The International Air Transport Association said at the opening of the IATA World Financial Symposium and World Passenger Symposium in Macao that travelers can already use AI to plan trips, pay with digital wallets and use biometrics for a more seamless airport journey, and that the challenge now is realizing the value these innovations can create to make travel more efficient and improve financial resilience. AI assistants and automated agents are changing how travelers discover and compare travel, and airlines should prepare for this shift while retaining control of their data and commercial relationships and ensuring the quality of the underlying data.
Modern Airline Retailing is central to adapting to this changing marketplace: seven airlines are live or implementing Orders, more than 20 are expected to follow from 2027, and IT providers have committed more than US$1.7 billion to Offers and Orders. On payments, airlines spend more than US$24.5 billion annually to process payments, and new payment methods affect customer choice, cost, cash flow and risk, so reconciliation, settlement and revenue accounting must be built into the transformation from the start rather than simply digitizing existing complexity. Biometrics are increasingly part of normal travel and make airport processing faster, but many solutions are airport- or country-specific, so their full value is not yet realized; the standards for secure digital passports exist with ICAO's Digital Travel Credential, more than eight in ten passengers are interested in using a digital passport to check in, and wider adoption depends on governments issuing and accepting digital travel credentials. The 2026 events are the first editions held in North Asia, and China's airlines carried more than 770 million passengers in 2025, a record high.