I predicted travel's coordination standards would emerge painfully through market failures by 2027-2030. I was wrong. Between October 2025 and February 2026, the agentic coordination stack arrived through unprecedented Big Tech coalition-building. MCP, A2A, UCP and ERC-8004 are real. The protocols exist. But liability in multi-agent failures, security at machine speed, distributed settlement and the unanswered cost question remain unsolved. The stack is here. The hardest work

Why Telemetry Matters as You Build Reasoning Workflows As we progress through 2026, travel companies will shift from AI pilots to scaled agents. Let's make sure we don't create a critical gap where we can see what our AI decided, but rarely why. Unlike deterministic software, reasoning models can’t be "rewound" to debug failures. This article explores a three-tier roadmap for building the semantic telemetry required to move into responsible, production-ready travel orchestrat

Is your star engineer a force multiplier or a gravitational centre everything orbits around? When brilliance becomes sovereignty, the stakes are measurable: audit exceptions, recruitment failure, competitive disadvantage as AI scales around you. This playbook identifies the shift early, prepares for immediate departure or sabotage and reclaims organisational resilience without losing genuine talent willing to partner.

A fictional story showing the future of travel planning to booking. Follow Clara as her agent secures a perfect trip in 90 seconds. The secret: Algorithmic Trust, where infrastructure moves from simply being AI-accessible to being AI-verifiable. The efficiency of the future demands Verifiable Operational Excellence - your integrity is your new competitive moat.

True AI agent transformation is blocked by market forces. Incumbents prioritise Translation (AI wrappers) over Transformation (verified data), rationally protecting profitable business models. The likely outcome is incremental adaptation, not revolution. Strategic survival depends on watching the right market signals.

Hotels are deploying MCP servers. OTAs are partnering with OpenAI. Everyone's racing to be AI-ready - but they're building engines for roads that don't exist yet. AI agents don't browse hotel lists; they query with precise requirements. This creates a fundamental discovery problem: how do agents find and verify millions of fragmented hotel endpoints? The answer lies in coordination infrastructure. Layer 3 in the distribution stack. Who builds it and on what terms?

The $1.2T travel ecosystem is transforming. AI agents invert data ownership (platform-accumulated → traveller-controlled) and shift traffic from burst searches to continuous, conversational APIs. The true competitive moat is not efficiency, but transaction integrity: making distributed coordination reliable when bookings fail at 2am. Dive into the shift, from precision queries to adaptive strategy.

The loyalty era shifts from Platform Intelligence to Agent Partnership, where AI advocates negotiate on travellers' behalf. The competitive advantage? Verifiable operational excellence - accurate inventory, transparent pricing, reliable APIs. Marketing narratives still matter, but agents verify the substance behind them. The 2025-2027 window is when early movers establish dominance.

In a world of commoditised tech, true competitive advantage in travel isn't going to be about building the "best" AI solutions. This guide reveals how smart leaders are shifting focus from tech parity to flawless execution and unique assets, creating a strategic moat competitors can't replicate.

The cracks are already showing. We're using 20th-century management frameworks to coordinate 21st-century AI capabilities. It's like using a sundial to schedule Zoom calls. AI doesn't make us less agile; it makes the practices we used to achieve agility redundant. The change is in letting go of the methods we used to express our values and finding new ones, so we can finally focus on being agile without the overhead of doing Agile.

"Are we there yet?" has always been the fundamental question of business. What's new is that AI is changing the entire journey and potentially the destination. This article challenges the view of AI as a magic wand for acceleration and reveals how leaders can build the capabilities to use AI as a powerful compass, not just a faster engine, to find new value in uncharted territory.

Protect your organisation from internal bad actors who exploit change or coordinate behind scenes to advance personal agendas. This analysis reveals two primary manipulation scenarios, key warning signs like information control and alliance building, plus practical prevention strategies including diversifying information sources and strengthening decision-making processes.

Using musical collaboration as a lens, explore the unresolved challenges of integrating AI agents as true team members. From developing shared language to preserving team culture, organisations must build operating systems that enable human-AI collaboration.

AI represents a powerful momentum point that can transform organisations willing to challenge accepted constraints. This final instalment in our Momentum Series explores how to identify AI-driven opportunities, overcome implementation blockers and scale capabilities throughout organisations. Discover how successful companies don't just implement AI, they reimagine what's possible when constraints are recognised as flexible rather than fixed.

Creating isolated pockets of momentum isn't enough. True transformation happens when momentum becomes woven into an organisation's DNA. Discover the three critical dimensions for scaling momentum: empowering teams to identify opportunities, designing organisational architecture that allows momentum to flow across boundaries and establishing rhythms that sustain momentum through changing conditions. Move from "doing momentum work" to "being a momentum-driven organisation"

Organisations face practical blockers preventing momentum. Learn to identify and overcome common obstacles through cross functional focus and using a simple framework.

Business momentum requires initial energy but builds force as it progresses. "Momentum points" emerge when teams recognise that long-accepted constraints are actually flexible. This perspective shift, more than technology itself, creates transformative acceleration. By questioning assumptions, identifying friction points and connecting enablers to outcomes, organisations can discover new possibilities for growth.

Learn 10 key practices to elevate your IT role at the leadership table and drive business success

Gen Z brings innovation potential, but rigid organisational structures suppress the transformative capabilities companies claim to want.

A CIO's and IT Leader's practical playbook for building successful IT partnerships that deliver lasting business impact