Skyscanner's Chief AI Officer: 61% of "Explore with AI" Users Go On to View Flights

Metasearch has been the part of the funnel most exposed to AI assistants answering travel questions before a traveler ever reaches a comparison site. Skyscanner's answer, laid out by chief AI officer Piero Sierra in an interview with PhocusWire, is to move from returning options to returning answers — and eventually to acting on the traveler's behalf. He also put a number on it.

An early conversion figure

Skyscanner began beta testing Explore with AI earlier this summer, alongside an AI-powered road trip planner. The feature lets travelers describe a trip in natural language rather than starting from a destination and dates.

"Travelers can describe the kind of trip they want in their own words, rather than starting with a destination and dates, and receive relevant options," Sierra said. "We then test whether those ideas genuinely help; around 61% of users went on to view flight options."

That 61% figure is the useful part of the disclosure. It measures whether conversational discovery actually feeds the commercial funnel rather than sitting beside it — the question every metasearch and OTA product team is currently trying to answer internally.

Sierra also said around half of travelers arrive at Skyscanner undecided about where or when to go, which is the audience Explore with AI is aimed at.

Three investment priorities, no number

Asked how Skyscanner's AI spend compares with Trivago — which recently said it increased investment in internal AI tools more than fivefold in the first seven months of 2026 — Sierra declined to give a figure.

He described three priorities instead: building AI products that move travelers "from searching to getting trusted answers"; using AI across engineering and the wider company to improve productivity; and partnering with AI platforms so that Skyscanner's live travel data powers third-party travel answers.

That third priority is the one with distribution consequences. Feeding live pricing and availability into external AI assistants is a bet that being the data layer behind someone else's answer is worth more than defending the destination site.

Search, answers, actions

"AI is evolving from search, to answers, to actions," Sierra said. "Travelers no longer just want technology to show them options; they want help understanding those options and deciding what is right for them. Over time, AI will also take action on their behalf when prompted. But travel is high stakes, so that progression must be grounded in trusted, real-time data and keep travelers in control, especially when they book."

On the supply side, Sierra tied the same logic to Skyscanner's late-2025 acquisition of Longtail, which he said "helps turn Skyscanner's demand intelligence into action, enabling airlines to use those insights to set prices more effectively as traveler behavior changes over time."

For destination marketing organisations, he framed agentic AI as a way to convert inspiration into bookings: Explore with AI mixes Skyscanner's travel insights and live prices with paid destination content, and "with permission, AI can act on that intent by applying preferences and helping complete a booking."

Also on the roadmap

Skyscanner is the official travel and technology sponsor of the Solheim Cup in the Netherlands in the second week of September, and is working with SkyNRG to support 20 tons of sustainable aviation fuel through a book-and-claim model covering international player travel.

Sierra speaks at Phocuswright's Travel Marketing AI Summit in London on 8 September.