A two-day forum in Paris this October will put one uncomfortable question on the table: what happens to travel when AI systems from rival countries start planning trips for us — and they don't play by the same rules?

The Global Travel Futures Forum runs on 28 and 29 October, organised by the Global Resilience Network (GRN) together with Atout France, the European Travel Commission, the European Tourism Association and Sorbonne University. Around 250 senior figures from travel, tech, finance, government and academia are expected. The premise is that there is no single AI future — the US, Europe, China, the Middle East and India are each building distinct systems shaped by their own ideas about data, trust and sovereignty. Rather than asking which approach wins, the forum will ask how the travel industry can cope when a single trip crosses all of them.

Travel is a sharp test case. One holiday can involve airlines, airports, rail, hotels, border checks, payments and booking platforms across multiple jurisdictions. As AI agents increasingly search, book, pay and handle disruption on a traveller's behalf, no single company or country controls the whole chain. Sessions will tackle the practical fallout: who owns a traveller's identity and data when borders are crossed, how competing AI agents and payment systems talk to each other, and where human judgement should stay in charge.

The opening keynote comes from Dr Luc Julia, co-creator of Siri and former chief scientific officer at Renault, who deployed the world's first in-car LLM avatar. His talk at the Hôtel de l'Industrie on 29 October, AI Without the Hype, argues for cutting through inflated claims about machine intelligence — his own summary: be afraid of humans, not of AI. He'll then be quizzed on stage by BBC presenter Rajan Datar.

The signature session, You've Only Seen One Future: Five AI Pathways Meet in Paris, compares how AI is developing across the US, Europe and UK, China, the Middle East and India. Confirmed names include Eduardo Santander of the European Travel Commission, European Commission tourism director Maximilian Strotmann, ETOA's Tom Jenkins, Atout France CEO Adam Oubieh, and representatives from Alibaba, Sabre, BCG and HBX Group.

The event opens on 28 October at the Sorbonne with an academic and student-focused programme on AI, traveller behaviour and tourism in 2030, including findings from a Generation Z survey.

There's a sobering stat behind all this: EU enterprise AI adoption sits at just 20 per cent in 2025, ranging from 42 per cent in Denmark down to 5.2 per cent in Romania. GRN's wider programme continues at World Travel Market London in early November and returns to China in 2027.

For travellers, this matters more than it might sound. The AI that one day rebooks your cancelled flight, handles your visa data or pays a hotel in a foreign currency will be shaped by decisions debated at forums like this one — and by how well incompatible national systems end up working together. Participation in the Paris forum is by invitation.