POLAND – 2025/12/04: In this photo illustration, a Booking.com logo seen displayed on a smartphone. (Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Travel has long been a discretionary spending priority, but the next decade may redefine what travelers are willing to organize their lives around. For Booking.com, the catalyst is not just a beach vacation, a city break or a bucket-list international trip. Increasingly, it is the rise of sports-led travel.
Ian Ackland, Managing Director for Booking.com in the Americas, sees a powerful convergence forming: younger consumers (think Gen Z) prioritizing experiences, global sporting events creating new reasons to travel, and digital platforms making it easier to assemble multi-part trips around a single unforgettable moment.
“The desire to travel, we know, is the number one priority of discretionary spend,” Ackland told me. “What this allows us to do is put the lens over that piece around, well, what does travel mean when it comes to sporting events?”
A Decade Of Sports-Led Travel
The timing matters. The Americas are entering an unusually dense calendar of global sports events. Ackland pointed to a run that starts with the World Cup and extends through the Summer Olympics, Rugby World Cups, the Winter Olympics and other major events through 2034.
That sports calendar is not just an event strategy. It is a travel strategy.
Ackland noted that Booking.com’s research surveyed 6,000 people across the Americas to better understand intent to travel for sporting events. One headline finding: 81% of travelers said they planned to travel for some major event.
The generational split is even more interesting. According to Ackland, Gen Z and Millennials over-indexed significantly, with 91% saying they would spend $5,000 or more to attend a once-in-a-lifetime sporting event and postpone other life events to help fund it. Gen X came in around 71%, while Boomers were in the high 30s.
This is not merely about sports fandom. It is about how younger consumers define value. For many, a once-in-a-lifetime sports trip is not a luxury splurge. It is a priority purchase.
Lola Young at the Rolling Stone Future of Music during the SXSW Conference & Festivals held at the Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater on March 12, 2026 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images)
SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images
The Experience Economy Is Becoming More Intentional
For years, brands have talked about the experience economy as a broad consumer shift. What Booking.com’s data suggests is that experience spending is becoming more specific, more planned and more emotionally charged.
A major sports event gives travelers a reason to go, but it rarely stands alone. A World Cup match, an NBA game, a WNBA event or a UEFA final becomes the anchor around which the rest of the trip is built. Travelers add hotels, flights, cars, restaurants, attractions and local experiences.
That is where Booking.com’s “connected trip” strategy becomes relevant. Ackland said Booking.com is seeing faster growth in reservations that include more than one element. A hotel might be paired with a car, a flight or an experience. Those multi-vertical transactions are still a low double-digit percentage of total business, he said, but they are growing at roughly three times the pace of standard transactions.
This is a notable signal. The consumer is not just buying inventory. The consumer is assembling a memory.
The Bleisure Layer
The sports-travel trend also intersects with bleisure travel, particularly in the U.S. market. Ackland said recent Booking.com partner conversations showed the blending of business and leisure was stronger among U.S. travelers than among travelers from other nations.
That tracks with real behavior. A business traveler may not “move” a meeting to attend an event, but they might suggest dates that happen to align with a concert, game, festival or food experience. The work trip becomes the permission structure. The experience becomes the emotional payoff.
For travel brands, this creates new moments of influence. The booking journey is no longer just about finding the lowest rate or the closest hotel. It is about understanding why the traveler is going, what else they want to do, and how to reduce friction across the trip.
Loyalty Moves From Points To Instant Utility
Booking.com’s Genius program provides another window into how loyalty is evolving. Ackland described Genius as an instant-reward discount program with three levels. Levels 2 and 3 are based on higher travel frequency, and those members represent about 30% of Booking.com’s audience but account for roughly the mid-50% range of reservations.
That is a meaningful concentration of value.
More important, Genius is not limited to one travel category. Ackland said it extends across hotels, car rentals and flights, with deeper discounts unlocked as members move through the levels.
This matters because the next generation of loyalty is less about abstract points accumulation and more about immediate relevance. If a traveler is building a trip around a once-in-a-lifetime event, the winning loyalty proposition may be the one that helps them save, simplify and personalize the broader journey.
Loyalty becomes less of a program and more of a utility layer.
AI And The Trust Gap
Ackland raised another topic shaping the future of travel: artificial intelligence.
He said roughly three-quarters of travelers want some level of AI-powered recommendation. Booking.com is investing in AI across discovery and search, including what Ackland called “search in your own words,” which allows travelers to use free-text prompts rather than beginning with a traditional linear destination search.
In practical terms, this means a traveler could search based on intent, not just geography. Instead of starting with “Paris hotel,” the traveler could ask for a family-friendly place near a specific venue with good transit, strong reviews and access to local food experiences.
The opportunity is obvious. The trust issue is equally obvious.
AI adoption may be running ahead of consumer confidence. For a simple domestic trip, many consumers may accept AI recommendations quickly. For a larger trip—Japan, the World Cup, the Olympics—the stakes are higher. Consumers may want the convenience of AI but still need reassurance.
Ackland believes Booking.com’s review infrastructure helps close that trust gap. AI can surface relevant reviews and summarize them in ways that make search more personalized and results more useful. In his view, AI becomes a technology-enabled version of the travel agent: informed by broad data, but ultimately useful only if it increases confidence.
“The ability to make search better,” Ackland said, comes from making it “more personalized” and “more unique to me.”
What Brands Should Learn
The bigger story is not just that people will travel for sports. It is that major live events are becoming organizing principles for consumer spending.
Sports, concerts, festivals, food tours and attractions are no longer add-ons. They are increasingly the reason the trip exists. That shift has implications for airlines, hotels, OTAs, credit card companies, destinations and loyalty platforms.
The brands that win will not simply sell rooms, seats or tickets. They will help consumers assemble experiences with less friction and more confidence.
For Gen Z and Millennials especially, the memory is the product. The trip is the platform. And the event is the spark.
