The AI Agent Should Belong to the Traveler

Mark Zuckerberg published a manifesto on Monday titled "The Future is for Everyone," laying out Meta's philosophy for what he calls personal superintelligence. Most of it is positioning against rival labs and regulators. But buried in it is an idea that matters to travel: the AI agent should work for the person using it, not the company that built it. If that principle wins, travel commerce changes in ways the industry has barely begun to prepare for. I wrote about this almost a year ago, when I asked OpenAI's chairman Bret Taylor at Skift Global Forum whether travelers should own their AI memory or whether platforms should control it. Zuckerberg's manifesto answers part of that question, but not in a way the travel industry should find comforting. Every Travel Company Is Building the Wrong Agent Consider what every major travel company has built so far. Booking.com launched a trip planner. Expedia built Romie. Airlines rolled out chatbots. Hotel chains intro