Expedia Group’s VP of Marketing, Brandon Ehrhardt, says the travel industry is facing a content overload problem, and the brands that win in 2026 will be the ones that hold onto a human voice. In a recent WiT Studio interview, he argued that the rush to generate endless marketing materials through artificial intelligence is producing what he calls “AI slop,” and that more output doesn’t automatically mean better engagement. “Just because you can bulk create content or creatives doesn’t mean more is necessarily better,” Ehrhardt said, warning that travelers are quick to tune out generic, mass-produced messaging.
His central point is that travelers are fragmenting across more channels, languages, and subcultures than ever before. That makes it harder for a single campaign to resonate with everyone, but it also raises the stakes for brands to speak clearly to specific audiences. He suggested that the most memorable travel brands in the coming year will be those that stay culturally tuned and locally relevant, even as they operate at a global scale.
The interview also touched on Expedia Group’s newly released Unpacked 2026 insights, which point to sports tourism as a major growth area. Ehrhardt framed this trend as more than just entertainment, noting that travelers are drawn to the cultural immersion that comes with attending live events in different cities and countries. Set-jetting, or traveling to destinations featured in movies and television shows, also appears to have staying power rather than fading as a passing fad.
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What makes these trends tricky for marketers is that they sometimes pull in opposite directions. Quiet countryside “readaways” are growing alongside high-energy sports trips, and Ehrhardt acknowledged that brands have to decide where to focus without losing their identity. The challenge, he said, is balancing bespoke, localized storytelling with the efficiency that scale demands.
That tension is not new, but the pressure is different now. AI tools make it cheap to produce variations of an ad or a blog post for every possible audience segment. The result, however, can be a sameness that erodes trust. If every brand sounds like every other brand, travelers have little reason to remember any of them.
Ehrhardt’s argument suggests that the winning move is not to produce more, but to produce with more intention.
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The conversation also moved into harder territory, including overtourism and sustainability. He referenced early data from Expedia’s “Smart Travel Health Check” with WTTC, an initiative designed to raise awareness of how tourism impacts local communities. The goal is to spotlight pressure points before they become crises, though Ehrhardt stressed that responsibility sits with the industry as a whole rather than with any single company.
He also pushed back on the idea that AI will replace marketers. Instead, he described the future marketer as a human generalist who is amplified by AI, not substituted by it. That means creative teams will need to rethink which skills matter most, and which capabilities are underdeveloped today but will be essential in the next decade.
Ehrhardt’s comments arrive as travel brands experiment with AI-driven personalization, dynamic pricing, and automated customer service. The tools are powerful, but the interview makes a case that the human element remains the differentiator. Travelers are looking for connection, and a perfectly optimized campaign that lacks warmth will not deliver it. For marketers, the takeaway is less about mastering the latest AI feature and more about deciding where human judgment adds value. That could mean choosing which stories to tell, which audiences to serve, and which trends to ignore. His framing suggests that the brands that thrive will be those that treat AI as a support system, not a replacement for taste.