Google’s Ailish English on AI reshaping travel

As artificial intelligence fundamentally transforms how consumers discover and book travel, one message emerges with striking clarity from leading travel and hospitality management consultancy PACE Dimensions’ conversation with Ailish English, Industry Head for Travel at Google: the brands that win won’t necessarily be the biggest—they’ll be the ones that get AI-ready first.

One thing becomes immediately apparent within minutes of speaking with Ailish English: her unconventional career path has given her a perspective on technological disruption that few in the travel industry can match. The seasoned executive brings unique insight to her role at Google, having witnessed first-hand how digital transformation can reshape entire sectors—and she’s adamant that travel stands at its most pivotal inflection point yet.

English brings a distinctive background to her role at Google, having started her career as a wealth manager in Irish stockbroking before pivoting to fintech start-ups following the 2008 financial crisis. Her journey through finance and technology has equipped her with rare understanding of how digital transformation doesn’t just change processes—it fundamentally rewrites competitive dynamics.

“I began my career traditionally as a wealth manager back in stockbroking,” English reflects. “And then the crash happened in 2008, 2009. To be very honest with you, it all got a bit depressing. You know, people were being laid off in the industry and you were continuously telling people that their portfolios were down again and again. So it kind of made me take… to kind of re-evaluate my career and what I was doing.”

That crisis prompted her move into technology start-ups, where she discovered how tech could elegantly solve fundamental business challenges. “I went actually into the start-up world, and the start-up very cleverly used tech to solve for challenges within the finance business,” she explains. The division she headed partnered with large multinational banks to reclaim dividend withholding tax—work that revealed her aptitude for financial sales and strategic partnership development.

But English’s curiosity and ambition didn’t stop there. “Every couple of years I always do like to re-evaluate,” she notes. “At this point I realised I’d only ever worked for Irish companies. And the company size was getting smaller and smaller, which was fantastic in terms of what you can learn and the experiences you gain. But I was starting to think I’d really like to embrace a much larger global conglomerate.”

Eleven years ago, that journey brought her to Google—where she now heads up the accommodation and transport business across the UK and EMEA, connecting travel businesses with consumers using Google’s increasingly AI-powered product suite.

Connecting travel businesses with consumers in an AI world

At Google, English’s role extends far beyond traditional business development. As Industry Head for Travel, she focuses on helping hotel chains, independent hotels, OTAs, car rental companies, and everything in between leverage Google’s platforms to reach their ultimate customers and achieve their growth objectives.

“I think primarily what my role is, is connecting travel businesses with their consumers by using Google products,” she explains. “It’s about thinking about how Google, and leveraging Google platforms, can really help these companies connect with their ultimate customers, and how that can really help those companies reach their business objectives and obtain the growth that they’re after.”

This connecting role has become increasingly complex and powerful as AI has evolved from background technology to central capability across Google’s product suite. English now finds herself at the intersection of technological possibility and commercial reality—helping travel companies navigate an AI transformation that’s reshaping every aspect of customer engagement.

The post-COVID normalisation: What changed and what didn’t

When discussing the biggest shifts reshaping travel today, English immediately identifies COVID-19 as the fundamental reference point that divides the industry into “before” and “after.”

“I don’t think I could start a conversation with you today without thinking about COVID,” she states frankly. “It’s 100% a reference point for travel—the journey before, the journey after.”

From a macro perspective, the pattern has been clear. “Post-COVID, there was the massive demand for travel and the big burst that happened in the first year or two,” she explains. “Still very much a huge desire amongst consumers to travel. But we have seen normalisation now in the growth rates post the pandemic, and we expect to continue to see that normalisation over the next couple of years.”

However, one constant remains remarkably strong: consumer desire to travel persists despite geopolitical challenges and economic uncertainty. “All of our research says that consumers are really interested in travelling despite what might be seen as some challenging geopolitical times, with what’s going on in the world,” English notes. “What we’re seeing is it might change preference for destinations, but actually, from a consumer sentiment to travel, people are still really up for their trips more so than ever before.”

This resilient demand represents crucial good news for anyone working in the travel industry. “People want to travel,” English emphasises. “So I think that’s the constant.”

The nature of demand itself has evolved significantly. The previously clear segregation between business and leisure travel—a categorisation that defined industry analytics and strategic planning for decades—has blurred considerably. Companies now focus more on overall demand patterns rather than maintaining strict category distinctions, reflecting how travellers themselves increasingly blend work and leisure in single trips.

The 300-minute journey: How consumers research travel differently

Perhaps most striking is how consumer behaviour has fundamentally transformed in the research phase. English reveals that travellers now spend an average of 300 minutes researching each trip—a staggering five hours of investigation before booking.

“The amount of time that people are spending in the research phase has actually just elongated and has continued to elongate over the last couple of years since COVID,” she explains. “We’ve seen that it’s been 300 minutes—300 minutes is actually the typical amount of time that people spend researching a trip.”

As with many consumer trends, generational differences matter. “Gen Z spend more time in terms of looking per minute for a holiday than other demographic segments,” English notes. “But interestingly, it is around that 300 minutes” across most travellers.

This extended research time reflects something deeper than mere browsing or indecisiveness: consumers have become intensely value-driven in ways that fundamentally reshape how travel brands must communicate. “People are a lot more value-driven,” English observes. “So therefore spending more time online researching because they want to go after that value piece.”

Critically, this value-orientation doesn’t mean travellers simply seek cheaper options. “When we say value, it doesn’t mean a cheaper holiday or they don’t want to spend as much money,” English clarifies emphatically. “What it actually means is that people are willing to put in a lot more legwork to go after a better ROI for what they have to spend on their holidays. So that is really what they’re looking for.”

This shift has profound implications for how travel brands position themselves. “When we’re talking to our travel brands, we’ll be really thinking about that and how you’re thinking about positioning your content and how you’re thinking about positioning your value proposition to make sure that it is front and centre for people in your advertising, so that they are very… so it’s very obvious why your brand should be picked over another,” English explains.

Simultaneously, brand loyalty across travel has declined significantly—creating both immediate challenges and substantial opportunities. “Brand loyalty in travel brands is actually declining,” English states. “How we think about that here at Google is thinking about, okay, well this means two things.”

The implications cut both ways. “If you are a business, you’ve got to work harder to keep your customers,” she acknowledges. “So you’ve got to think about how you can really delight and exceed their expectations, and what that looks like for your particular customer segment.”

However, the flip side creates genuine opportunity. “It presents a huge opportunity for most brands to be able to go after new customers that would have been previously a lot more loyal to another brand. So there’s two sides, but a huge and really exciting opportunity.”

The AI revolution: Levelling the playing field

For English, AI represents not just incremental improvement but fundamental transformation in how travel brands can compete. She frames it as genuinely democratising, particularly for smaller players who previously lacked resources to compete with established giants.

“I think what is going to be the biggest change that we will be observing over the next couple of years… how we’re using AI is definitely going to disrupt the travel journey,” English predicts. “It’s going to change people’s expectations and how they go about researching the complex questions that they’re able to ask, and in turn the results that they’re now going to be expecting.”

When asked what brands must do to compete in this AI-driven environment, English reframes the challenge as opportunity. “My first answer… the first part of that question is I feel the takeaway for me is it’s a really, really exciting time for travel brands,” she begins enthusiastically. “This shift in how consumers are able to use AI, I think can lower the barriers to entry, can level the playing field in terms of having the opportunity to engage with customers and to think about how they can now go after customers that they didn’t previously have access to.”

The practical implications are immediate and substantial. Google’s AI overviews—sophisticated summaries that appear for complex search queries—now reach 1.5 billion users monthly, fundamentally changing how consumers discover travel options.

“People who regularly engage… and that is now up to about 1.5 billion people every month are using AI overview,” English explains. “So it’s really, really staggering. And the more people use them, they find them useful, and they’re actually now changing… they’re engaging in those more long, complex queries, and therefore in turn they’re able to get a lot richer results.”

This creates an entirely new discovery paradigm. Rather than typing simple keywords and scrolling through pages of results, consumers now ask nuanced questions and receive synthesised answers drawing from multiple sources. Travel brands that position themselves effectively within this ecosystem gain unprecedented access to highly-qualified potential customers.

Your website: The new competitive battleground

When asked specifically what brands must do to compete in this AI-driven environment, English’s answer is unequivocal and emphatic: focus relentlessly on your website.

“Front and centre, the biggest thing to do is think about your website, think about your assets,” she urges. “From a website point of view—is your website… what we’re calling it now… is it optimised well so that AI—be it AI agents, be it large language models, AI overviews which you see on Google search—is it able to pick it up?”

The requirements are specific and technical. “How it does that is—is the content… have you got lots of content? Are you content rich? Is there structured data in a good place? Are you in a position to really be able to be found?” English elaborates. “These are the important things.”

Her conclusion carries particular weight: “Your website was probably never as important as it is now.”

This represents a significant shift in competitive dynamics. For years, travel brands could rely on third-party distribution—OTAs, metasearch engines, comparison sites—to handle much of their customer acquisition. Websites served primarily as booking engines for customers who already knew they wanted a specific property or brand.

That model no longer suffices. In an AI-discovery world, websites become the primary asset that determines whether brands get surfaced for relevant queries. Content richness, structured data, clear value propositions—these technical and editorial elements now directly drive commercial success in ways they never have before.

The multimodal search revolution

Beyond traditional text searches, English identifies another transformative shift: the explosion of visual and multimodal search capabilities that create entirely new discovery pathways.

“What we’re really noticing at Google is a shift in multimodal searching,” English explains. “Consumers not just searching… not just typing in keywords into Google search any longer. They’re now using phones. They’re using Google Lens and Circle to Search to be able to look at images.”

The scale here is staggering. “At Google we’re actually seeing 25 billion Google Lens searches coming in a month,” English reveals. “And that is a really big number. This is globally and we’re actually seeing that one in five of these searches actually have commercial intent.”

For travel brand leaders, this data demands attention. “If I’m leading a travel business, well, how do I interpret this?” English asks rhetorically. “The way we would think about this is, well, these are incremental searches that people weren’t using a couple of years ago. So this is a whole new world. This is a whole new opportunity to be able to talk with your customers, engage with your customers, and perhaps move a little bit more up the funnel to put your brand front and centre where you weren’t able to do it previously.”

Visual search creates particularly compelling opportunities for travel brands, where imagery has always driven emotional engagement and aspiration. A potential traveller photographing a friend’s holiday snap can now instantly discover where that beach resort is located and how to book it. Someone browsing a magazine can search images directly to find similar hotels or destinations.

“There’s so much opportunity,” English emphasises, “but it’s just about thinking about how you get yourself ready and in a good position to be able to be surfaced by AI.”

Google’s AI-first evolution: From infrastructure to consumer experience

English’s perspective on where Google’s innovation is headed reveals the company’s comprehensive AI transformation—one that extends far beyond simple search improvements to touch every aspect of how consumers engage with travel content.

“Google has been… in the suite of products that we offer, we are… we’ve been an AI company since 2015,” English notes. “So we’ve been thinking about this now for a long time, and we’ve been harnessing all that AI superpower, I’d say, and integrating it into our products at every level.”

This integration creates opportunities to reach customers throughout their entire journey. “What we are able to do is offer brands opportunities to reach customers at every phase in that research journey,” English explains.

YouTube represents a particularly powerful platform for travel content. “That is such a powerful platform where people come day in, day out,” English observes. “In every market, how travel content and consumers looking at travel is growing year in, year out on YouTube. People are getting really immersive in the experiences they want to see. They really want to engage with brands.”

The content itself has evolved significantly. “They want to get deeper into the content, their influencers on social media or creators on YouTube,” English notes. “These are now replacing what we traditionally… the traditional big advertising campaigns because people are more leaning into those authentic experiences and engaging with, I guess, human beings through the platforms like YouTube and indeed other social channels.”

Google’s AI Power Pack—encompassing Performance Max, AI Max, and various AI formats within YouTube—enables brands to engage customers based on their journey stage. “No matter what a brand’s objective, business objective or marketing objective actually is, we have AI solutions that are easier to use than ever before,” English explains.

The system leverages intent signals across Google’s ecosystem. “Google has seven products with over 2 billion monthly users,” English notes, listing Gmail, Google Maps, Google Photos, the Play Store and others. “Across that whole ecosystem, there is a lot of reach and there are a lot of people out there who are looking and are looking at booking a holiday in different ways.”

The AI understands context and journey stage. “Some people start with Maps, some people start with YouTube. Some people start on Google search,” English explains. “But we are able to understand, and AI is using those intent signals to understand where people are at in the journey. And then our products can find them on that journey and show the right ad at the right time.”

This sophisticated orchestration delivers the right message at the right moment. “If somebody is early on and they really want to just engage with a brand and they want to be inspired, well then they’ll be shown more than likely engaging video content,” English describes. “When somebody is now in market, they’ve been researching for a while, so we’re going to show them that clear call-to-action message where you’ve got a deal, perhaps.”

Beyond consumer-facing innovation, English highlights Google’s work on sustainability—an increasingly important consideration for travel brands and their customers. “We have been… we’ve worked across a host of products, and one particular one, which I find really interesting, is we’ve been working to reduce contrails,” she shares. “We’ve done some pilots with many airlines, and we’ve been really focused on how we and how our technology can actually help reduce contrails, which in turn can obviously make flying far more sustainable.”

Data: The marketer’s superpower in a less loyal world

For English, data represents the essential foundation for competing effectively as brand loyalty declines and consumer choice expands. First-party data particularly gives organisations genuine insight into customer engagement—but only when properly structured and actionable.

“Data is more relevant than it ever was before,” English states emphatically. “Having a really good handle on your first-party data really gives any organisation a real look at their customers and how they’re actually engaging with them.”

She acknowledges the evolving regulatory landscape. “There have been lots of changes, of course, with collecting data, with privacy. And I’m sure that this is going to continue to evolve. We’ve got the DMA regulation here across EMEA, across Europe. So there’s lots going on in that space and I think advertisers have to keep up to date with it, and think about making sure that they are being compliant with what is required within their region.”

Within appropriate privacy frameworks, however, data becomes transformative. “Data should be a marketer’s superpower,” English argues. “I mentioned earlier in our conversation that people are being less brand loyal. So thinking about that, what does that mean for a business? It really means, well then you’ve got to think about how can you be the brand that your customer comes back to again and again? And of course the way to do that is to show, to give that excellent personalisation and that personalisation in terms of experience that you’re able to provide.”

The applications extend well beyond marketing communications. “Data and AI can really supercharge things like how you can optimise your pricing, how you can think about putting dynamic packages together, how you can enhance the customer experience, go above and beyond to delight, to have seamless experiences for your customers,” English elaborates.

However, she emphasises forcefully that collecting data alone achieves nothing. “There’s no point in having reams of data if you’re not able to analyse it and then take action on the back of it,” English warns. “The next bit is to think about how you can use AI to cut through your data and to give you… to be able to make it meaningful.”

The customer experience imperative: AI as enabler, not replacement

English’s perspective on customer experience reflects broader concerns about how technology investments sometimes prioritise cost reduction over experience enhancement. She acknowledges this tension directly.

“As a consumer I can talk to you on that one. I’m 100%… I couldn’t agree more,” English responds when asked about declining service standards across industries. “I think this is where travel brands can win and they can lose. It’s all about that experience.”

The stakes in travel are particularly high. “I’ve heard many, many talks from really senior folk in different travel brands, and they take the fact that somebody is going on their two-week annual holiday with their brand very, very seriously,” English observes. “And if you under-deliver on that, well you know that’s a big problem. You’re not going to get that consumer back again, but you’re really letting somebody down with their annual holiday.”

Her philosophy on AI’s role emphasises enhancement rather than replacement. “I’m a firm believer that people do business with people,” English states. “And AI is there, in my mind, to do two things. It should be there… if I was running my business, I should be thinking about AI and how it can help me solve the business challenges I have in my own business.”

The key lies in strategic application rather than wholesale adoption. “The challenge is spending the time on your business challenges rather than, oh, AI is out there, what should I be doing? Just to basically bolt it onto all these different departments without really thinking through what you’re actually trying to solve,” English cautions.

“Using it really smartly, I think is important,” she continues, “but also never forgetting that what we’re trying to do here is use AI to give a better experience no matter what kind of side of the value chain that you’re on. Ultimately to the end user. But again, it will always be AI helping people do business with people.”

Real-world applications demonstrate this potential convincingly. “I’ve seen the Four Seasons do some really great work where they’re using AI sentiment to analyse customer reviews across lots of multiple platforms and analysing what are being shown as pain points,” English shares. “And then thinking how they can address those within their customer service experience.”

Chatbot experiences continue improving substantially. “I’ve seen the chatbot experience get better and better and better, and I think that is really going to change again, once agentic AI comes on board and becomes a lot more mainstream,” English predicts.

Other companies use Vertex AI to deliver enhanced website services. “People have much more detail in their planning,” English notes. “There are so many different ways to think about it.”

The evidence for early adoption is compelling. “What I’ve seen people do… I think it’s early adopters that are actually probably going to do really well because they’re testing as they go. They’re being agile,” English observes. “We’ve seen where smart marketers have leaned into AI already. They’re seeing 60% uplift in terms of the output. So people are really getting the benefits of using AI across and optimising all of their efficiencies and not just in marketing.”

Competing against OTA dominance: An age-old challenge with new tools

When challenged about how travel suppliers can compete against the enormous scale and spending power of online travel agencies, English reframes the question fundamentally—seeing it as an enduring strategic tension rather than a new AI-specific problem.

“I think this is an age-old problem. I don’t necessarily think that this challenge has anything to do with AI per se,” she responds candidly. “I think that there’s always been that tension between direct and the OTAs.”

She acknowledges the structural advantages OTAs possess. “The fact is that the OTAs, they are more nimble. They often are more agile. They don’t have the overheads that some of the… and they spend a lot. And they spend a lot. Exactly. 100% they have, generally speaking, larger pockets.”

However, English’s advice centres on clarity and fundamentals rather than attempting to outspend competitors. “It goes back to the fundamentals and to the foundations. And it’s about as a travel brand being very clear on your objectives, being very clear on what you’re trying to achieve,” she explains. “Do you want to… what’s your budget and what do you want to achieve with that? Is it about customer retention? Is that where you want to dial up? Is it about new customer acquisition?”

She advocates for pragmatic coexistence strategies. “There is space for direct bookings and OTAs to play together and to win,” English notes. “So it’s about being clear on where you want to push and where you want the OTA to actually win.”

Website optimisation emerges again as crucial. “It’s really about making sure that your website is in a really good… it is able to be found and surfaced very, very well,” English emphasises. “So it’s thinking about, do you have great imagery? Do you have great video assets? Are you really showcasing your value proposition coming back to that again?”

The AI-discovery paradigm specifically creates opportunities for direct bookings. “If your website is really answering all of those questions, well then AI will surface your website and will show it, particularly in the likes of AI overviews,” English explains. “Because what AI overviews will be designed to do is give the user the best experience. And that gives an opportunity, I think, for directs.”

The shifting demand curve: Always-on becomes essential

Traditional peak booking periods are evolving significantly, English observes, with implications for marketing strategy and budget allocation that many travel companies haven’t fully grasped.

“Traditionally, the biggest time of year and still very much is, is that peak period. So it’s Boxing Day right through to the end of January,” English notes. “But what we have seen over the last couple of years is actually that peak period softening in terms of how peaky it is.”

The demand curve has become more distributed. “We’ve now seen that in the UK for travel, Black Friday’s becoming a much bigger thing,” English explains. “And we’ve seen companies react to that by going after the demand, bringing forward sales, bringing forward discounts, and just be open to the demand and going after it.”

This creates a more extended booking season. “That might mean that the peak isn’t actually as peaky as it would have been previously for Boxing Day time, but it might mean that it goes on longer into February,” English observes.

The implications for marketing strategy are profound. “As a marketer, it’s less about having these big burst campaigns that you would have had traditionally and how you planned and bought your media was the same every year because this is when people bought their holidays,” English explains. “That’s really shifting.”

AI accelerates this trend by making information accessible at any time. “AI is making it easier for people to get information at any point in time,” English notes. “So just make sure that your digital doors are open, and that you’re not closing your shop door online.”

Her recommendation challenges traditional campaign-based thinking. “As long as you’re comfortable with your cost of sale, it should be always on because people are always in market to book a holiday,” English advises. “Don’t be limiting or shutting off your marketing campaigns.”

Navigating media fragmentation: Clarity over complexity

The proliferation of media channels, platforms, and touchpoints creates genuine strategic challenges for travel marketers. English acknowledges this complexity whilst advocating for disciplined strategic thinking.

“The media industry has changed a lot as well as the travel industry,” English observes. “And it makes making decisions complex because there are so many different options out there for sure.”

Her advice emphasises strategic clarity as the antidote to fragmentation paralysis. “My advice to many marketers is to be very clear on your marketing strategy and what you actually want to achieve,” English states. “And be very clear on how are you thinking about your go-to-market strategy.”

The framework she recommends focuses on customer journey stages. “Think about, well then where can you get the best reach? Where can you… how can you find the customers? How can you get in front of the customers?” English elaborates. “And then once you’re in front of the customers, how can you engage with them? And then how can you get them over the line? How can you convert them?”

This journey-based thinking naturally leads to integrated platform strategies. “There’s so much reach out there, but it’s again about having… being able to show the right messaging at the right time,” English explains.

Budget discipline remains essential. “Budgets are limited… they’re not infinite,” English acknowledges. “But it’s understanding then about what… so make sure that you’re really tight on what your cost of sale is.”

Three imperatives for remaining competitive

When asked for her top advice for travel leaders looking to remain competitive over the next two to three years, English identifies three critical priorities that emerged repeatedly throughout our conversation.

First: Get AI-ready. This encompasses far more than simply adopting AI tools—it requires systematic preparation across technology, people, and processes.

“Sounds very basic, but it’s get AI-ready,” English begins. “So what does that mean for your organisation? It’s going to mean different things for different organisations, depending where you are within that travel sphere of organisations. So make sure that you are ready, your website is ready, that your teams are ready.”

Internal AI adoption matters substantially. “If you’re using AI tools internally for operational efficiency, which I think everybody should be, they’re amazing. We use Gemini, we use Notebook LM and all of our products here at Google. We use them every day,” English shares. “Make sure that your people are empowered to use them. Because actually you’re just gaining efficiency. You’re saving time, and hopefully people are redeploying that time to be a lot more creative and moving towards improving profitability for your business.”

Second: Understand your customers deeply. This requires organised, structured, actionable data that informs decisions across the entire organisation.

“In this era, understanding your customer is absolutely key. Probably again, more important than ever before,” English states. “Understanding your customer and, to do that correctly, you need to have a really good handle on your data.”

The requirements are specific. “You need to have it organised. You need to have it structured, and you need to not just have the data, you need to be able to analyse it,” English emphasises. “Again, AI can really come in here and help you, and then you need to action the output.”

Critically, this demands cross-functional collaboration. “I work with companies, day in, day out—you’ve got great data sets, etc., but they’re not necessarily then linking up their teams internally to make sure that the marketing team is talking to the analytics team and that they’re all… or the distribution team, etc., that everybody’s actually getting the benefit and the richness of this customer data and bringing it into how cross-functional departments are building out their strategies for the year,” English observes.

Third: Maintain agility. In an environment where AI enables rapid disruption, organisational agility becomes a defensive necessity and offensive capability simultaneously.

“I mentioned the word a few times, but agility is definitely important,” English notes. She shares a revealing conversation with a CMO of a traditional company who identified his greatest competitive threat not from established rivals but from potential disruptors.

“I was just saying, ‘What keeps you up at night or do you think your competitors are gaining share, etc.?’” English recalls. “And, you know, he actually said, ‘It’s not my competitors that I’m worried about, but I’m keeping an eye on them every day. There’s a couple of horses in the race for market share in my business. But it’s a new company that’s just going to come along and it’s going to be small, it’s going to be agile and it’s going to really disrupt our business.’”

AI enables precisely this kind of disruption. “That’s what AI is actually enabling companies to do, which is really exciting. But it does mean that everybody needs to keep on their toes as well,” English observes. “So it’s very much not falling asleep at the wheel.”

Her conclusion emphasises opportunity over threat. “Get… be excited about it. There’s opportunity here that there never was before,” English urges. “There is scale to reach people. Just using Google as an example across our suite, like I said, 1.5 billion users at the moment already globally every single month in AI overviews. That’s absolutely a mega number about how AI is giving you the opportunity to reach customers more cost-effectively.”

The leadership mindset: Continuous curiosity and strategic career moves

English’s own career philosophy—one that brought her from Irish stockbroking through fintech start-ups to Google—emphasises continuous learning and strategic self-reflection.

“I’ve always been really curious and I always like to take stock and reflect,” she explains. “So every couple of years, I’ve made moves, so I’ve made moves in different companies I’ve made, and then when I came to Google, I’ve worked across different industries.”

This pattern reflects deliberate career management rather than restlessness. “I’ve been in travel now for quite a while, but I’ve changed… worked with different companies,” English notes. “So I think it’s really important to continuously be learning, and empowering yourself to be excited always about your next… what’s your next move? Honing your craft, but thinking ahead.”

The mindset centres on perpetual skill development. “Just really being curious about how you can develop your skillset even further. What more can you learn?” English asks rhetorically. “And I think that has really stood me well in different pivots that I’ve made throughout my career, but also in developing those transferable skills that lend to be able to have those more well-rounded conversations.”

This becomes increasingly critical as careers progress—countering the natural tendency towards complacency that experience can bring. “The further you are on in your career, the more that you need to be conscious of that,” English observes. “Because I think some people can get and say, well, I’m very experienced, I’ve got great expertise, and unfortunately that gets out of date if you’re not on the money.”

The metaphor captures the urgency perfectly: “Standing still is the quickest way to get left behind.”

English’s approach involves intentional networking focused on genuine learning rather than superficial connection-building. “It’s really just continuous learning, continuous… just doubling down and have… be curious, but have conversations with people,” she explains. “Understand how other… always be building your network. And I know that sounds a bit ugh, but what I mean by that is, though, have conversations where you’re asking how other leaders, or how other experts in their field are thinking about their world.”

The payoff comes through accumulated insight. “For me, every time I have a coffee, I’m actually learning something,” English notes. “I’m like, ‘Ah, that’s something I haven’t thought about. What would that actually mean for me and how I think about running my business?’”

Looking ahead: The AI-enabled future of travel marketing

As our conversation draws to a close, English’s enthusiasm about AI’s transformative potential is unmistakable whilst remaining grounded in practical business realities. She envisions a future where travel brands leverage AI to create richer, more personalised experiences whilst simultaneously improving operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

The opportunity extends across every dimension of travel business: from inspiration on YouTube to consideration through AI-powered search, from conversion via optimised direct booking experiences to post-travel engagement that builds lasting loyalty.

“We didn’t go into the whole Gen AI and how it can help in terms of assets, and creative and all that kind of stuff from a marketing perspective as well,” English notes, highlighting areas we didn’t even explore fully. “I could go on and on, but I think really… it’s be excited about it and think about how it can help your business to get ahead.”

Her final message emphasises urgency without panic—excitement tempered by strategic discipline. “AI, understanding customer behaviour, so AI-ready, understanding customer behaviour and being agile—being the top three. That would be my top three,” English summarises.

For an industry that has always competed on experience quality and emotional connection, English’s vision represents not a replacement of human service but its amplification through intelligent technology. The brands that recognise this—and act quickly to become AI-ready, deepen customer understanding, and maintain strategic agility—will find themselves positioned to compete effectively regardless of their scale or legacy constraints.

Having spent time with English, several messages resonate with particular clarity: in the AI-enabled travel landscape rapidly emerging, success won’t belong to those with the largest marketing budgets or the most properties. It will belong to those who understand that their website has never been more important, their data has never been more valuable, and their agility has never been more essential.

The question isn’t whether AI will transform travel marketing and distribution—it already has. The question is whether your organisation is ready to compete in this new landscape, where 1.5 billion people monthly use AI overviews, where 25 billion visual searches happen each month, and where consumers spend 300 minutes researching trips whilst demonstrating declining brand loyalty.

English’s career journey from financial services through start-ups to global technology leadership has equipped her with rare perspective on how industries transform. Her conviction that travel stands at a pivotal moment—one where AI levels the playing field whilst simultaneously raising competitive stakes—deserves serious attention from any hospitality leader concerned about their brand’s future viability.

Those who embrace the transformation she describes will find themselves well-positioned for the future of travel. Those who delay will discover that standing still—in a world where AI enables unprecedented agility and reach—truly is the quickest way to get left behind.

PACE Dimensions is expert in opportunity identification and prioritisation, business architecture and design, operating model design, transformation delivery, and change management. Find out more about how PACE Dimensions can help your business excel at www.pacedimensions.com