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Travel demand has come back, but something else has come with it... friction.
Not minor, surface-level friction but the kind that builds across a journey. For example, a price that needs interpreting, reassurance that arrives a step too late, or a decision that multiplies into five more decisions. These examples can add up and lead a motivated customer to give up and head elsewhere. Normally, a third-party or OTA.
That's the landscape travel and hospitality brands are operating in right now. And it's what our new report, Emerging Challenges in Travel 2026, sets out to map.
What the research tells us
The starting point was YouGov's Booking Burnout study, which found that 71% of British holiday bookers describe at least one part of the booking process as stressful. That's not a niche problem; the majority of your customers are already arriving under strain, before they've even seen your pricing.
What makes that number commercially significant is what happens next. When effort rises and confidence drops, customers default to the path of least resistance, which is usually an OTA. The booking gets made and the margin doesn't land with you.
What senior leaders told us
To understand how this plays out inside travel organisations, 383 Group spent the past year in conversation with senior digital, product, marketing and commercial leaders across travel and hospitality organisations. The discussions were structured, honest conversations about where journeys break down, where teams feel stuck and where experience and revenue come into conflict.
Along the way, the same themes kept surfacing, regardless of brand size or market segment.
Booking journeys are carrying too much responsibility. They're expected to convert, reassure, explain complexity, personalise choices and stand in for human interaction, all at once. That's an enormous amount of pressure to place on a digital experience, and most journeys weren't designed to hold it.
Internal complexity is slowing progress. More than half of the leaders we spoke to identified legacy or third-party booking technology as a structural constraint. When change feels expensive and risky, teams become cautious, improvements stall and journeys stop evolving even as expectations keep rising.
Decision fatigue is replacing confidence.
Customers aren't abandoning journeys because of one catastrophic failure; they're leaving because small moments of effort accumulate:
- Unclear trade-offs
- Add-ons introduced at the wrong moment
- Reassurance that appears after the doubt has already set in.
Analytics show where people leave. However, they rarely show where confidence first started to drain.
Direct relationships are harder to protect. Brands want the data, the margin and the loyalty that comes from booking direct. Customers want the quickest, simplest path to done. Most leaders we spoke to described this as an ongoing trade-off rather than a solved problem.
Where the opportunity sits and AI
Our report also looks at where brands are making progress, and the pattern is consistent. The strongest outcomes came from creating clarity.
Modest changes: reordering information, introducing reassurance earlier, reducing the number of decisions at high-stakes moments. These clarity improvements delivered measurable lifts in conversion and reductions in service demand.
In one case, an AI-powered natural language search tool cut failed search results from 15% of queries to 0.2%. And, this was simply by better matching how customers describe what they want.
The lesson above isn't that AI is the answer. It's that aligning any AI tool or AI intervention to real customer behaviour, rather than deploying it for its own sake, is what customers value and where it can support commercial growth.
Ready to see where friction is costing you?
The challenges in this report are visible in live booking journeys, in contact centre volumes and in conversion data that shows drop-off without explaining the cause.
Understanding where friction is building and what it is costing you is the place to start. A full redesign is rarely the answer; seeing the journey through the lens of customer effort rather than internal process tends to get you further, faster.
That is what Friction Mapping® was developed to do. It identifies points of emotional load, structural breakdown and commercial leakage across the end-to-end journey, connecting qualitative insight, behavioural data and business impact into a shared view that teams can act on together.
If that sounds like the clarity your team needs, the report is a good place to begin.
Download Emerging Challenges in Travel 2026
If the findings connect with what you are already seeing in your data, we would be glad to talk through what Friction Mapping® could look like for your organisation.
Missed our recent webinar on booking burnout? Watch the replay here
FAQ
Q: Who conducted the research behind the report?
A: The research was led by Sukhi Dehal and Andrew Machin from 383 Group's leadership team, working alongside senior researchers, customer consultants and strategists. The interviews were carried out over the past year with 20+ senior leaders across travel and hospitality, covering digital, product, marketing and commercial roles.
Q: What did the interview process involve?
A: Each conversation focused on present-day pressures rather than future ambitions. Leaders were candid about where journeys break down, where teams feel stuck and where experience and commercial performance come into conflict. Those patterns, viewed across all the interviews, are what shaped the findings in the report.
Q: What is the YouGov research referenced throughout?
A: YouGov publishes an annual study into what stresses British travellers during the booking process. Their 2025 Booking Burnout report was the starting point for our own research, giving us a clear consumer picture to test against what senior leaders were experiencing on the other side. You can access the YouGov report directly here: YouGov Booking Burnout 2025
Q: How do I get a copy of the report?
A: The report is available to download via the link on this page. You will be asked to share a few details before accessing it.
Q: Who is this report for?
A: It is written for senior leaders in travel and hospitality who are responsible for growth, digital performance and customer experience. If you sense friction in your booking journeys but lack clarity on where it sits, what it costs or how to prioritise fixing it, this report was written with you in mind.
Q: Can I speak to someone about the findings?
A: Yes. If the report raises questions specific to your organisation, Sukhi and the team are happy to talk it through. Get in touch
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