Duff on Hospitality Law

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . . Our Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, August 8, 2025, is below. For several weeks now, we’ve all seen and read the many headlines regarding American Airlines planned use of AI for rate setting. This week’s Update features several stories on the controversy, including a report into the art and science of rate setting. Enjoy.

• • Expedia Reports Strong Second Quarter.  Buoyed by its B2B, advertising and international lines of business, Expedia this past week reported strong second quarter performance and increased its guidance on gross bookings and revenue for the full 2025 calendar year.  Like other hospitality companies that reported this past week on weakening U.S. demand, Expedia experienced some of the same slow down but managed to offset the weakness through its other businesses.  Of the three primary Expedia Group companies (Expedia, Hotels.com and VRBO), Expedia faired the best as the remaining two continue to experience platform transition challenges.  Expedia continues to work with AI platforms – namely OpenAI and Google – to drive traffic to its websites, which according to Expedia CEO, Ariane Gorin, converts “well.”

• • Southwest Tickets Now Available on Booking Holdings’ Websites.  Southwest Airlines announced last week that its tickets are now available on Agoda, Booking.com and Priceline (among other BH websites).  This latest announcement further evidences Southwest’s complete transition from being an exclusively direct channel retailer to embracing a wide variety of third party intermediaries.

• • Booking.com Launches Co-Branded Credit Card in U.S.  After months of rumors and speculation, Booking.com finally revealed its first U.S. co-branded credit card, the Booking.com Genius Rewards Visa Signature Credit Card.  Cardholders will receive travel credits (each worth $1.00) in varying amounts for purchases – up to 6% for hotels and short term rentals booked on the Booking.com app.  Cardholders will also be immediately enrolled in the third (highest) tier of Booking.com’s Genius loyalty program.  Hoteliers must keep a close eye on the card and any future cardholder promotions to ensure the card doesn’t undermine pricing on the Booking.com platforms.

Our next Update will be for the week ending Friday, August 29. 

Good Sunday evening from Seattle . . . Our Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, August 1, 2025, is below. It was another slow week in the online travel world with Booking Holdings again capturing most of the industry’s headlines. Enjoy.

• • Booking Holdings Reports Strong Second Quarter. This past week Booking Holdings issued its second quarter earnings release (for those interested, a copy of the earnings call transcript is linked below). Booking Holdings’ strong market position in countries outside the United States (as compared to its primary competitors, Expedia and Airbnb) once again proved to be its saving grace as the U.S. leisure market continued to struggle. Highlights from the recent release for me include the following:
    • Booking.com’s loyalty program, Genuis, showed meaningful growth. Booking.com plans to soon add additional travel products (beyond accommodations) to its awards program.
    • In an effort to head off the effects of Google’s AI summaries on traditional search engine marketing, Booking Holdings is diversifying its marketing investments, including a 25% (YOY) increase is spending on social media platforms. According to Booking Holdings CEO, Glenn Fogel, these investments will allow Booking Holdings to engage with customers earlier at the inspiration stage of the travel funnel.
    • With regard to AI and its growing importance within Bookings Holdings, Fogel provided updates on efforts at Priceline, Agoda, Booking.com, Kayak and OpenTable to grow their use of AI organically. Fogel also confirmed previously reported collaborations with OpenAI (including OpenAI’s recently announced ChatGPT Agent), Microsoft and Amazon as a means of expanding Booking Holdings’ sources of future travelers.
  • Trust Remains a Concern for Most Users of AI. Booking Holdings released last week The Global AI Sentiment Report, which shares important insights gained by Bookings Holdings from over 37,000 consumers in 33 markets. While the Report details consumers’ overwhelming excitement about the new technology (and growing interest in using the technology in the future), concerns among consumers remain. I encourage everyone to take 30 minutes to review the Report.
  • Yet Another Class Action Targeting Booking.com. This past week saw news of yet another potential class action against Booking.com over its pricing (e.g., rate parity) practices. This latest claim is being brought by the UK’s Bed and Breakfast Association on behalf of thousands of UK accommodation providers. The same concerns I expressed earlier over similar previously announced class actions (particularly for those providers with negotiated portfolio-wide contracts with Booking.com) apply equally to this newly announced effort.

Have a great week everyone.

With summer in full swing, it is no surprise that this past week was another slow week in the online travel industry.  Our recommendation?  Enjoy this week’s Update with a drink in hand by your pool or other favorite body of water.  Enjoy:

• • OpenAI Launches Agent Mode.  On Thursday this past week, OpenAI officially released new functionality (ChatGPT Agent) that can search and book hotels, activities and flights on behalf of its ChatGPT chatbot users.  Pro, Plus and Team users of ChatGPT have or will soon have access to the new agent with Enterprise and Educator users to follow.  According to ChatGPT, the agent can create custom travel plans (using users’ provided destinations and preferences) and itineraries complete with maps and hotel and activities bookings.   Over time, as the agent learns of users’ preferences, the agent will factor those preference into its proposed plans and itineraries.  A demo released as part of the launch shows a user using the new agent to plan and book a trip for an upcoming wedding.  In the demo, the agent uses Booking.com to review hotels’ availability and rates and then book. 
    
    
  • New Intermediary Seeks to Help Hoteliers Leverage AI Platforms.  DirectBooker, a startup backed former TripAdvisor CEO, Steve Kaufer, and ex-Google Travel head, Richard Holden, is building a B2B platform to feed rich (differentiated) hotel content (ARI) to AI platforms directly and allow hoteliers to bypass the emerging content stranglehold held by OTAs.  What’s the business model you might ask?  Early indications from DirectBooker are that they are looking at traditional CPC or CPA models.  Additional details about the startup’s plans are available on the DirectBooker website. 

Google captured most of the online travel industry’s headlines this past week as it seeks to “balance” the competing interests of regulators, on the one hand, and intermediaries and direct sellers, on the other hand. As long as traditional search maintains its outsized influence on online travel, the outcome of these discussions will have a significant effect on the industry. Whether AI makes irrelevant this entire controversy remains to be seen – for now.

• • Closed Door Negotiations Produce No Definitive Solution for Google. This past week the European Commission conducted two days of closed door workshops between Google and online intermediaries and direct sellers from the retail and travel industries. At issue were Google’s latest proposals for presenting search results in compliance with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) (or at least Google’s interpretation of the DMA). Failure to reach a solution will likely lead the EU to impose significant fines against Google.
    
    Two options were presented at the closed door meetings. The first option placed intermediaries at the top of search results where users could open an accordion style listing of the intermediary’s products and services. Under this first option, direct sellers could only place links within the intermediaries’ search results. The second option featured a box (below and separate from the intermediaries) where direct sellers could place links to their products and services. Between the two presented options, direct sellers generally favored the second option though questions around which sellers are featured in the box, how sellers are ranked, how sellers’ content is sourced and how much content can be displayed remain unanswered.
    
    Google’s latest proposals underscore the challenging position that hoteliers find themselves. While Google is understandably motivated to avoid significant penalties under the DMA, its interpretation of the DMA, specifically, the requirement that it not discriminate against competing service providers (e.g., travel intermediaries) is leading it to favor competing intermediaries (e.g., Booking.com / Expedia) over hoteliers, who are owed, at best, an obligation to be treated fairly.

Good Sunday morning from Seatle . . .  Our Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, April 4, is below.  This week’s Update features a number of follow up stories on topics covered in recent Updates, including Booking.com’s challenges with fraudulent property listings and the major OTAs embrace of agentic AI.  I’ve also included a few stories on corporate travel, including an update on airline adoption of NDC and details of Steve Singh’s latest investment.  As many of you might recall, I predicted (prematurely) that 2024 was going to be a year of great change in the GDS world.  While we saw some changes (and one outspoken proponent of NDC abruptly change course), I still believe the industry will see dramatic changes in corporate and managed travel distribution in the year(s) ahead.  Enjoy.

• • Airlines’ Adoption of NDC Moving Slowly.  Henry Harteveldt’s group, Atmosphere Research Group, released a report last week detailing the airline industry’s transition away from legacy Edifact technology to IATA’s newer NDC technology.  Of the airlines surveyed, only 27% have begun a wholesale transition to NDC for order processing, servicing and settlement capabilities (so-called “Offer and Order”).  Eighty two percent (82%) of the airlines surveyed expect to make the transition by 2029.  According to Harteveldt, whether the industry attains these goals in partially dependent on the GDSs and whether they commit the resources to make needed technology improvements.  Hoteliers hoping to join the NDS parade may have a few years ahead of them.
    
    
  • UK Consumer Group Which? Calls Out Booking.com.  In its recent report, “What Went Wrong with Booking.com?”,  UK consumer group Which? identified several areas of concern contributing to an increasing number of fraudulent STR property listings.  According to the report, Booking.com’s initial denial of and then slow response to the concerns raised in the report have only compounded the concerns.
    
    
  • Expedia’s Considered Adoption of AI.   In a recent interview with CIOdive.com, Expedia’s SVP of data and AI, Shiyi Pickrell, shared details of the company’s considered approach to AI.  Echoing earlier statements of Expedia CEO, Ariane Gorin, Shiyi described AI as a tool to accelerate its existing strategic objectives – better experiences, growth and operational efficiencies.  Employees at Expedia are given access to an AI “playground,” where employees can experiment with 19 large language model AI platforms (including agentic platforms).  Potential use cases identified through use of the playground are then vetted by the company’s responsible AI council (consisting of representatives from technology, security and legal) to ensure each is vetted appropriately. 
    
    
  • Google Launches Hotel Price Drop Tool.  In case you missed the many stories these past few weeks detailing the recent launch of several new Google trip planning tools (many of which feature AI integrations), Google has launched a new hotel pricing tool (similar to Google’s existing Google Flights product) that alerts users when identified hotels reduce prices.  The new tool was released globally last week. 

I hope you have a great week.

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . .  Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, March 28, 2025, is below.  This week’s Update features stories on a variety of topics including Perplexity’s big booking announcement, HotelTonight’s introduction of Airbnb’s first ever “discounts” and two perspectives on Booking.com’s budding partnership with OpenAI.  I hope you enjoy.

• • Booking a Hotel Now Possible Through an AI Search Engine.  Clunky, yes, but Perplexity’s new booking platform is a big step.  Perplexity announced last week that it has partnered with TripAdvisor and Selfbook to launch the first AI search engine booking platform.  In response to natural language searches, users of AI search engine will receive a list of hotel properties created from content provided by TripAdvisor.  Users selecting one of the roughly 140,000 properties on Selfbook’s booking and payment platform will be able to book and pay for their booking without leaving Perplexity.  Users selecting properties not on Selfbook’s platform will be re-directed to third-party websites like Skyscanner (part of the Trip.com group) to complete the booking.   Today, the booking option is only available to website users, though a mobile solution is on its way.   The jury is still out on whether these AI search based booking options pose a greater threat to existing intermediaries (OTAs) or suppliers (e.g., who is ultimately providing the bookable inventory).  History has shown that the tech savvy intermediaries (armed with billon dollar marketing budgets) are usually the first to leverage these new technologies.
    
    
  • HotelTonight Introduces First Airbnb Discount.  Users of Airbnb’s hotel booking platform, HotelTonight, will receive a credit (10% of the HotelTonight rate) toward a future Airbnb stay.  The credits remain valid for one year following the HotelTonight stay and are automatically applied to users’ Airbnb accounts. 
    
    
  • Two Perspectives on OpenAI’s Relationship with Booking.com.  In two separate stories last week, Skift presented the views of first OpenAI and then Booking.com on the two companies’ budding relationship.  Here are the highlights:
    • OpenAI is currently working with several clients, including Booking.com, to build industry specific applications based on the same large language model (LLM) that powers ChatGPT.
    • OpenAI has no current plans to specialize in any particular industry (like travel), but it uses travel (like other industries) to improve its general application platform.  Travel is one of the primary use cases used to test updates to OpenAI’s software.
    • OpenAI’s agentic products (like Operator) may soon be part of the parties’ growing relationship. 
    • According to Booking.com, users of its booking platform are starting to change their search behavior and including AI generated summaries as part of their booking process. 
    • Booking.com’s current efforts are largely focused on its trip planner, which it launched in 2023, though it also exploring possible uses of agentic platforms (like OpenAI’s Operator).

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . .  Our Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, March 21, is below.  This week’s Update features a number of stories on the EU’s renewed interest in pursuing competition compliance, even if in the face of threatened U.S. tariffs.  What this might ultimately mean for Google search and/or Booking.com remains to be seen.   Enjoy.

• • EU Issues Preliminary Findings Regarding Google.  The European Commission issued preliminary findings this past week concluding that Google’s “self-preferencing” of its flight and accommodation business violated the Digital Markets Act (DMA).  With these findings in hand, Google can now prepare a formal response.  Google’s initial response (noting that the findings were “misguided”) claimed that changes already made by Google to comply with the DMA were causing EU travel businesses to lose direct traffic.  Initial published reactions were mixed.  Trivago applauded the findings.  Others, particularly those concerned about the effects of further Google changes on direct bookings, raised concern.  What about Booking.com, you ask?  According to Skift, the EU Commission is monitoring Booking.com’s DMA compliance and speaking to hoteliers and others in the EU travel industry.
    
    
  • “Don’t Write Off AI as Hype,” – Chris Hemmeter.  By now, many of my readers are probably growing tired of the many stories on AI, particularly generative AI and its predicted effects on travel – at all stages of the funnel.  For some time, I too thought AI was a lot of hype (like we’ve seen in the industry in years past) and would ultimately fade away.  My perspective changed dramatically with the first demos of agentic AI like OpenAI’s Operator.  Since then, I’ve tried to persuade clients to take a closer look at AI and its likely effect on client’s existing sales, marketing and distribution practices (not unlike the disruption hoteliers experienced following 2001 with the tremendous growth of OTAs).  My efforts have seen mixed results.  If you don’t believe me, maybe you might believe Chris Hemmeter, a long-time friend, industry savant and managing partner at Thayer Ventures.  In Chris’ presentation last week at the WiT Africa conference in South Africa, Chris explains why he believes generative AI is both an existential threat to travel suppliers and enormous opportunity for industry entrepreneurs.  I hope you take the time to read the story.
    
    
  • AI-Generated Traffic Results in Higher Engagement, But Lower Conversions.  In a report released last week by Adobe, Adobe details the tremendous growth in AI-generated traffic to retail and travel sites (in some instances 1700% increase YOY).  But what about these AI users?  Adobe’s research reveals that these users are more engaged (e.g., more time spent on the website, more pages viewed and a lower bounce rate), but they are less likely to convert – at least right now (but that number is increasing, which according to Adobe, reveals that users are becoming more comfortable with these new tools).   

Have a great week everyone. 

Happy Saturday from Seattle . . .  Our Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, March 14, 2025, is below.  What started as a relatively quiet week in the travel industry (other than the concerning reports from several major airline carriers that captured much of the travel industry’s attention and reporting), finished with a bang as multiple outlets began warning on Friday of a widespread phishing campaign targeting the hospitality industry via fake Booking.com emails.  I hope you enjoy.

• Microsoft and Others Warn of Widespread Phishing Campaign Via Booking.com.  The campaign, which, according to Microsoft, began in December 2024, uses an increasingly popular social engineering technique called ClickFix to deliver malware designed to steal users’ credentials.  According to Microsoft,  “[T]his phishing attack specifically targets individuals in hospitality organizations in North America, Oceania, South and Southeast Asia, and Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Europe, that are most likely to work with Booking.com, sending fake emails purporting to be coming from the agency.”  The fake emails encourage recipients to respond to negative reviews left on the platform by purported guests.  Recipients of the emails are then re-directed to a fake page that ultimately allows the hackers to collect payment and personal information.  So why are these campaigns targeting Booking.com and not other travel platforms?  The answer isn’t clear, though earlier last week, the UK consumer watchdog Which? reported that the lack of effective checks left Booking.com wide open to fraudulent campaigns (and listings) and urged the platform to do more to prevent fraud on its side.  Even if Booking.com chooses to ignore these requests, the UK’s Online Safety Act (which takes effect this year) may force its hand – at least in the UK.
  
  
• California Legislature Is Focused on Allegedly Abusive Predictive Pricing.  California legislators have introduced five (yes, five) bills aimed at limiting or preventing predictive pricing.  Predictive pricing involves the use of various technologies (including AI) to set different prices for the same products and services (including travel) based on users’ personal information (e.g., browsing history, residence).
  
  
• Another Week and Another Booking Platform Announces Its AI Partnerships.  South Korean online travel agent, Yanolja, announced this past week new partnerships with Google and OpenAI (including OpenAI’s new agentic AI tool, Operator) to offer new products and services to hoteliers and to enhance users’ trip planning experience.
  
  
• Massachusetts AG Releases New Junk Fees Rule.  Massachusetts’ Attorney General, Andrea Joy Campbell, announced the new regulations this past week as part of National Consumer Week.   Like the FTC’s recently issued final junk fee rule (which takes effect this May), the new Massachusetts’ regulation requires hoteliers to present most prominently the total price (rate and mandatory fees) of products and services whenever pricing is presented.  Taxes and other government charges are excluded from total price, though of note, taxes and charges on a hotel that the hotel chooses to pass on to the guest are not excluded.  The regulations also expressly require hoteliers to provide the nature and purpose of the mandatory fees.  The new regulations take effect on September 2, 2025.  This newest regulation underscores the need for uniform regulation of junk fees across the United States, which is a critical component missing from the FTC’s rule. 

Have a great week.

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . .  Our Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, February 28, 2025, is below. This week’s Update features a variety of stories from a variety of sources, including some new sources. It is often easy to rely on the industry pillars – Phocus Wire and Skift – both of which do an amazing job of covering the travel world. As our Update continues to evolve, we will continue to look for new sources, new perspectives and new opinions on the stories we believe are most relevant to our readers, including a few perspectives from resources in my own backyard here in Seattle.   

For those of you interested, we are attaching a copy of the transcript from Tripadvisor’s recent earnings release call.  As I noted in last week’s Update, Tripadvisor CEO, Matt Goldberg, used the call to share some interesting details on Tripadvisor’s recently announced partnership with generative AI platform, Perplexity, as well as its collaborations with other AI platforms. 

Enjoy.

• • Another Year and Another Record Broken on Annual OTA Marketing Investments.  Every year we seem to feature the same story.  Another year and another OTA annual marketing spend record is broken.  According to recent financial reporting, Trip.com, Airbnb, Booking Holdings and Expedia Group spent a combined $17.8 billion on marketing during 2024, an increase of a billion dollars over 2023 amounts. 
    
    
  • Amazon Unveils Alexa+.  This past week, Amazon unveiled its latest iteration of its well-known voice assistant, Alexa.  Alexa+ combines the voice assistant with, you guessed it, generative AI, to produce “free flowing conversations.”  Although the many demonstrations circulated online (as least those that I saw) did not feature travel (they did include booking online restaurant reservations), Amazon claims that the new AI enabled assistant will be able to book travel for users and announced that it was launching the new service with travel partners, Booking Holdings, TripAdvisor, Uber and Fodor’s.  The service will start rolling out across the U.S. in the weeks ahead and Amazon Prime members will receive free access to the new assistant.

• • AH&LA Supports Re-Introduction of Federal Junk Fees Legislation.  This past week saw the re-introduction of junk fees legislation in both the U.S. House and Senate.  AH&LA issued statements supporting the legislation.  You may ask why federal legislation is needed at this point with the FTC’s junk fees rule is scheduled to take effect in May.  In one word, pre-emption.  The FTC’s rule does not pre-empt similar junk fee efforts at the state level and allows states to freely adopt their own more restrictive (and often inconsistent) rules. 
    
    
  • Will the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA) Be Enforced Against U.S. Companies?  The last few stories in this week’s Update focuses on questions arising in Washington D.C. among President Trump and Republican law makers regarding the EU’s allegedly “select” enforcement of the DMA and DSA against U.S. technology companies.  The effort gained momentum last week with President Trump’s issuance of a new Executive Order stating, among other things, that regulations (like the EU’s DMA and DSA) will “face scrutiny from the Administration,” and U.S. Representative Jim Jordan’s letter to EU Commissioner Teresa Ribera asking her to clarify the DMA’s rules. (In each case, echoing the concerns of U.S. tech companies designated under the DMA as “gatekeepers”).  These concerns come as the EU Commission is reportedly poised to issue fines against Google for its failure to comply with the DMA.  What does this mean for hoteliers hoping to see meaningful EU mandated changes from Booking.com?  Will the fear of retaliatory tariffs convince EU regulators to limit or prevent their enforcement of these new rules against U.S. companies like Booking Holdings?  Like so much these days, no one knows.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Saturday morning from Seattle . . .   Nice to be back in balmy (25°) Seattle after a week working in frigid New York. 

This week’s Update presents yet another announcement by yet another generative AI platform about yet another AI tool that has direct application to (and is likely to have a major disruptive effect on) online travel.  I’ll admit that I’ve been a little slow to grasp AI’s potential, particularly for online travel.  Maybe each of you were already aware of (and planning appropriate responses to) the many collaborations between legacy travel platforms (Kayak and TripAdvisor) and generative AI platforms (Gemini, Perplexity) featured in our Updates over the past few weeks.   But, even with that knowledge, I’m guessing that this week’s demonstration by OpenAI of its new “Operator” agent tool was a wake-up call for at least a few of you. It was for me.

We feature only two stories in this week’s Update – stories that offer two leading industry perspectives on last week’s OpenAI demonstration.    Enjoy.

• • OpenAI’s Agent “Operator” Can Book Travel.  I’ll let our readers review this week’s two stories themselves.  Some of my immediate reactions include (i) interesting to note that the demonstrations feature only well-known travel intermediaries (Booking.com, Priceline and TripAdvisor) and not suppliers, and (ii) do traditional online marketing concepts of SEO, SEM, keywords and negative keywords apply in this context (in other words, how does one affect the Operator agent’s preferred travel resources)?  Application of this new tool could cement intermediaries’ position in the travel distribution landscape (if always the preferred choice of such agents) or erode the position (if such agents ultimately prefer booking direct through the relevant suppliers).  So much to think about here. 

I hope to see many of you this next week in San Diego at the annual HEDNA distribution event.  If you do plan to attend, please email or text (206-321-8386) so that we can connect while there.  Have a great week everyone.