Demand, tech capabilities position Apac and AI as Skyscanner’s next growth frontiers: CEO Bryan Batista

[SINGAPORE] Capitalising on the Asia-Pacific’s appetite for travel, surging flight capacities and digital savviness, Skyscanner is charting a flight path to strengthen its influence beyond its European home base. 

This stronger foothold in the region will also complement the roll-out of its new products, led by artificial intelligence.

According to CEO Bryan Batista, Skyscanner functions primarily as an aggregator that provides “the deepest, most comprehensive set of travel supply and inventory, and the most competitive pricing” to help travellers make informed booking decisions.

With about half of travellers using Skyscanner not having fixed plans, it also serves as a discovery channel.

It now houses over five million accommodation listings and works with more than 100 car rental partners, he added.

The bookings do not happen with Skyscanner. Instead, it monetises a cost-per-click and cost-per-acquisition model, working with partners such as online travel agencies (OTA) and direct service providers.

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Beginning as a flight price-comparison tool launched in Scotland, it has over the years expanded into various geographies and added multiple products, reaching an average of over 160 million unique monthly travellers and facilitating more than 4.2 billion trip searches annually.

In 2016, it was acquired by Trip.com Group – then known as Ctrip – joining the global travel platform’s portfolio.

Now, Skyscanner is doubling down on Apac as its key growth frontier, while leveraging the region’s tech-forward population to drive its larger AI push, said Batista.

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While he expects all geographies the company operates in to grow in tandem, Apac is projected to be the fastest-growing region for the company.

The travel metrics back up this belief. Citing data from the International Air Transport Association, Batista highlighted that Apac marked the fastest-growing flights demand, expanding 7.8 per cent year on year in 2025.

Skyscanner also observed a 9 per cent year-on-year rise in Apac search demand.

Batista added that some 82 per cent of Apac travellers say they will travel more or the same in 2027 as they did in 2026; in Singapore, this figure goes up to 89 per cent.

The region’s appeal also lies in its peoples’ digital fluency, and their strong AI adoption.

Anthropic recently opened an office in Singapore, the CEO noted, adding that the city-state ranks second out of 121 countries in Claude AI usage, relative to its population. Skyscanner also found that 65 per cent of travellers already use AI to plan and book travel.

“We expect that AI search recommendations and eventually actions will be really quickly adopted by our Apac consumers,” said Batista.

Acknowledging their open-mindedness towards AI, he added: “I would expect that as those products launch, we’ll be testing them in these markets first.”

The journey to success

The company’s presence in Apac is not entirely new, but it is ramping up its investments in the region.

South Korea is a mature market for Skyscanner, and one where it recognises a strong “meta-search competitor” in home-grown brand Naver, Batista noted. “Korean consumers are very accustomed to comparing prices ahead of booking.”

Meanwhile, India is a high-growth market that it has already invested in substantially. Skyscanner opened its office in the country about two years ago, and has since doubled its monthly users there to about 21 million each month.

“It’s the world’s most aggressive market in terms of aircraft capacity coming online in the next five years,” said Batista.

Then, there is South-east Asia, which is “more of a developing market, from an investment perspective for (Skyscanner)”, but one with high growth opportunities.

The travel player is already live in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, and has embarked on strong brand partnerships with local collaborators, said Batista, and he added that it is now investing more in product localisation and releases in the region.

In entering any market, Skyscanner evaluates local preferences, such as the need for a local-like app interface, and supply nuances, such as the dominance of OTAs vs airlines, to adapt its strategy.

This became relevant in the marketing for Apac, Batista noted. In its established Western markets, “direct traffic is the name of the game”, with search engine optimisation and Google paid search ads driving the business.

But in Apac, nuanced branding strategies, brand partnerships and social channels have been more influential, with travellers “looking at other trusted platforms as they get to know Skyscanner”.

A new age

Complementary to Skyscanner’s Apac focus will be its development of new AI-enabled products. Several such features have already been launched.

AI is playing an increasing role in travel discovery.

Batista added: “We want to meet our travellers where they are, and if they’re on these (AI) platforms, we want to ensure that they can get the best travel comparison possible.”

This is why Skyscanner earlier this year launched an app on ChatGPT’s marketplace.

He explained that it would be “a hell of a job” for large language models to scrape hundreds of interfaces for price data in real time, so its responses may not be the most comprehensive or reliable. 

But Skyscanner has direct application programming interface connections to its partners’ websites, with real-time access to information.

The partnership thus combines Skyscanner’s trustworthy data with ChatGPT’s “excellent conversational interface”, Batista said.

Calling this “a way of the future”, he added: “I’d expect for us to launch similar initiatives on other platforms as they become available.”

Skyscanner has launched several AI-enabled beta tools.

Explore with AI helps travellers on the Skyscanner website find deals using natural language. Early testing showed strong engagement, the company said, highlighting a 60 per cent clickthrough rate to view flight options.

Additionally, Road Trip Planner uses AI technology to create personalised car-based itineraries for users with different travel styles.

Inside the organisation, AI has also been driving productivity and accelerating product delivery, Batista added. Product releases such as the ones above have doubled over the last year, with the features “coded or developed in a matter of weeks”.

Powered by this emerging technology, agentic booking is now an “area of primary interest”.

“Even just over the last year, we’ve seen the people’s willingness to engage with this type of tool increase dramatically,” said Batista, noting excitement around Meta’s Muse AI and Instinct’s basic travel booking capabilities.

“But the question is: wouldn’t they rather use a trusted travel platform to do this? We think so.”

Skyscanner is testing this technology rigorously, and Batista believes that it is making good progress, with a product just months away. 

From a demand generation perspective, the CEO predicts that AI products will become an increasingly prominent revenue generator. 

“We are still, I think, one of the best, if not the best, in helping (users) compare prices and routes,” he said.

But with AI, Skyscanner will be able to give customers more relevant responses, he added.

“We will do a better job of personalising those answers to them, and then we will also be able to help them take actions beyond that,” he summed up.