Skift Power Rankings 2026: The Builders.

Power in the global travel industry has undergone a fundamental shift, moving away from those who merely manage legacy assets and toward the architects of the next generation of infrastructure. In this year’s iteration of the rankings, the focus has pivoted from the risk-takers of 2025 to the "builders"—the leaders who are actively constructing the platforms, products, and business models that will define how the world moves for the next decade. These individuals are not just betting capital; they are betting their reputations on a version of the future that is highly personalized, autonomous, and underpinned by agentic artificial intelligence. To identify the 2026-era vanguards, the methodology was refined to weigh infrastructure-building as the primary driver of influence, followed by novelty, attribution, scale, and breadth.

At the pinnacle of this year’s list is Decius Valmorbida, the President of Travel at Amadeus. Valmorbida’s ranking at number one is a testament to his high-stakes gamble during the height of the pandemic. While others were cutting costs, he accelerated investment into Nevio, a cloud-native retailing platform designed to move airlines away from the antiquated Passenger Service Systems (PSS) of the past and toward a modern "offer-and-order" model. Today, Nevio powers major carriers like British Airways and the Lufthansa Group, processing a quarter of Amadeus’s passenger flow. Beyond retailing, Valmorbida is architecting a future of "traveler-centric" identity. Through the $348 million acquisition of Vision-Box and the €1.2 billion acquisition of Idemia’s public security division, he is building the biometric rails that allow a traveler’s face to serve as their passport, boarding pass, and room key. This shift from provider-centric to traveler-centric data is perhaps the most significant infrastructure play in modern aviation history.

Following closely at number two is Ilan Twig, the Co-Founder and CTO of Navan. Twig’s contribution to the building movement is distinguished by his refusal to rely solely on third-party AI models. While many travel companies have simply layered OpenAI’s GPT-4 over their existing interfaces, Twig has led Navan to train its own travel-specific Large Language Models (LLMs). This proprietary stack, known as Navan Cognition, powers Ava, a virtual travel agent that resolves 60% of customer support chats autonomously. Twig’s vision is to create a "supervisor" model that prevents the hallucinations common in generic AI, making autonomous booking safe for high-value corporate fares. By owning the full stack—from the banking and card network connections to the AI reasoning engine—Navan has transitioned from a corporate travel tool to a foundational infrastructure provider for the enterprise.

The transformation of the guest experience is being led by Ahmad Al-Dahle, the CTO of Airbnb, who takes the third spot. Al-Dahle, a veteran of Apple and Meta, is tasked with evolving Airbnb from a search engine into an "understanding engine." For two decades, travel search has been a matter of applying filters for price, location, and amenities. Al-Dahle is rebuilding this as a personalization problem, using AI to understand the nuance of a guest’s intent. If the system knows a traveler is booking a family reunion rather than a solo work trip, the entire interface adapts. Furthermore, Al-Dahle is overseeing a massive internal build where AI now writes 60% of Airbnb’s code, significantly accelerating the company’s ability to launch new services like boutique hotels and local experiences.

In the hospitality sector, the "builders" are those solving the fragmentation of property management. Matt Welle, CEO of Mews (ranked 4th), has become a central figure by focusing on the "revenue per square meter" metric, a shift that encourages hoteliers to monetize every inch of their property, from co-working spaces to spas, rather than just bedrooms. Mews has institutionalized a user-centric design philosophy that has led to a 13.7% lift in revenue for properties using its embedded management tools. Similarly, Laura Calin, SVP at Oracle Consumer Industries (ranked 5th), is leading the monumental task of migrating 73,000 properties to Opera Cloud. Calin’s masterstroke was the creation of the Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform (OHIP), which opened Oracle’s historically closed ecosystem to over 3,000 third-party vendors, effectively turning a legacy software giant into an open innovation platform.

The list also highlights the democratization of travel expertise through technology. Henley Vazquez, Co-Founder of Fora (ranked 6th), has built a host agency that leverages AI to empower 15,000 travel advisors. By creating tools like "bookable quotes" and AI-driven "price drop" monitors, Vazquez has proven that human-led travel planning can scale when supported by a modern tech stack. Sharing the sixth spot is Med Benmansour of Nuitée, who is building the "Stripe of Travel." Nuitée provides the API-led infrastructure that allows banks, super-apps like Grab, and loyalty programs to embed hotel bookings directly into their ecosystems without building their own supply chains.

The legacy Global Distribution Systems (GDS) are also seeing a resurgence of building activity. Garry Wiseman of Sabre (ranked 8th) has successfully migrated 99% of the company’s computing to Google Cloud and launched Sabre Mosaic, a modular architecture that allows airlines like Riyadh Air to function as modern retailers. Wiseman’s focus on agentic AI APIs has enabled partners like MindTrip and PayPal to create conversational booking flows that handle everything from discovery to payment in a single thread. Meanwhile, Andrew Jordan, CTO of Travelport (ranked 14th), is building TripServices, a cloud-native platform designed for a generation of travelers who prefer natural language interfaces over traditional booking forms.

The corporate travel landscape is being reshaped by builders like Steve Singh, CEO of Spotnana (ranked 13th), and Evan Konwiser of Amex GBT (ranked 15th). Singh, a co-founder of Concur, is now building a "Travel-as-a-Service" platform that uses open APIs to allow other companies to build travel products on Spotnana’s rails. Konwiser, on the other hand, is managing the integration of the world’s largest corporate travel datasets following Amex GBT’s acquisition of CWT. His work on the Egencia AI engine is focused on building "trust" in autonomous systems, ensuring that travelers feel safe letting an AI agent manage their disruptions.

Hospitality infrastructure is further represented by Adam Harris of Cloudbeds (ranked 9th) and Uli Pillau of Apaleo (ranked 12th). Harris is focused on bringing enterprise-grade AI to independent hotels, offering demand forecasting with 95% accuracy. Pillau is championing the "agent-first" PMS, creating a protocol that allows AI agents to interact directly with hotel operations, such as parsing guest comments into maintenance tasks or facilitating voice-based bookings through ChatGPT. These builders are joined by Kevin King of Shiji Group (ranked 18th), whose Shiji Enterprise Platform serves the luxury tier of the market with a single guest-profile architecture that spans casinos, resorts, and global chains.

In the realm of payments and data, Prajit Nanu of Nium (ranked 17th) is building the financial plumbing that allows money to move across borders in real-time. By integrating stablecoins and programmable money, Nanu is solving the reconciliation nightmares that have plagued travel companies for decades. Luis Segredo of Hapi (ranked 22th) and Sankar Narayan of SiteMinder (ranked 23th) are also critical builders in the data layer. Segredo’s work on data normalization allows giants like IHG to offer seamless digital checkouts, while Narayan is evolving SiteMinder from a channel manager into a comprehensive hotel commerce platform that processes over AU$85 billion in booking value annually.

Finally, the rankings acknowledge the builders within the major airlines and hotel groups who are navigating the transition from legacy systems to modern digital experiences. Naveen Manga of Marriott (ranked 19th) is overseeing a $360 million digital transformation that includes a "composable chassis" for AI agents. Michael Leidinger of Hilton (ranked 21st) has replaced the aging OnQ system with a Property Engagement Platform (PEP) that is now live in nearly 7,000 hotels. At the airlines, Andrew Nocella of United (ranked 24th) has become a trendsetter by prioritizing premium demand and Starlink connectivity, while Amala Duggirala of Delta (ranked 25th) is integrating AI into every layer of operation, from baggage routing to personalized concierge services, all while maintaining the "human touch" that remains Delta’s competitive moat.

The common thread among all 25 builders is a focus on "agentic" capabilities—systems that do not just provide information but take action on behalf of the user. Whether it is a PMS that automatically adjusts room rates based on real-time demand or an AI agent that rebooks a canceled flight before the traveler even realizes there is a problem, the 2026 Power Rankings prove that the future of travel belongs to those who build the systems that work silently in the background. As the industry moves away from the era of "filters and forms" and toward an era of "intent and action," these 25 builders are the ones laying the foundation for a more efficient, profitable, and traveler-centric world.