Japan is speeding up its transition to smarter, faster border control by extending the availability of automated e-gates to foreign visitors. This initiative, known as Japan e-gate access for foreign visitors, is designed to cut down on long queues at airports, speed up immigration processing and offer a more seamless arrival and departure experience for international travelers.

TripWorks, the operator-built platform transforming how tour and activity businesses manage pricing, automation and growth, today announced the launch of A.N.I.E. (Assistant for Next-gen Interactive Engagement) – the first native AI chatbot purpose-built for the tours and activities industry that can guide a guest from question to confirmed booking entirely within a single conversation.

TBO, a global B2B travel distribution platform, has renewed its collaboration with Vervotech to integrate advanced hotel mapping capabilities, reinforcing a previously established partnership between the two companies. This renewed engagement reflects a shared commitment to enhancing the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of hotel data across TBO’s expanding global distribution network. Following its public listing, TBO has accelerated its expansion into new markets, significantly increasing the scale and complexity of its supply ecosystem. This growth has heightened the need for robust data mapping infrastructure to support multi-language content, regional variations, and diverse supplier inputs.

Australian online travel company Webjet is taking a deep dive into AI-powered travel with the launch of its new Webjet ChatGPT travel app with the aim of making searching for flights and hotels faster, easier and more intuitive.

Travelgate, part of the Travelsoft Group, is hosting the sixth edition of ConX, an invitation-only conference bringing together more than 1,000 senior executives from global travel distribution on 2 June at Poble Espanyol in Palma de Mallorca. Huawei returns as Main Sponsor for this edition. Under the theme ‘Otherness’, ConX 2026 confronts the central tension of the AI era: when every competitor runs the same models, trains on the same data and deploys the same tools, differentiation becomes the only sustainable advantage. The programme brings together the people best placed to define what that differentiation looks like — and to build it.

A revolution is taking place in China’s industrial tourism, powered by artificial intelligence, smart manufacturing and cutting-edge tourism experiences enabled by technological progress. Cities such as Wuhan are turning into the playground for AI-powered industrial tourism. Tourists can explore factories and industrial parks that use creative technologies such as robotics, automation and smart factories to produce goods for consumers.