7:00 a.m., Terminal 3, Delhi airport. The software executive strides through the DigiYatra e-gate – no papers, no lengthy security check-in queues. By 9:30 a.m., the executive is checking into the Indian Hotels Company Limited’s Ginger Mumbai Airport, where a waist-high robot hands over the room key while an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered concierge pings a personalised itinerary to the executive. These touchpoints are no longer stray occurrences, but reflect a Rs 42 trillion opportunity for India’s economy, expected to support 64 million jobs by 2035, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. This shift is expected to transform the entire travel experience, from discovery, booking and transit to stay and post-trip engagement. Biometric boarding, bot-run lobbies, blockchain-based rewards and cloud dashboards are no longer pilots; they form the backbone of India’s next-generation travel and hospitality experience.
AI
AI has moved from back-office trials to front-of-house engines, driving revenue and streamlining service. It now shapes the travel experience even before a ticket is booked, analysing preferences, browsing history and past complaint patterns, working right through to check-out. For instance, MakeMyTrip’s generative AI “collections” tool, rolled out in March 2025, organises 86,000 stays across more than 2,000 cities as per plug-and-play themes such as wellness breaks, kid-friendly escapes and luxury retreats. It helps users jump from browsing to shortlisting in just a few taps. For travel aggregators, such tools help reduce decision fatigue, speed up conversions and increase average order values by nudging users towards faster, more confident bookings.
Once booking intent becomes a confirmed itinerary, pricing systems take over to optimise yield. While many Indian hotels still rely on seasonal trends and occupancy forecasts to set tariffs, some chains are now experimenting with revenue management systems that learn from past data to fine-tune rates, promotions and package offerings. This marks a shift from fixed-rate pricing to a more dynamic, intelligence-driven approach. As digitisation deepens, such systems could eventually enable real-time pricing decisions in the sector.
On site, AI has become the invisible porter. At Marriott’s Moxy Bengaluru Airport, a delivery robot nicknamed “ROXY” works alongside a 24×7 chat assistant to handle routine runs and frequently asked questions, allowing staff to focus on high-touch moments that guests remember. Mid-market chains in the country are following suit, standardising response quality and reducing queues without compromising service.
Blockchain
Loyalty points and tickets have long been the industry’s slowest, most error-prone links. Points often take days to reflect in accounts after a purchase, duplicate claims pile up and paper or quick response passes can be faked. In 2025, efforts are being made to embed greater trust and speed into these processes.
In June 2025, Air India shifted its Maharaja Club on to Loyyal’s blockchain platform, a back-end overhaul aimed at modernising how rewards are tracked and redeemed. The upgrade allows members to earn points the moment a payment clears and redeem them instantly with major retail brands across the US and the UK. This replaces the legacy system of delayed crediting and 48-hour reconciliation windows, offering a more seamless, real-time experience even though the blockchain layer itself remains invisible to the traveller.
Railways are following a similar path. For the January 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela, Indian Railways/IRCTC issued NFT-based tickets on Polygon, giving pilgrims tamper-proof passes that also served as digital souvenirs. With daily crowds of around 1.2 million, the railways’ bigger gain was counterfeit control: one token, one seat, permanently recorded.
Behind the scenes, some hotels and online travel agencies (OTAs) are also piloting ledgers for supplier payouts and chargeback protection, but it is in loyalty and ticketing that the impact of blockchain is visible.
Cloud computing
Flash sale spikes, monsoon rebooking waves, last-minute upgrades, none of these can wait for a server reboot. The sector now demands capacity that can scale up within seconds and provide a single, real-time view of every guest or passenger. This visibility helps reduce delays, avoid overbooking and coordinate across systems.
Sabre’s global capability centre in Bengaluru showcased a fully cloud-native “offer-order” retailing stack (SabreMosaic) and AI tools that allow airlines to scale computing power during holiday peaks, deploy dynamic bundles instantly and retire brittle, on-premises reservations code. While no Indian airline has adopted SabreMosaic so far, several global carriers such as Virgin Australia, Air Serbia, Oman Air and American Airlines (currently running a proof of concept) have begun integrating the platform into their operations.
In the hospitality space, the Kerala Tourism Development Corporation (KTDC) shifted over 30 state-run resorts to Stayflexi’s all- cloud property management system (PMS) in June 2025. The key features of this PMS include live channel management, automated dynamic pricing and unified dashboards.
Fuelling this trend, hyperscalers are doubling down locally. Amazon Web Services has earmarked over Rs 664 billion in fresh data centre investments for its Asia-Pacific (Mumbai) region in 2025, giving OTAs, airlines and hotel tech vendors the low-latency infrastructure they need while ensuring regulated data stays within India’s borders.
Virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is bridging the gap between imagination and experience, turning browsers into buyers while reducing training expenses.
In April 2025, Madhya Pradesh’s Department of Archaeology set up VR booths at Bhopal’s State Museum and Orchha Fort. Ten headsets at each site stream multilingual 3D reconstructions of cenotaphs and frescoed corridors, so visitors can roam the spaces virtually before stepping out.
Further, Air India showcased a VR “cabin walk-through” for its new A350 business-class and premium-economy products at the Outbound Travel Mart 2025, allowing trade attendees to virtually explore the airline’s redesigned passenger experience.
Hotels are seeing significant benefits in guest confidence and sales. A Hotelogix tech survey conducted in May 2025 found that properties offering VR previews of premium categories saw direct booking conversions rise by up to 16 per cent, particularly for weddings and corporate events. By enabling guests to virtually assess room layouts and amenities rather than rely on descriptions, hotels reduce scepticism and simplify upselling decisions.
Metaverse and digital twins
While VR offers a one-time preview, the metaverse and digital twins keep spaces open, shared and editable. For operators, it means fewer site visits and faster decision-making.
The GMR Group has launched an AI-powered digital twin of Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport to support a next-generation operations centre. Passenger flows, equipment status, gate assignments, everything is mirrored in real time.
Hotels are also recognising the commercial potential of this technology. “Book your exact room” digital twins are increasing conversions by allowing guests to select specific views, balcony depths or ballroom layouts. Earlier this year, OYO introduced “#metaversehoteltours” to let users explore rooms virtually before they book.
IoT
If AI is the brain, internet of things (IoT) is the nerve network, comprising tiny sensors and trackers feeding live data. This allows operators to act before guests even realise there is a problem. Today, “smart rooms” and airside telemetry are no longer pilots; they are standard across Indian hotels, airports and railways.
At the Delhi International Airport, the unified total airside management platform went live in March 2025. It integrates AI/machine learning (ML) models, IoT sensors and radar to monitor every aircraft movement and the speed of every airside vehicle, flagging anything that could delay a turnaround.
Hotels are wiring guest rooms similarly. Occupancy sensors communicate with heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems to reduce energy use when a room is empty and automatically activate cooling or heating within seconds of a key tap. Properties using occupancy-driven automation have cut energy bills by up to 15 per cent, while maintenance teams now receive alerts before an air conditioner fails during full-house events.
On the rail front, Indian Railways floated a Rs 32 billion tender in July 2025 for “smart coach” components, onboard diagnostics, condition sensors and passenger information systems, shifting maintenance from reactive to predictive and improving safety. Fewer delays, lower utility costs and safer journeys are now being delivered by devices that travellers never even notice.
Outlook
In 2025, India’s digital shift in travel is not about catching up, it is about taking a lead. Its edge lies in three forces working in tandem – a growing base of tech-savvy consumers, deepening public-private collaborations and a willingness to leapfrog legacy systems rather than retrofit outdated systems.
That said, systemic challenges persist, including patchy connectivity in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns, uneven digital skills on the ground, ageing tech stacks inside state-run assets and rising cyber risks across always-connected ecosystems. However, the solutions are already on the table: cloud-native infrastructure roll-outs, state-level skilling programmes, privacy-by-design frameworks and back-end overhauls replacing siloed systems with open, modular architectures.
As cloud adoption accelerates, 5G networks densify and policies increasingly align around interoperability, data sovereignty and platform openness, India has the opportunity to develop a smart tourism playbook for much of the Global South. Blockchain-enabled rewards, XR previews, AI-managed journeys and IoT-driven telemetry are no longer experimental – they are already live. The next challenge is integration: consolidating data and services to build a single traveller profile, create a unified loyalty wallet and provide a real-time, cross-sector operational view.
