WiT 2026 • Singapore
WiT 2026 in Singapore, held from September 30 to October 2 at Marina Bay Sands, was a meticulously curated, high-impact conference focusing on agentic AI, distribution economics, and the lasting importance of trust in Asia’s travel-tech dialogue. Celebrating its 21st edition under the theme “21: A New Beginning,” the event served as a strategic summit for OTAs, airlines, hotel groups, payment providers, investors, and innovators shaping the future of travel discovery, booking, and experience.
WiT Singapore is Asia’s leading travel-technology and distribution conference, designed as a content- and network-focused event rather than an exhibition. The 2026 edition spanned two locations: an Innovation Day at Pan Pacific Singapore on September 30 (featuring WiT Bootcamp, the exclusive Next Generation Leaders roundtable, and the Global Travel Tech Thinktank), followed by two days of main-stage sessions at Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre on October 1–2.
The event drew nearly 500 senior and international professionals from over 30 countries, anchored by regional HQs in Singapore and featuring speakers from AirAsia, Agoda, Booking.com, Expedia Group, Klook, MakeMyTrip, Skyscanner, Trip.com Group, Amadeus, Visa, Google, TikTok, and others.
This positioning is crucial: WiT is where discussions on distribution strategy, AI in booking processes, payments, and margins take place, occurring three weeks before ITB Asia’s focus on trade contracts and destination marketing. The conference’s value lies in its sessions, curated interviews, and the attendee network rather than booth interactions.
The 2026 program was organized into seven “acts” over two main-stage days, progressing from “The Asia Moment” and “The Provocation Moment” to “The Build,” “The Reckoning,” “Rewriting the Future,” “The Growth Map,” and concluding with “The Wager – Placing Bets on What’s Next.” The central theme was agentic AI: more than half of US travelers now use AI for travel, and agentic AI is the top investment priority for a third of travel companies, despite only 9% feeling fully prepared, down from 12% the previous year.
This tension between rapid consumer adoption and industry readiness was a recurring theme in nearly every session. Expedia Group highlighted that around 68% of travelers use AI for trip decisions, but only about 8% feel confident booking through it. Wego’s CEO predicted that AI agents could surpass direct consumer traffic in bookings within two to three years. Skyscanner’s first WiT appearance emphasized moving “from search to answers,” ultimately acting on travelers’ behalf, with “trust is the moat.”
Noteworthy sessions and industry insights
Tony Fernandes (Capital A/AirAsia) made his anticipated WiT debut amid a jet-fuel spike, asserting that crises are catalysts and that AirAsia MOVE must be “quite different” instead of another OTA clone.
ixigo’s Rajnish Kumar shared an AI-native rebuild story: isolating 40–50 people from the rest of the company to develop an app with agents that auto check-in, hunt cheaper fares, and reconfirm hotels, arguing that “if you’re not really full stack, you won’t even survive in the age of AI.”
Klook’s Eric Gnock Fah described AI as “a coffin or a saviour,” while redirecting product resources toward a booking-capable chatbot and noting that offline merchants remain the bigger competitor.
MakeMyTrip’s Rajesh Magow countered “revenge travel” narratives, citing sustained demand and 75% repeat-customer transactions as evidence of loyalty built on word of mouth.
Booking.com’s Laura Houldsworth unveiled AI-first brand tests alongside the core business, noting that 84% of regional travelers now view travel as a wellbeing necessity.
Hotel 101 Global’s Hannah Yulo-Luccini illustrated operational extremity: a 680-room hotel operated with just 30 staff by standardizing everything down to the light bulb, with robot housekeepers and 90% of bookings via OTAs as “marketing.”
The Ascott’s Tan Bee Leng emphasized back-end orchestration—connecting inventory, reservations, payments, and loyalty—before front-end AI can “create beautiful music in harmony.”
Panels on loyalty (HeyMax vs Pelago), payments (“travel companies have to be fintech companies,” according to Agoda’s Timothy Hughes), and agentic distribution rounded out the day, closing with a human touch on trust, relationships, and taste as the uniquely human advantage.
WiT’s reputation for being “blunter than most industry events” was upheld: featuring onstage interviews and candid debates rather than sponsored keynotes, with OTA executives, hotel groups, airlines, payment providers, and startups openly discussing distribution economics and margin allocation. The three-day flow balanced depth and networking:
Day 1 (Innovation Stage): WiT Bootcamp, Next Generation Leaders (invite-only), Global Travel Tech Thinktank (invite-only), and opening cocktails.
Days 2–3 (Main Stage): Seven thematic acts, the WiT Phocuswright Global Startup Pitch (Seedup and Scaleup winners), The Great WiT Debate, and a closing party with the WiT For Good Charity Auction.
For a luxury and hospitality audience, the most actionable insights were the operational standardization case (Hotel 101), the loyalty and high-value redemption stories (Pelago’s 600,000-mile Disney cruise redemption), and the payments/fintech imperative for cross-border settlement and method proliferation (Agoda’s increase from 40 to 122 payment methods in five years).
Strategic key takeaways for travel, hospitality, and luxury brands
Agentic AI is inevitable, but trust is the differentiator. With consumers using AI to decide but not yet to book at scale, brands that earn confidence—through transparent policies, reliable fulfillment, and human escalation paths—will succeed in the next cycle.
Distribution strategy must be AI-native, not AI-wrapped. ixigo’s isolated rebuild and Booking.com’s AI-first brand tests indicate that simply adding AI to legacy systems will underperform compared to greenfield, agent-first designs.
Operational standardization unlocks tech velocity. Hotel 101’s single-room-type model demonstrates how extreme standardization accelerates robotics, dynamic pricing, and OTA-centric marketing—relevant for asset-light expansions and investor-led models.
Loyalty is shifting from points to experiences. High-value, narrative-rich redemptions (e.g., Pelago’s Disney cruise) and flexible earning models (HeyMax First’s “fly now, earn later”) suggest experiential loyalty as a lever for premium and luxury segments.
Payments are now core product. As highlighted by Agoda’s panel, travel brands must operate like fintechs—offering local methods, seamless cross-border settlement, and embedded finance—to reduce friction and capture margin.
WiT 2026 delivered precisely what its community expects: a focused, high-quality discussion on where travel’s value will emerge in an agentic-AI world, anchored by Asia’s innovators and global platforms. For those in luxury hospitality, F&B, or travel media, the most valuable signals are the shift to AI-native distribution, the operational playbook for tech velocity, and the emerging loyalty and payments trends that will define premium experiences in the next 12–24 months.
For more details : https://www.witevents.com/
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