Sources
The 31 publishers this observatory tracks — 15 of them the direct source of a figure — grouped by what they are: statistical authorities, trade bodies, research houses, platforms.
Thirty-one publishers are tracked here, from national statistical authorities to the research arms of the companies that sell travel technology. Fifteen of them are the direct source of at least one of the 60 indicators: Amadeus, Anthropic, Booking.com, Deloitte, the European Travel Commission, Euromonitor, Eurostat, Google Cloud, McKinsey, the OECD, Phocuswright, Sabre, Sojern, Travelport and UN Tourism. The other sixteen are reference publishers we read and monitor without, so far, taking a number from them. They are grouped by what they are, because that is what tells you how to read a figure: a statistical office publishes a method and a revision policy; a vendor publishes research with a commercial interest attached.
We weigh them differently when deciding what belongs in the dataset. Official statistics anchor the market context, documented industry research carries the behavioural measures, and curated platforms are used only to locate primary documents — never as the sole authority for a number. Where a figure reached us through an intermediary, its page says so.
Official statistics
7OECD
2Intergovernmental body publishing the Tourism Trends and Policies series, harmonised inbound and domestic tourism statistics, and policy papers on AI adoption in tourism.
Eurostat
2The EU statistical authority. Source of the monthly accommodation series (tour_occ_nim) and of the experimental platform-economy statistics covering Airbnb, Booking, Expedia and TripAdvisor (tour_ce_omr).
UN Tourism
3The United Nations agency for tourism. Custodian of the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics and publisher of guidance on responsible AI adoption across the sector.
ISTAT
Italy's national statistical institute. Monthly arrivals and nights by region and province, and the reference series behind Italian destination reporting.
Banca d'Italia
Italy's central bank runs the international tourism survey at border crossings, the authoritative series for inbound and outbound travel spending.
World Economic Forum
Publisher of the Future of Jobs, Global Risks and Travel & Tourism Development series, with executive surveys on AI-driven workforce change.
Italia.it / ENIT
Italy's national tourism agency and official destination portal. The reference model for sourcing discipline: every claim attributed, dated and traceable to an institutional source.
Trade association
3IATA
The airline trade association. Monthly air passenger and cargo market analysis, the Global Passenger Survey, and industry financial outlooks.
WTTC
Industry body producing the Economic Impact Research satellite-account estimates and technology foresight reports, several co-authored with Microsoft.
European Travel Commission
1The association of European national tourism organisations. Runs the recurring survey of NTO digital and AI maturity and the quarterly European Tourism Trends & Prospects.
Industry research
9Phocuswright
4The reference research house for travel distribution. Consumer travel trackers and the Travel Forward and State of Distribution series.
Skift Research
Research arm of the travel trade publication Skift. Executive surveys on AI adoption, several produced jointly with McKinsey.
McKinsey & Company
3Management consultancy publishing travel practice research on generative and agentic AI, often with Skift Research.
Deloitte
1Runs the annual US Summer Travel Survey, one of the few repeated instruments that measures AI-assisted trip planning year over year on a consistent question wording.
Euromonitor International
2Market research firm. The Voice of the Consumer: Travel Survey is fielded annually across tens of thousands of respondents.
Tourism Economics (Oxford Economics)
Forecasting house producing inbound and outbound travel projections used by national tourism boards.
OAG
Air travel data provider. Schedules, capacity and connectivity data, plus foresight analysis on AI in distribution.
The Data Appeal Company
Location-intelligence company, part of Almawave, founded by Mirko Lalli. Sentiment, demand and flow data for destinations; official research partner of the European Travel Commission together with Mabrian.
Mabrian
Travel intelligence platform measuring demand, connectivity and perception indexes for destinations. Official research partner of the European Travel Commission.
Platform data
10Amadeus
4Global distribution system and travel technology provider. Annual Travel Trends report and traveller surveys, plus white papers on agentic AI for airlines.
Sabre
3Travel technology provider. Research on conversational commerce, content fragmentation across agencies, and practical agentic AI deployment.
Booking.com
15Online travel agency. Publishes the Global AI Sentiment Report and the European Accommodation Barometer, both with disclosed sample sizes and field periods.
Expedia Group
Online travel group. Traveler Value Index and the Path to Purchase studies on how travellers research and book.
Sojern
16Travel marketing platform. Runs paired surveys of travellers and destination marketing organisations, which makes the adoption gap between the two directly measurable.
Travelport
2Travel retailing platform. The annual State of Modern Retailing report covers consumer trust in AI and in travel pricing.
Mastercard Economics Institute
Economics unit analysing anonymised, aggregated transaction data. Useful because it measures spend rather than stated intent.
Anthropic
1AI developer. The Economic Index publishes privacy-preserving aggregate statistics on how Claude is actually used, by task and by geography — rare first-party telemetry on AI usage.
Google
1Operator of Search, AI Overviews and Gemini. Publishes the ATLAS study on AI tool usage and periodic travel-search research.
RankWit
AI search visibility platform for travel. Runs travel prompts daily across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and AI Overviews, and audits which AI crawlers a site actually admits. Publisher of this observatory.
Curated intelligence
2TourismIntel
Curated intelligence platform founded by Mirko Lalli, aggregating industry reports and official tourism statistics (OECD, Eurostat, UN Tourism, ISTAT, Banca d'Italia) with per-report editorial briefs and a public MCP server. Used here to locate primary documents, which we then cite directly.
Officina Turistica
Italian tourism industry publication. Mirko Lalli's column covers AI adoption by hotels and destination marketing organisations, including European Travel Commission findings on national tourism organisations.
