How Can DMCs Win Distribution in the Age of AI? Insights from Arival Brisbane
At TourConnect AI we spend our days helping Destination Management Companies turn enquiry volume into confirmed bookings faster, with less friction and without sacrificing the personal touch that defines great travel. So when our Founder and President Michael Herrmann joined the panel discussions at Arival 360 | Brisbane in June 2026, it was more than a speaking slot. It was a chance to put the real operational challenges of DMCs into the middle of one of the industry’s most important conversations.
Arival’s first Australian event brought together operators, distributors, technology providers and destination leaders from across Oceania and APAC. The sessions were practical, the questions sharp, and the underlying theme unmistakable: AI is rewriting how travellers discover, evaluate and book experiences. Distribution control is up for grabs.
What Was the Core Debate at Arival About Who Wins AI’s Distribution Wars?
One of the standout sessions was the Great Debate on AI’s distribution wars. The premise is straightforward and high-stakes. OTAs are large, data-rich and technologically sophisticated. They already sit between huge volumes of travellers and a fragmented supply base. In an AI-mediated world, that scale and data advantage could let them tighten their grip further.
Yet the same technology opens doors the other way. Operators who control their own inventory can manage it far more intelligently. Direct bookings via large language models become more feasible when the underlying product data is clean and current. And for DMCs, there is a particularly interesting opportunity: the chance to claw back a meaningful share of the travel-agent business that currently flows through OTAs. Better and faster AI applied to itinerary creation, response speed and data quality could make DMCs the preferred partner for agents once again.
That debate framed much of the discussion in Brisbane. It also aligns closely with what we hear every week from DMC decision-makers who use Tourplan and similar systems.
Why Are DMCs Potentially Better Positioned Than OTAs for Travel-Agent Business?
Expedia Group’s 2025 full-year figures show agency revenue accounting for roughly 22% of total revenue (around US$3.2 billion of US$14.7 billion). That is a substantial slice of business still flowing through traditional travel-agent channels. DMCs are, in many ways, the more natural supplier for those agents than pure OTAs.
Agents selling complex FIT or small-group trips need more than a catalogue of bookable products. They need reliable local knowledge, flexible itineraries, accurate live rates, and a partner who can respond quickly when plans change. A well-run DMC already owns the relationships, the contracts and the operational know-how. The missing pieces have historically been speed and consistent data quality.
How Big Is the Data-Quality and Response-Speed Gap That Pushes Agents Toward OTAs?
When a travel agent sends an enquiry, two factors decide whether the DMC wins the business or loses it to an OTA or a faster competitor: how quickly a usable itinerary appears, and how accurate and complete the data inside it is.
Industry conversations and client feedback consistently point to the same pain points. Response times measured in days rather than hours erode conversion. Incomplete or outdated rates force agents to chase clarifications. Manual re-keying between email, spreadsheets and the booking system introduces errors that later require correction. These gaps are not theoretical. They are measurable in lost conversion rates and in the quiet migration of agent volume toward channels that feel more responsive.
Closing those gaps does not require matching an OTA’s marketing budget. It requires treating speed and data integrity as core competitive metrics rather than operational afterthoughts.
What Courage Do DMCs Need to Prioritise Underserved Travel-Agent Needs?
Many DMCs already have growth opportunities on the table: new source markets, product expansion, direct-to-consumer experiments, or deeper OTA partnerships. Prioritising the unmet needs of existing travel-agent partners can feel less glamorous. It requires measuring yourself against OTA performance on response time, first-draft quality and ease of doing business, even when those agents are not yet your largest revenue line.
That measurement can be uncomfortable. It surfaces process friction that has been accepted for years. Yet the upside is structural. Agents who experience consistently fast, accurate itineraries tend to send more volume. The relationship compounds. In a market where AI is accelerating expectations on both the traveller and the trade side, the DMCs willing to set higher internal standards for agent service are the ones most likely to capture share that is currently leaking.
What Pathways Exist for DMCs to Close the Gap and Compete More Effectively?
AI is the most powerful lever available today, but not every AI tool is equal. The solutions that deliver durable advantage are those with deep integration into the existing stack—especially Tourplan and other core booking systems—and those that have already been proven commercially in live DMC environments. Generic chat interfaces that sit outside the operational workflow rarely survive the pressure of real quote volumes and real rate complexity.
Itinerary automation that draws on live availability, contracted rates, product rules and historical patterns can compress hours of work into minutes while still leaving final control with the human consultant. That combination of speed and retained expertise is what agents notice.
Non-AI pathways also exist. Some DMCs are building specialist travel-agent growth teams inside operations, focusing capacity on high-potential partners and creating clearer service-level expectations. Technology and organisational design reinforce each other. The strongest results come when both move together.
Why Might Implementing AI Now Create a Lasting Advantage as Models Improve?
We are in a year of structural reset for B2B travel. AI is moving from experimental pilots into the daily fabric of operations teams. Like any learning system, the models improve with volume and with high-quality domain data. The categories and workflows that generate the most structured usage today are likely to become the ones the technology serves best tomorrow.
DMCs that begin feeding clean, high-volume itinerary and booking data into purpose-built systems now position themselves to benefit as the technology matures. Waiting until the tools feel perfect risks handing the early volume advantage—and the resulting model refinement—to competitors who started earlier.
Can LLMs Themselves Undermine the Traditional OTA Advantage?
OTAs start from a position of strength that should not be underestimated: data scale, engineering resources and established traveller relationships. Those advantages are real. At the same time, large language models introduce a different dynamic. When travellers or agents can ask for the best-priced, most reliable option for a given set of requirements, the intermediary that simply aggregates inventory becomes less essential. The system can surface the strongest provider—whether that is an OTA, a DMC or an operator—based on price, reliability, response quality and inventory accuracy.
In that environment, the organisations that control high-quality product data and can deliver fast, accurate fulfilment gain leverage. For DMCs that already own local contracts and operational capability, the opportunity is to become the reliable answer the models prefer to recommend.
What Does This Mean for DMC Decision-Makers Right Now?
Arival Brisbane made one thing clear: the distribution landscape is being rewritten in real time. The debate is no longer about whether AI will matter. It is about who will use it to strengthen their position with the partners and travellers that matter most.
For Destination Management Companies the path is practical. Improve response speed. Raise data quality. Integrate itinerary automation deeply with systems such as Tourplan. Measure yourself against the service standards agents already experience elsewhere. The tools exist. The commercial case is visible in conversion and relationship depth. The remaining ingredient is the decision to prioritise it.
At TourConnect AI we remain focused on exactly that work—helping DMCs turn the operational friction of itinerary creation into a competitive advantage. The conversations in Brisbane reinforced why that work matters now more than ever.
