While global travel bookings are rebounding, the dominance of the major online travel agencies (OTAs) remains a primary competitive pressure for travel ecommerce brands. The leading seven OTAs dominate, accounting for 46% of online travel spending last year. 

Today, accommodations providers must pivot to expanding services and seamless digital experiences to thrive. Success hinges on seamless booking, technology-driven journeys, and holistic servicing, making the choice of a travel ecommerce platform a strategic decision, not just an IT necessity. 

This guide shares the state of the ecommerce travel industry, with a breakdown on what modern travelers search for—and strategies you can use to position your brand to meet—or exceed—those expectations. 

The travel ecommerce industry in 2026

The global online travel market is booming. Per one report, the industry generated over $650 billion in 2024—a figure that’s tipped to exceed the $1 trillion mark by 2030. Apps claim a significant share of revenue, which has risen by over $1 billion since 2017.

Yet the travel industry stands at a critical inflection point: Accommodation providers must pivot from fragmented booking systems to holistic digital experiences that compete directly with OTA dominance.

Here’s an overview of the travel ecommerce trends dominating in 2026:

• The OTA stranglehold: Almost half of online travel spending takes place through an OTA like Expedia, Booking.com, Trip.com, and Airbnb. These OTAs collectively claimed $382.5 billion last year. 
• Mobile-first expectations: Travelers want to perform actions like booking and checking in from their smartphones. A recent study found the vast majority use smartphones to collect information regarding their destination, while almost half are comfortable making payment from their devices.
• The generational imperative: Millennials and Gen Z will dominate travel by 2030. Having grown up with the internet, these digital natives bring significantly higher expectations for engagement. Almost half live with their parents yet 41% earn six figures annually, which presents opportunities for digital-first travel brands to claim high-ticket direct bookings. 

The digital traveler’s new demands: Experience over everything

Modern travelers bring fundamentally different expectations that render traditional booking systems obsolete. Their needs demand seamless, personalized journeys from discovery to departure.

The experience economy

It’s not just beach vacations driving travelers to book a trip. Almost 90% of providers report increased demand for travel that takes travelers off the beaten track with experiences they don’t get every day—whether that’s backpacking, “living like a local” activities, or visiting a wonder of the world. 

Younger generations who dominate the travel industry are driving this trend for an experience economy. Gen Z, in particular, is the wealthiest generation in history. McKinsey reports they’re less likely to define their achievements on life-stage milestones like having children or getting married. They care more about accomplishments related to financial security, and are more likely to spend on experiences that enrich their day-to-day lives.

Social discovery 

Social media is a key discovery touchpoint. It’s the preferred channel used for travel inspiration—beating word-of-mouth recommendations, guidebooks, and film and TV. Some 39% of consumers use social media apps like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest to plan their next trip.

Unsurprisingly, influencer content is the most influential. It beats organic content and paid campaigns as the leading format to impact travel decisions. Boutique agency Nellie Travel, for example, shares testimonials from happy clients on their Instagram page to entice followers to book similar vacations of their own:

Mobile-first booking expectations and flexible payment demands

The future of travel is online. But customers don’t just jump on their computers to book flights—some 71% of North America’s lodging and accommodations sales are projected to be online by 2029.

We already see OTAs leaning into this trend. Booking Holdings, for example, owns the most-visited travel and tourism website in the world: Booking.com. More than half of its $21.36 billion revenue is generated through a smartphone.

This clear demand for convenience extends to payment methods. Some 19% of travelers use digital wallets to pay for personal travel; 26% use them for business. A growing number—almost one in five—plan to use buy now, pay later (BNPL) services to book flights, hotels, and cruises for their summer vacations. 

How to drive direct travel bookings and reduce OTA dependency

Platform positioning for holistic vacation servicing

Unified commerce is the infrastructure that allows travel brands to focus on guest experience and innovation, rather than maintaining complex, fragmented tech stacks. Leading brands are leveraging these travel platforms to create compelling digital experiences that reduce OTA dependence while building lasting customer relationships.

To work effectively, the platform must be extensible to support core commerce requirements (like merchandise sales) but also integrate specialized third-party services, such as:

• Booking engines
• Car rentals
• Excursions
• Travel insurance providers 

💡Tip: Shopify’s unified data model acts as a centralized commerce operating system. It funnels order, customer, and inventory data back to this repository without the need for patchy middleware or custom integrations. It’s why Shopify delivers 33% better total cost of ownership (TCO) and 23% better platform costs on average. 

Data-driven travel loyalty programs 

To draw customers away from OTAs and increase direct booking rates, you’ll need a robust loyalty program—one that offers “too good to miss” incentives OTAs can’t deliver. 

This requires a two-pronged approach:

• Customer analytics: Learn about individuals—like what they enjoy, the reason for their trip, and their travel preferences—for tailored suggestions. Data from sources such as your customer relationship management platform (CRM), booking engine, and sales teams should flow into a customer data platform (CDP) for a single customer review. Shopify users have a CDP by default, alongside native segmentation tools to divide customers into groups based on traits they share.
• Personalized rewards: Use what you’ve learned about customers to combine personalized outreach with tailored rewards. For a segment of frequent travelers, you might offer priority check-in on their next trip. For budget-conscious bookers, you might offer exclusive discounts on off-peak routes. 

Advanced personalization and targeted upselling capabilities

It’s becoming increasingly expensive to acquire customers across all industries. Travel brands, in particular, are feeling the effects. Adobe reports that the cost to acquire a new customer in this industry surged over 35% between 2022 and 2025. 

Customer data is the most valuable asset any travel ecommerce brand owns. Instead of mass market campaigns that drain budgets, you can use what you’ve learned about each individual traveler to optimize costs with hypertargeted marketing based on preferences and history.

For example, instead of sending a generic “10% off flights” promotion to your entire list, use past booking data to identify customers who regularly book weekend city breaks. Those travelers receive a personalized email featuring destinations they’ve browsed before, plus a limited-time hotel and flight bundle for the cities they prefer. 

💡Tip: Shop Campaigns gives you the freedom to acquire new customers at a controlled cost. Set your target cost and desired return on ad spend, then promote merchandise to customers in the Shop app. You’ll only pay when the customer converts.

Offer international payment processing and flexible payment options

Travel isn’t cheap. Customers don’t always have the funds to pay for their experiences up front—that doesn’t stop them from booking. Instead, they rely on BNPL options like Klarna and Affirm to fund their travel. 

It’s not just overseas travel that’s being paid in installments. Domestic events like the Coachella music festival are often paid this way. Billboard reported around 60% of general admission ticket buyers opted for a payment plan. 

Flexible payments are soaring because they appeal to budget-conscious travelers who can tick off their bucket list and pay for it later. These options also minimize cart abandonment—according to Baymard, 39% of carts are abandoned because extra costs were too high. Ten percent left because the site didn’t support their preferred payment method.

The high cost of disjointed systems: Operational complexity crushing profitability

Travel brands are limited by complex, outdated systems that lead to disjointed online booking experiences. This operational complexity drives up costs—instead of focusing on building world-class experiences, you’re fighting with patchy middleware and wasting resources on maintenance. 

The core challenge is unifying transactions across the full stay into one cohesive payment (the “unified folio”) and create the unified experiences necessary to compete for direct bookings.

Success requires the following core platforms to speak seamlessly to one another:

• Central reservation system (CRS)
• Booking engines
• Channel managers
• Property management systems (PMS) 
• Inventory management systems (for merchandise)

The ultimate goal is to reduce total cost of ownership across channels, including online booking and in-person services, while maximizing return on investment (ROI). Revenue leakage from poor customer experience and booking abandonment can block sales. That, combined with rising platform costs, can drain profits. 

Building scalable travel ecommerce architecture for enterprise growth

Enterprise travel brands require commerce platforms that handle complex inventory, international transactions, and peak booking periods while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to changing market demands.

Real-time inventory synchronization across multiple channels

Many travel brands sell merchandise to supplement direct bookings. Apparel, destination guides, luggage accessories, or souvenirs are low-ticket items in comparison to bookings, but they increase customer lifetime value (CLV). They also help position your brand as a “one-stop shop” for everything travel-related.

To do this seamlessly, you’ll need a unified commerce platform that supports real-time inventory synchronization across multiple channels. Shopify’s native inventory management system (IMS), for example, integrates with the following platforms so quantities and product data update in real time:

• Point-of-sale (POS) software 
• Social commerce platforms
• Ecommerce marketplaces

💡Tip: You don’t need to invest into product development, source suppliers, and manage inventory to capitalize on merchandise sales. Shopify Collective lets you partner with other brands who handle this for you. 

Bala, for example, seamlessly syncs partner products to their ecommerce website—a move that helped expand offerings and create a smooth shopping experience. Inventory data is pulled from the supplier’s site. When the customer makes a purchase through Bala’s storefront, details are sent to the partner for fulfillment. Bala is billed the wholesale price and retains the profit. 

“Through Shopify Collective, the initial sync of the content from the brands PDPs was flawless, enabling us the opportunity to enhance the customer experience by incorporating our own editorialized imagery,” says Brooke Konzelmann, head of partnerships and PR. 

Platform agility for rapid feature deployment and testing

While we can’t foresee another global event like the pandemic, the travel industry is constantly evolving. Agile commerce platforms allow you to rapidly deploy and test new features—like personalized offers, dynamic pricing, or bundled packages—to respond quickly to changing traveler preferences and seasonal demand.

Take it from BEIS, who experienced incredible growth selling their travel luggage—until COVID hit. Quick thinking meant they paused the upcoming launch of their first roller bag. Instead, they focused on multifunctional accessories their customers could take anywhere, from the grocery store to the gym.

This quick thinking paid off. “2020 was tremendous,” says CEO Adeela Hussain Johnson. “We surpassed 200% growth by a long shot. And then every year since it’s been double-digit growth.”

Security and compliance considerations 

Enterprise travel commerce involves sensitive data—like payment information, personal identifiers, and booking details—across international markets. You must have robust security measures and compliance with global regulations.

Check that your technology infrastructure offers:

• PCI compliance and fraud prevention for high-volume booking environments
• International data protection and fulfillment of privacy requirements
• Enterprise-grade uptime and disaster recovery capabilities

It’s difficult to navigate these regulations if you’re operating across jurisdictions with varying data protection laws, like GDPR (Europe), CCPA (California), or LGPD (Brazil). Work with a data compliance specialist to maintain compliance with these international regulations and safeguard against fines.

From check-in to transformation: The travel ecommerce platform decision that defines your future

It doesn’t matter what travel service you’re selling: your choice of travel ecommerce platform determines your ability to reduce operational complexity, optimize revenue growth, and deliver the seamless experiences that drive direct bookings and customer loyalty.

A flexible, unified platform can help future-proof your travel business. Shopify makes that possible. We reduce TCO and offer the platform extensibility you need to design experiences that increase direct booking conversion. 

In other words, we focus on innovation so you can do what you do best: sell world-class travel experiences to your customers.