Why Agentic AI Is the Biggest Threat to Legacy Hotel Software Vendors

Private equity prices technology. Vivek Bhogaraju, Executive In Residence at private equity firms, has spent years applying that discipline to hospitality and travel tech.

That perspective makes him a sharp voice at the upcoming  Skift Data + AI Summit this June. While much of the AI conversation in travel leans toward possibility, he focuses on what happens inside the system as agentic AI takes on work that fragmented stacks were never built to handle.

Where do you see the biggest opportunities for AI to impact business outcomes in travel?

“Hotels have been held back for years by fragmented tech stacks, information silos, and subscale (and fragmented) solution providers that kept digital transformation at scale out of reach.

AI agents are the perfect antidote, stitching together disparate datasets to unlock revenue and boost profitability that were operationally impossible before.

The incremental opportunity here dwarfs the current combined software spend in hospitality and travel.”

Which AI trend will reshape travel operations in the next few years?

“Agentic AI, without question. We are moving from AI that suggests to AI that acts — and in travel, that means autonomous agents handling, for example:

• Competitive rate shopping
• Pricing and inventory optimization
• Guest communications
• Meetings and groups proposals end-to-end

This is a reckoning for legacy hotel software vendors sitting on tech debt and walled gardens, because agents do not care about proprietary lock-in; they care about getting the job done.”

What misconception about AI in travel do you want to correct?

“The biggest misconception is that AI will commoditize everything overnight, and no travel tech company is safe. Disruption risk is not uniform.

Companies with deep proprietary data, embedded workflows, and genuine domain expertise are more insulated, while point solutions built on publicly available data should be worried.

Travel brands and travel tech companies actively investing in agent layers, reimagining workflows, and designing thoughtful human-agent interactions will be far better positioned than those waiting for the dust to settle.”

What’s the single most important factor for scaling AI in travel operations?

“AI readiness, full stop. If your data is trapped in silos, inconsistent, or inaccessible, no amount of AI investment will move the needle.

But beyond the foundation, hospitality and travel are deeply human — so the teams that pair data discipline with human taste and judgment rather than just chase brute automation will have the real edge.

Travel brands and travel tech companies building proprietary semantic layers and thoughtful agent-human interaction layers today are the ones who will shape and monetize AI in travel tomorrow.”

Continue the Conversation in NYC

Skift Data + AI Summit draws operators, investors, builders and technology leaders deploying capital and making platform decisions right now.

Vivek is one of several voices in the room who have seen too many technology cycles to mistake momentum for moat. 

That level of thinking, applied to data and AI in travel right now, is what makes this room matter.