Virtuoso’s latest pulse survey shows travel suppliers and advisors heading into 2026 with rising confidence, strong pipelines, and highlighting travel trends.
Virtuoso Partners Are Feeling Good About 2026
I spend a lot of time talking about what travelers want, but every once in a while it is worth stepping back and looking at what the people selling travel are actually seeing. Virtuoso (a consortium of luxury travel agencies) just released its January 2026 Network Pulse Survey, polling 908 preferred partners (travel vendors like American Airlines, Marriott, and Viking Cruises) and 1,468 travel advisor members across all nine of its global regions. The results paint a picture of an industry that is not just recovering but genuinely confident about where things are headed.
On the partner side, optimism jumped six points from July’s survey to 62%. That is a meaningful swing. Even more telling, the share of partners describing their outlook as pessimistic dropped to just 3%, down from the highest level the survey had ever recorded six months ago. Uncertainty remains elevated at 36%, driven largely by geopolitical concerns from surveyed participants in the UK, Ireland, and parts of Southeast Asia, but the overall trajectory is clearly positive.
Cruise lines are far and away the most bullish supplier category right now, with 88% expressing a positive outlook. Tour operators follow at 75%. Hotels, which make up the largest share of Virtuoso’s partner base at 630 respondents, are more measured but still trending in the right direction.
What Is Driving Partner Confidence?
When you ask partners why they feel good, the answer is pretty simple: the pipeline is full. Leads and booking volume ranked as the number one driver of optimism at 63%, followed by client budgets and traveler spend at 51% and overall financial health at 47%. Cruise lines were especially likely to point to changing client preferences and macroeconomic trends as additional factors boosting their outlook.
The booking numbers back this up. Nearly three in five partners (59%) reported an increase in bookings over the past six months, a gain of 10 points from July. Partners reporting a decline fell 13 points to just 12%. That is a dramatic improvement in a short window and suggests that the softness some suppliers felt in mid-2025 was more of a pause than a trend.
Among partners seeing growth, the fastest-growing client segments are luxury leisure couples (74%), family travelers (65%), and multi-generational groups (60%). Ultra-high-net-worth individuals came in at 42%. Cruise partners in particular are seeing strong increases from Baby Boomer and Silent Generation clients as well as solo travelers, which tracks with the broader industry trend of older travelers prioritizing experience over savings.
How Are Travel Advisors Feeling?
On the advisor side, the mood is similarly upbeat, though the numbers look a little different. Seventy-one percent of Virtuoso members describe their outlook as optimistic, up slightly from 69% in July. Only 2% are pessimistic. The top driver of that confidence is client budgets and traveler spend at 73%, with financial health at 52% and the booking pipeline at 50% rounding out the top three.
Fifty-one percent of members reported an increase in bookings, marking the ninth consecutive survey in which a majority of advisors saw growth. That said, it is the lowest reading in the three-year window of this survey, and the share of members reporting unchanged bookings rose to 35%. Virtuoso frames this as the market settling into a new normal rather than a sign of trouble, and I think that is probably the right read.
The 2026 trends report piece also highlights some specific segments with a growing number of travelers year-over-year. The trip types seeing the most growth from the advisor side are multi-generational and family travel (68%), celebratory and milestone trips (61%), and premium ocean cruising (59%). On the behavioral side, advisors report that clients are increasingly prioritizing bucket-list travel (63%), avoiding over-touristed destinations (48%), and booking further in advance to lock in preferred properties and dates (46%).
There was no mention of reading retreats for trends in travel in 2026 despite my own findings. Travellers seek experiences over trying to save money and it’s possible that social media is a distinct driver in this, especially in the United States. One more piece that both agency owners and industry partners highlighted is closer-in bookings with a change in how travelers plan their trips and book far closer to departure than in years past.
AI Adoption Is Real On Both Sides
One of the more interesting sections of the survey covers AI adoption. Two-thirds of Virtuoso advisors (66%) are now using AI tools in their business, with travel research and fact checking (77%) and drafting communications (70%) as the top use cases. Among those using AI, 60% say it has improved their responsiveness and 52% say it allows more time for relationship building. This is particularly interesting because many consider travel agencies at risk of AI replacement amongst other office jobs.
5 minutes ago, @karpathy just dropped karpathy/jobs!
he scraped every job in the US economy (342 occupations from BLS), scored each one’s AI exposure 0-10 using an LLM, and visualized it as a treemap.
if your whole job happens on a screen you’re cooked.
average score across… pic.twitter.com/2MOUhA98yW
— Kaito | 海斗 (@_kaitodev) March 14, 2026
Partners are not far behind at 61% adoption, though their top use case is different: creating marketing content (50%) leads the way, followed by drafting communications (44%) and data analysis (43%). Among partners using AI, 61% say it frees up more time for relationship building and high-value interactions, the highest rated benefit on either side of the network.
For those not yet on board, 63% of non-adopting advisors and 54% of non-adopting partners say they have no plans to implement AI or are unsure about it. That is a sizable holdout group, but with nearly a quarter of non-users on each side planning to adopt within the next year, the gap should continue to narrow.
Conclusion
The overall takeaway from Virtuoso’s January 2026 pulse survey is that the luxury travel industry is in a strong position heading into the year. Partners are more optimistic than they have been in months, booking pipelines are healthy, and pessimism has essentially disappeared from the supplier side. Advisors are similarly confident, driven by robust client spending and a growing appetite for meaningful, bucket-list travel experiences. The fact that fulfillment is also near record highs on both sides, 83% for advisors and 86% for partners, suggests this is not just a good business cycle but a genuinely satisfying time to be in the travel industry.
What do you think about Virtuoso’s findings?
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