
The challenge is finding a suitable option within those constraints, often during periods of concentrated demand when fares and availability can change quickly. Where the destination, dates and budget are largely established, an AI agent could be instructed to identify suitable options and complete the booking when the consumer's conditions are met.
Delegating the purchase without surrendering control
The question for travelers, then, is how much control they want to retain when AI takes on greater responsibility for their purchases. Our research found that 77% of respondents consider the ability to set a maximum spending amount important before allowing AI to make purchases on their behalf, while 44% would be comfortable allowing AI to purchase automatically within a budget they've set. The key distinction isn't between human and AI purchasing, but between who executes a transaction and who sets its terms.
Consider a traveler planning to fly home for Thanksgiving. They've instructed an AI agent to find a direct flight arriving before Wednesday evening, with a maximum budget of $400, including baggage. Rather than repeatedly checking fares themselves, they authorize the assistant to make the purchase as soon as a suitable option becomes available. When a flight meeting those conditions appears for $375, the AI books it automatically, without requesting further approval. The traveler hasn't approved the individual transaction, but they've already established the conditions under which it can take place.
This distinction is particularly relevant for time-sensitive travel bookings. Where prices fluctuate and availability is limited, the ability to act quickly when a suitable option becomes available could be valuable.
Business travel presents a similar scenario. Someone attending a conference or visiting a client typically knows their destination and travel dates before beginning their search. They may also have to comply with company travel policies, approved suppliers and spending limits, all of which could help define the parameters within which an AI agent is authorized to make a booking. In both cases, the consumer or business retains control over the conditions of the purchase while delegating its execution.
The research doesn't establish that consumers are more willing to delegate holiday travel bookings than other types of purchases. But the combination of predetermined requirements, time pressure and cost sensitivity makes these journeys a useful illustration of why agentic commerce could become appealing.
The challenge of trust
Travelers may be able to set the rules for what AI can purchase, but they would still need to trust the systems responsible for carrying out those instructions. And that trust cannot be taken for granted. When asked which providers they would trust to offer an AI assistant capable of making travel purchases, 39% of respondents selected none of the options listed. While this doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of trust in agents itself, it raises questions about what consumers need to feel confident in the organizations offering these services. Indeed, 74% of respondents consider it important to verify that an AI agent is genuinely authorized to make purchases on their behalf.
For travelers to benefit from autonomous purchasing without sacrificing control, the safeguards they expect must extend beyond the instructions they give their AI agents. Travel merchants need a reliable way to verify that an agent initiating a transaction is genuinely authorized to act on the customer's behalf.
Where a customer would traditionally confirm a booking themselves, merchants may increasingly encounter AI agents acting on instructions they cannot directly observe. This places new demands on payment infrastructure, which must support the verification of agent identity and consumer authorization, rather than simply processing transactions.
The challenge becomes more complex when agents operate across multiple travel providers, each with different booking conditions, payment requirements and cancellation policies. A consumer may have authorized a journey within a particular budget, but merchants still need confidence that the individual transactions being initiated fall within the permissions granted.
Solutions such as Nuvei's Know Your Agent are designed to help merchants address this challenge, supporting AI-initiated purchases without removing the safeguards consumers expect.
What travelling for the holidays tells us about what comes next
Travelling home for Thanksgiving or Christmas offers a glimpse of why agentic commerce could find some of its earliest practical applications in journeys where the destination, timing and budget are already established. The emergence of travel-specific AI agents shows how businesses are beginning to build experiences around these opportunities, even as autonomous purchasing remains at an earlier stage of development.
More broadly, it suggests that the future of agentic commerce may be shaped as much by the purchases consumers would rather delegate as by those they enjoy making. The opportunity extends beyond helping people discover what they want to buy, towards removing the time and effort involved in purchases where the desired outcome is already known.
For travel merchants, the challenge will be to support not just AI-initiated transactions, but the verifiable consumer authorization behind them. As agents take on greater responsibility for completing purchases, payment infrastructure will need to establish trust between consumers, agents and the businesses accepting their transactions.
The future of travel booking may involve fewer individual approvals, but that doesn't have to mean less consumer control. And if agentic commerce can make the annual scramble to get home for the holidays a little easier, it may offer an early indication of how autonomous purchasing could change commerce more widely.
