Duff on Hospitality Law

The Canadian Competition Bureau (Canada’s FTC) has initiated an enforcement campaign targeting hotels advertising in Canada. Here’s what you need to know:

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . .  Our Online Travel Update for the week ending May 9, 2025, is below.  What started initially as a relatively slow week in online travel picked up as the week progressed. Earnings releases captured much of the attention this past week, though Google’s announcement on its delivery of advertising for AI platforms garnered a lot of interest (and just made it into my AI presentation to the AH&LA General Counsel Committee on Thursday). For those of you who didn’t sit in on the earning release calls for TripAdvisor or Expedia, we’ve attached the transcripts for both calls. I hope you enjoy.

• • FTC Issues Additional Guidance on Pending Junk Fees Rule. The much-discussed FTC rule on junk fees takes effect tomorrow, Monday, May 12, 2025. If questions remain about the rule and its application, the FTC’s newly issued FAQs may provide some last-minute assistance. If questions still remain, please let us know. We would be happy to share the materials we presented recently as part of AH&LA’s program on the issue.

• • Expedia’s Tough First Quarter the Result of Heavy U.S. Concentration. Oh, to be Booking.com with a truly global platform. With inbound international travel to the U.S. down (particularly from Canada), Expedia was forced to reduce its full year gross bookings growth and revenue growth forecast. Highlights for Expedia came largely from its B2B and advertising businesses, which enjoyed continued robust growth (14% and 20%, respectively) in the first quarter.  Among the more interesting aspects of the quarterly release were Expedia’s announced partnership with social media platform Instagram and Expedia’s continued discussion around AI. Expedia and Instagram have partnered to allow Instagram users to create itineraries directly from the social media platform’s videos and then to book travel from the itineraries. The new tool is called Trip Matching, and it will be rolled out to U.S. users in the weeks ahead. On the AI front, Expedia continues to work with several generative AI platforms to ensure its listings appear in the platforms’ user outputs. 

• • Google Tests Advertising in AI Generated Search Results. For some time now, many have debated how AI platforms would survive financially; subscription fees alone would never sustain the kind of investments needed to support and grow their AI infrastructure. Enter Google and its Google Adsense for Search.  Google is now allowing AI platforms to connect with Google’s advertising program and deliver advertising as part of the AI platforms’ outputs. One of the first to feature Google’s ads, is AI start up, iAsk. Travel prompts to iAsk can now produce outputs featuring sponsored links from TripAdvisor, Viator, Kayak, CheapOair and American Airlines (one of the first direct suppliers we’ve seen participate in this new AI space). It isn’t clear yet how these links are triggered (e.g., keywords (or their AI equivalents)). 

Have a great week everyone. 

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . .  Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending May 2, 2025, is below. This week’s Update features stories on many of the large online players, including first quarter earnings reports (and transcripts) for both Booking Holdings and Airbnb. I hope you enjoy.

• Airbnb Looks to Hotels (Again) to Help Sustain Its Growth.  Growth in Airbnb’s traditional core markets (e.g., U.S., Canada, UK, France and Australia) slowed in the first quarter.  According to Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky, Airbnb will look to international markets and the addition of high-quality hotels to spur continued growth.  “We think almost all hoteliers in the world would love to have Airbnb as a distribution channel,” Chesky said.  Other changes discussed this past week include the removal of subpar listings from the STR platform, the introduction of a new guest ratings system and introduction of total price display (say goodbye to the toggle).   Will last week’s announcements finally mean that Airbnb becomes a legitimate hotel distribution channel (and Airbnb supports enrollments on a portfolio- wide basis), time will only tell.  We’ve heard similar statements from Airbnb in the past. 

• Booking Holdings Benefits from Global Portfolio.  While travel to the U.S. moderated during the first quarter, Booking Holdings’ global portfolio allowed it to benefit from increased travel to other destinations.  For the first quarter, Booking Holdings posted results beating most analysts’ expectations - room nights up 7% YOY, gross bookings up 7% YOY, revenue up 8% YOY and Adjusted EBITDA up 21% YOY.  The first quarter marked the first time that room nights exceeded 300 million.  Like his last quarterly earnings call, CEO Glenn Fogel again dedicated a portion of the first quarter call to the company’s AI initiatives.  In particular, Glenn noted the recent launch of Kayak.ai and the ongoing work on agentic AI developments with several leading generative AI platforms – OpenAI (Operator Agent), Microsoft (Copilot Actions)  and Amazon (Alexa+).   

• Kayak Becoming an AI Facilitator?  For some time now, we’ve featured stories identifying and explaining the many AI challenges ahead for the hotel industry.  Hoteliers seeking to capture the attention (and bookings) of users of these new platforms must now learn how to educate, train and influence these platforms in the face of growing competition from their online competitors.  Kayak CEO Steve Hafner’s recent interview with Travel Weekly provides an interesting glimpse into how these online competitors view these AI platforms and how they are hoping to capitalize on the many opportunities presented. 
  
  
• FTC Suit Against Uber Provides Helpful Reminders to Subscription and Loyalty Programs.   At the end of last month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed suit against Uber alleging that the ride sharing company’s subscription program (Uber One) charged users without their consent, failed to deliver on promised savings and maintained deceptive billing and cancellation practices.  According to the FTC, the practices violated both the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act and the FTC Act.  In the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the FTC specifically called out Uber’s false claim that subscribers to the program could achieve specified savings, Uber’s failure to make information about the subscription program readily accessible, Uber’s charging of members before prescribed dates and Uber’s maze of screens (23) and actions (32) necessary to cancel the subscription.