Fullstory surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. consumers to understand how rising costs, digital friction, and changing expectations are reshaping the travel experience. Here’s what the data tells us, and what it means for travel and hospitality brands navigating a more demanding market.
Travel is still happening. The math just looks different.
Demand hasn’t collapsed. Seventy percent of respondents traveled in the past year or plan to travel this year. But consumers are making sharper tradeoffs: 33% are cutting budgets or shortening trips, 31% are booking earlier to lock in prices, and 20% are swapping flights for road trips or other lower-cost alternatives. Only 13% say they’re postponing travel altogether.
Baby Boomers (25%) and Gen X (18%) are the least likely to adjust plans due to rising costs. Millennials and Gen Z are more reactive: just 14% of Millennials and 8% of Gen Z report making no changes to their travel behavior.
What this signals for brands: the market isn’t shrinking, but it is bifurcating. Value-seeking consumers are still showing up—they just need more from the experience to justify the spend.
Search and OTAs still own early-stage planning. AI is gaining ground.
When consumers start planning a trip, they turn to search engines (53%), online travel agencies like Expedia or Kayak (51%), and direct airline or hotel websites (44%). These channels aren’t going anywhere. But generative AI is starting to enter the mix. Fifteen percent of respondents say they use tools like ChatGPT or Claude to begin the planning process—including 19% of Gen X and 17% of Millennials. That’s not a dominant share yet, but it’s a meaningful signal about where discovery is heading.
The takeaway here is that brands need to be findable through traditional channels while preparing for a world where AI-mediated recommendations increasingly shape where people consider going.
The three things that actually drive booking decisions
When asked what matters most in a travel experience, consumers ranked their priorities clearly:
Price and overall value—77%
Quality of customer service—51%
Convenience of booking—48%
Loyalty rewards and digital tools ranked lower. Value, service, and ease are the
fundamentals—and they’re being evaluated at every step, not just at checkout.
Hidden fees are the biggest trust-breaker in travel
Sixty-one percent of respondents cited hidden or unexpected fees as their top frustration when booking travel. That’s not a design problem or a UX problem in isolation—it’s a trust problem with downstream consequences.
Nearly 70% of respondents said they would be likely to switch travel brands after a single negative experience. That number should give any travel brand pause. Loyalty in this category is fragile, and friction doesn’t just lose a transaction—it loses the customer. Booking abandonment tells a similar story. Thirty-one percent of consumers say they abandon bookings when final pricing changes too late in the process. Another 24% leave to compare options and don’t return. These aren’t passive drop-offs—they’re active rejections of an experience that felt untrustworthy or too difficult to complete. Understanding why people leave, and at which step, is where behavioral data becomes operational. When brands can see exactly where users hit unexpected fees, slow down, or exit without completing a purchase, they can start fixing the right things. That’s the difference between assuming the checkout flow is fine and knowing it isn’t.
Why people still book through OTAs—and what it would take to change that
When asked what would make them more likely to book directly with an airline or hotel, consumers gave a clear hierarchy:
Lower or price-matched rates—44%
Faster and simpler booking experience—19%
Better loyalty rewards—19%
Price is the primary lever, but it’s not the only one. A fifth of consumers would shift their behavior for a meaningfully better booking experience alone—without a price incentive.
That’s a real opportunity for brands willing to invest in the quality of their direct channel.
Personalization works—but only when it’s useful, not decorative
Consumers are open to personalization, but they’re selective about what kind. The top preference (by a wide margin) is personalized pricing, discounts, or bundled offers (55%). Destination recommendations came in at 41%, and content-based suggestions trailed at 26%.
The pattern is consistent: travelers want personalization that reduces friction or saves them money, not personalization that just makes the experience feel curated. Knowing that a guest prefers a king bed is useful. Serving them an email about “dreamy destinations” when they’re mid-booking is not.
Digital tools that support the actual journey also ranked highly: mobile boarding passes and check-in (63%), real-time alerts and notifications (56%), and centralized itinerary management (49%). These aren’t flashy features—they’re operational ones. They reduce uncertainty, keep the traveler informed, and minimize the moments where something going wrong becomes a reason to never book again.
What this means for travel and hospitality teams
The survey points to a consistent underlying theme: consumer tolerance for friction,
surprise costs, and impersonal experiences are low—and the consequences of getting it wrong are higher than brands may realize.
A few implications worth sitting with:
Transparency is a competitive advantage. Sixty-one percent of consumers naming hidden fees as their top frustration isn’t just a complaint—it’s an opening for brands that price and communicate clearly.
The booking experience is a retention tool. Nineteen percent of consumers would book direct for a better experience alone. The brands investing in faster, cleaner booking flows aren’t just reducing abandonment—they’re recapturing margin they’re currently handing to OTAs.
Personalization needs to earn its place. Value-based personalization—pricing, bundling, recognizing loyalty—resonates. Personalization as atmosphere doesn’t. That’s where to focus.
Behavioral data closes the gap between assumption and reality. When a team debates whether hidden fees are really the problem, or whether users are abandoning because of confusion on the confirmation step, behavioral data settles the question. Brands that can see the full picture of how users move through their digital experiences are better positioned to act on what consumers are actually saying, not just survey by survey, but continuously.
The gap between what travelers expect and what they experience is where revenue goes. See how leading travel brands close it.
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The Fullstory 2026 Travel & Hospitality Survey was conducted in May 2026 by a third-party research provider. The study surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. consumers.
