Duff on Hospitality Law

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.