2025: The Year Customer Expectations Transformed

And What It Means for Service, Personalisation and Travel Operations.

As we close out 2025, one thing is clear: this year wasn’t about isolated breakthroughs or shiny new tools. It was about foundational change.
Across customer operations, travel technology and enterprise IT, we saw themes repeat themselves — in boardrooms, demos, workshops, RFPs and client conversations. Patterns emerged. Priorities shifted. Expectations rose.

Here’s our view of the five shifts that truly defined 2025 — and why they matter.

1. AI Became Infrastructure, Not a Buzzword

For years, AI was framed as “the next big thing”. In 2025, it became the backbone of digital operations.

This wasn’t the year of one standout model. Instead, it was a year characterised by a mindset reset. Businesses stopped experimenting at the edges and started weaving AI directly into their core architecture. AI moved from innovation labs to enterprise diagrams.

Two developments accelerated this shift:

• Agentic workflows matured — systems able to act, not just respond. The value moved beyond conversational interfaces to actual task execution, orchestration and decision-making.
• Small language models (SLMs) proved their strength. Lighter, faster, lower-cost models delivered high accuracy for operational use cases, especially in tightly defined domains like travel, logistics and customer service.

The conversation finally moved from “what can AI do?” to “how do we design around it?” — and that subtle shift is going to reshape the years ahead.

2. Cyber Threats Reached New Heights — And Raised Expectations

2025 will be remembered as a year where the cyber landscape escalated dramatically. Multiple well-known UK brands suffered attacks — visible reminders that vulnerability isn’t theoretical. It’s immediate.

The message to every organisation was clear: security can’t stay static while technology evolves at speed.

As AI accelerates what’s possible for businesses, it simultaneously accelerates what’s possible for attackers.

The organisations that responded best were those who:

• built resilience into their architecture,
• invested in layered defence models, and
• treated cyber strategy as an evolving discipline, not a compliance exercise.

Security is no longer a guardrail — it’s a differentiator. Customers, partners and travellers expect nothing less.

3. ‘Disposable Code’ Arrived — And Began Reshaping How Teams Build

Perhaps one of the most unexpected behavioural shifts came from inside IT teams themselves.

A new pattern emerged: create → use → discard → rebuild.

With today’s models capable of generating working components, visualisations and tools almost instantly, teams realised something profound: the cost of building has fallen to near zero, and so has the barrier to rebuilding.

• Drop raw SQL output into a model and get a fully formed chart.
• Ask for a workflow component and get a working prototype in seconds.
• Produce, test, refine — with minimal effort.

This opens extraordinary opportunities for innovation. But it also introduces new challenges for governance, consistency, and long-term architecture.

Whether “disposable code” becomes a disruptor or a competitive advantage will depend on how organisations adapt over the next two years.

4. TMCs Reaffirmed What Really Differentiates Platforms

This year brought clarity across the travel sector: in an increasingly crowded market, differentiation isn’t found in UI gloss or feature lists. It’s found in depth.

What resonated most with TMCs was consistent:

• power — the ability to orchestrate complex workflows end to end
• flexibility — configurability that reflects the reality of travel operations
• integration strength — software that connects deeply, cleanly and reliably

When platforms go head-to-head, these capabilities become obvious very fast.
In engagements throughout 2025, TMCs repeatedly highlighted that orchestration and integration strength are where real competitive advantage lives.

The market has matured. Expectations have risen. “Good enough” no longer wins business.

5. Customer Service Finally Embraced AI — At Scale

After years of cautious testing and gradual adoption, 2025 was the year customer service teams truly stepped forward.

The shift wasn’t just technical — it was cultural. Teams began expecting AI as a default part of the operational environment, not an optional enhancement.

They wanted tools that:

• deliver faster resolutions
• improve accuracy
• reduce manual load
• and help staff focus on human, high-value interactions

AI moved from “future potential” to present-day operational necessity. And as expectations rose, the demand for reliability, transparency and real-world impact grew with it.

Looking Back — And Ahead

2025 was a year where the industry recalibrated — technologically, operationally, and strategically.
AI matured. Cyber resilience became unavoidable. Development patterns shifted. Service expectations transformed.
And across travel operations, the gap between flexible platforms and rigid ones widened noticeably.

These shifts didn’t happen in isolation. They’re interconnected — and they’re shaping the landscape we all operate in.