UK | The world is not moving towards a single artificial intelligence future.
The United States, Europe, China, the Middle East and India have developed distinct systems shaped by different approaches to innovation, sovereignty, trust, data and scale.
The Global Resilience Network (GRN) will bring those five pathways into one room at the Global Travel Futures Forum in Paris and test what they mean in practice for the global travel economy.
Convened with Atout France, the European Travel Commission, European Tourism Association and Sorbonne University, the two-day Forum will bring together approximately 250 senior leaders from travel, technology, finance, government, destinations and academia.
Its central question is not which AI pathway will win, but how organisations and travellers can function across systems that may not share the same rules, infrastructure or assumptions.
Travel is the proving ground
Travel has exposed the challenge faster than almost any other sector. A single journey can cross national borders, airlines, airports, rail networks, hotels, payment systems, identity checks and digital platforms. As AI agents begin to search, plan, book, pay and respond to disruption on a traveller's behalf, no one company or country controls the whole experience.
The Forum will move beyond demonstrations of individual AI tools to confront the questions now facing industry leaders.
Who orchestrates a journey that no single organisation controls? Who owns identity and data when a traveller crosses borders? How will competing AI agents, payment systems and mobility networks communicate? And where must human judgement remain in charge?
“AI is not arriving as one global system with one set of rules,” said Laurie Myers, CEO and Global Strategist of the Global Resilience Network.
“Travel cannot prepare for only one future. Resilience will depend on operating across competing ecosystems while protecting trust and human agency. Paris puts those futures side by side and asks what leaders must do now.”
Dr Luc Julia: AI without the hype
Dr Luc Julia, a pioneer in AI and connected devices, co-creator of Siri, former Chief Scientific Officer at Renault Group where he deployed the world's first in-car LLM avatar, former CTO and SVP of Innovation at Samsung, and author of There Is No Such Thing as Artificial Intelligence, will deliver the opening keynote at the Hôtel de l'Industries.
In AI Without the Hype: What Artificial Intelligence Can and Cannot Do, Julia will challenge inflated claims about machine intelligence and examine where technological capability ends and human responsibility begins. He will then join BBC presenter Rajan Datar, host of the Forum, in conversation.
Five pathways, one global industry
The Forum's signature session, You've Only Seen One Future: Five AI Pathways Meet in Paris, will compare the forces shaping AI in the United States, Europe and the UK, China, the Middle East and India.
Later sessions will test those pathways against the traveller journey, including identity, payments, mobility, interoperability, data governance, ethics and human agency.
Confirmed speakers at the forum include Eduardo Santander, CEO of the European Travel Commission (ETC), Maximilian Strotmann, Director General from the Tourism Unit of the European Commission, Tom Jenkins, CEO of the European Tourism Association (ETOA), Adam Oubieh, CEO of ATOUT France, Leon Li, Vice President of Public Affairs, and Ada Xu, Director International from Alibaba and Fliggy, Rylan Henriques, Managing Director and Partner at BCG, Javier Cabrerizo, Chief Strategy, Transformation and AI Officer and Carlotta Galvin, Head of ESG both at HBX Group, and Philippe Person, Director of Investment at Caisse des Dépôts, as well as senior representatives from Alibaba Cloud and Sabre, GEO Tourist, MMGY, G2A, Rednote, Worldia, among others.
Further speakers and programme partners will be announced.
The AI adoption gap is widening
The organising theme is resilience, defined not as backing the right model or the right region but as the capacity to operate across all of them. The gap is widening rather than closing.
European Commission data cited when GRN announced its China mission put EU enterprise AI use at 13.5 per cent in 2024, while Eurostat's 2025 survey puts it at 20 per cent, ranging from 42 per cent in Denmark to 5.2 per cent in Romania.
The next generation opens the conversation
The Forum’s precursor event opens on the 28th of October at Sorbonne University with an academic and intergenerational programme exploring AI, traveller behaviour, the future workforce and tourism in 2030. It will include findings from a Generation Z survey and industry discussion.
The main event is the executive Forum, which follows on the 29th of October at the Hôtel de l'Industrie.
Part of a continuing international programme
Paris is a major stage in GRN's international executive AI programme, which began with the ETC and Atout France examining the value of Chinese AI systems, followed by a full day at Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou in May 2026.
Last week, GRN convened two executive sessions at Arabian Travel Market in Dubai, examining how AI operates across the traveller journey and what remains of brand advantage when autonomous agents plan, book and manage trips. The programme continues at World Travel Market London in November and returns to China in May 2027.
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