Duff on Hospitality Law

Good Saturday morning from San Diego . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, May 1, 2026, is below. As the number of stories included in our weekly Update indicate, it was a busy week in online travel with Booking Holdings’ quarterly earnings release (a complete copy of the earnings call transcript is linked below) and a newly announced partnership between Uber and Expedia. Enjoy.

• • An End to Keywords? A question that many of us have been asking for some time now – particularly as we reconsider the keyword provisions that we’ve relied on for years now. Google’s recent announcements may provide an answer. Now that Google has introduced AI platforms that may soon replace traditional organic and paid search, Google has now turned its attention to monetizing those platforms. This past week, Google announced changes to its AI Max advertising products that will match ads to users’ conversational queries, not just a keyword or two. With these newly announced Google tools, marketers may define messages, audiences and exclusions, but Google decides (not the marketer) when such messages, audiences and exclusions match users’ intent and appear. What will markets pay to be part of this new uncertain system? Only time will tell. For those of us struggling with keyword provisions and their enforcement, it is time to re-think our approach.
  • Swiss Authorities to Examine Keyword Restrictions. The Swiss Competition Commission has announced two new investigations into search engine advertising, including advertising by three package travel companies. At issue are alleged agreements among companies to refrain from bidding on keywords associated with each other’s competing brands. Given our first highlighted story, one has to ask how relevant this investigation might be in a year or two.
  • Uber’s SuperApp Aspirations. On Wednesday, Uber announced a series of new products and features targeting travel. The biggest (and by far, the most publicized) new feature is the soon availability of hotels to Uber users in the U.S. through a newly announced partnership with Expedia (Dara is back in travel). Ultimately, Uber expects to offer 700,000 hotels with Uber One members earning 10% back in Uber One credits with each booking and hotel discounts (up to 20%) on a rolling list of hotels. As part of the newly announced partnership, Uber rides will also soon be integrated directly into the Expedia app. Other announced features include Uber Travel, which includes curated travel recommendations, Open Table reservations and Uber’s new “room service,” which arranges for food to be delivered to the hotel room you just booked on Expedia. Exactly how the promised hotel room discounts would be provided or funded by Expedia wasn’t made clear.
  • Booking Holdings Issues First Quarter Earnings Report. I will let others far more knowledgeable speak to Booking Holdings’ newly announced first quarter financials. Here are a few of my takeaways from the OTA’s first quarter earnings release:
    • Booking.com’s continued focus on the U.S. market is now producing real results. U.S. room night growth accelerated in the first quarter (fourth consecutive quarter) to the low teens largely through domestic bookings. Booking.com’s growing U.S. strength wasn’t just limited to hotels, but extended across flights, cars and packages. According to Booking, its strong U.S. numbers make clear that Booking is now taking share from its U.S. competitors (hello, Expedia).
    • Booking estimates that the Middle East conflict has reduced room night growth by approximately 2 percentage points (with similar effects on gross bookings). Booking expects these effects to continue (and even escalate) into the second quarter, but it is expecting a third and fourth quarter rebound.
    • With regard to popular AI platforms, CEO Glenn Fogel believes that the so-called “performance marketing platforms,” will ultimately be very advantageous to Booking. Among other things, Booking believes that AI platforms will increase the number of travels willing to purchase travel digitally.
  • Claude Announces New Connectors. Anthropic announced this past week a list of new apps that users can connect with Claude. By connecting third party apps, users can interact with multiple apps while in a single Claude conversation. Once connected, these apps become part of the Claude conversation as Claude recommends apps it believes most relevant to users’ preferences, context or conversation. If two or more connected apps are relevant, users may see several apps. The newly announced “connector” apps include Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Uber (and now by extension, Expedia?).

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, April 24, is below. It was another interesting week at Booking.com (second in a row) as it faces yet another competition law inquiry – this time from Italian competition authorities over the preferential treatment provided properties in Booking.com’s preferred program. AI regulation also features prominently in this week’s Update as regulators press ahead with restrictions on technology based or assisted pricing. Enjoy.

• • Another Week; Another AI Partnership Announcement. The AI arms race continues. This past week featured another newly announced “AI partnership” between an established intermediary and a large AI platform. This week’s announcement came out of TripAdvisor - one of the very earliest intermediaries to announce an AI partnership with Perplexity. This time TripAdvisor has partnered with Anthropic to make its hotel and experiences inventories available to users of Claude. Claude users can now summon TripAdvisor content by identifying Viator or TripAdvisor as their travel partner. When users are ready to book recommended travel, Claude re-directs them back to TripAdvisor to complete the booking. TripAdvisor also announced last week an expanded partnership with Amazon to assist users of Amazon’s Alexa+ to build travel and modify travel itineraries via voice.
  • OpenAI Adopts Familiar Advertising Pricing Model. According to third party sources, OpenAI has adopted a widely used search advertising payment model – pay per click (PPC) – for its AI chatbot, ChatGPT. Pay per click is the same model used by Google and has become the online marketing industry’s standard. What is a ChatGPT generated click really worth? The market will soon tell us. According to several sources, travel advertising is now routinely appearing on ChatGPT with, wait, you guessed it, OTAs, absolutely dominating the platform (Expedia, Booking.com and Airbnb featured in over 80% of the noted ads). What triggers these ads and to what extent are they tied to specific indicia of users’ intent remains to be seen.
  • Booking.com’s Preferred Program Under Scrutiny. To what extent is a program that allegedly values the commissions paid by suppliers over other consumer oriented factors (quality or value) anti-competitive? That’s the question now before Italian regulators. We will keep an eye on this one. Perhaps regulators will also address the question of what value is a program the purports to offer preferred placement if every competitor is effectively “required” to be part of the same program? What does “preferred” really mean?
  • AI Regulation on the Horizon? For some time now my answer to the often repeated question, “What AI regulations apply to my hospitality operation?” has largely been the same. Not many. Outside the possible use of AI systems in certain “high-risk” decision making (almost exclusively in the employment context for most hospitality operators) or such systems’ access and use of personal information, most of the AI regulations (even outside the U.S.) proposed or adopted over the past few years have had little application. That may soon change. Possible changes in the EU and at the state level may introduce a new era of regulation. At the top of legislators’ and regulators’ minds? Algorithmic or technology assisted pricing. While Maryland’s first of its kind anti-surveillance pricing legislation may specifically exempt the kind of widely used loyalty program or membership pricing often used in the hospitality industry, not all states considering the issue may include similar carve outs.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday evening from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, April 17, 2026, is below. Booking.com featured prominently in many of last week’s industry headlines and for reasons it would probably rather avoid. Enjoy.

• • The Secret to AI Visibility? NerdWallet. Not really, but according to a recent report by Limy, an AI visibility firm, NerdWallet outperforms Hyatt and other travel suppliers in terms of AI agent visibility. According to Limy, NerdWallet excels at providing content that helps users compare value – points, pricing or other metrics. The good news, at least for now, is that OTAs and other intermediaries didn’t perform much better. As for hotel brands, Marriott and Hilton faired the best (each accounting for roughly 10% of AI citations).
  • Booking.com Data Breach May Present Another Round of Reservation Hijackings. Last weekend, Booking.com sent emails to travelers advising them that hackers had accessed booking data resulting in the disclosure of personal information to third parties. According to Booking, the compromised information includes travelers’ names, email addresses, phone numbers and reservation details. Booking claims that it has issued new PINs to prevent any further unauthorized disclosures. Additional details – size of breach, cause of breach, steps undertaken to correct the breach, etc. – were not provided. Now travelers must wait and see what becomes of their accessed data. Readers of our Update will recall previous stories detailing Booking.com’s prior security issues, including a widely publicized phishing campaign that resulted in compromised hotel reservation data being used to contact travelers for additional (unwarranted) payments. Armed with this new information collected directly from Booking.com, scammers will find it even easier to contact and potentially scam guests.
  • Discovery Yes, But Booking, No. Expedia announced this past week the results of an Expedia commissioned survey measuring travelers’ trust and confidence in AI. According to the survey, only 8% of respondents were comfortable letting AI handle actual travel bookings. In contrast, 53% of respondents were comfortable with AI-generated suggestions, 42% of respondents were comfortable using AI to track pricing and 40% were comfortable letting AI build travel itineraries. Why the gap? Respondents cited the loss of control, concerns over data privacy, fears of misuse and the perceived inadequacy of customer service should something wrong with the AI booking occur as reasons for the lack of trust around bookings. A similar survey conducted by Skift last year found that 2% of respondents were comfortable letting AI handle bookings.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, April 10, is below. It was a relatively quiet week in the online travel industry as evidenced from this week’s stories. Enjoy.

• • Hopper Scores Desperately Needed Victory with RBC. Last week’s newly announced partnership between Hopper and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) couldn’t have come at a better time for Hopper, which recently announced significant changes with its key financial partner, Capital One. According to last week’s announcement, Hopper will soon power travel for members of RBC’s loyalty program, Avion Rewards. For years, Expedia has served as RBC’s travel partner, but it elected to walk away from the relationship when RBC sought to prohibit Expedia from powering travel for any other Canadian financial institution. I guess exclusivity is a concept that makes Expedia nervous.
  • Who’s Actually Advancing Technologically? Look to the Job Listings. Skift’s founder, Rafat Ali, posted an interesting story this past week on Skift. In the story, Ali posits that job postings provide a strong indicator of which companies are actually “building” AI solutions for travel. A few takeaways from Ali’s review of 170 postings from 13 major travel companies . . .
    
    • The technical specificity of listings, not the volume of listings, was the key differentiator for Ali. Five companies stood out for their postings’ technical specificity – Expedia, Booking Holdings, Airbnb, Agoda and Marriott.
    • Not surprisingly, OTAs accounted for the majority of listed AI positions – 105 of the 170 total positions.
    • Also not surprisingly, Sabre represented the largest “AI gap” (my term, not Ali’s) between AI narrative (advertised “AI first platform”) versus actual AI hiring.
    • Generative AI has been replaced by agentic AI as the key concept/desire in travel AI hiring.

I recognize that Ali’s approach may not be a perfect indicator of a company’s AI prowess, but it may be a leading indicator of what direction a particular company might be heading (or perhaps, hopes to be heading).

• • Booking.com Agrees to Lift Rate Parity Requirements in Chile. Time to add Chile to your list of “no parity” countries in your Booking.com agreements. The Chilean Court for the Defense of Free Competition (TDLC) announced this past week an out-of-court agreement with Booking.com that ends an investigation that began in 2024 with regard to Booking.com’s contracting requirements. As part of the settlement, Booking.com agreed to remove all rate parity provisions from its contracts and to eliminate price controls from its preferred and Genius program participation requirements. The effect of these changes is likely limited to hotels located in Chile.

Have a great week.

Good Saturday afternoon from sunny Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, April 3, 2026, is below. This week’s Update features a variety of stories, including an update from Amazon and its plans for Alexa Plus and travel. Enjoy.

• • Amazon Seeks to Collapse Travel Discovery and Booking into a Single Platform. It has been a while since we’ve seen an update from Amazon and its plans for its AI user interface, Alexa Plus. Given the recent announcements by both OpenAI and Google regarding their somewhat divergent plans for their AI platforms (and specifically, purchases/bookings on their platforms), Amazon’s latest announcement was quite timely. This past week Amazon announced that Alexa Plus now has the ability to order food through Grubhub and Uber Eats. More importantly, according to the announcement, the new functionality (and supporting architecture) is intended to handle the full transaction from browsing to payment. So what about travel? According to the announcement, travel planning is one of several future possible uses of the new commerce architecture. For now, the pizza order and delivery functionality is limited to Echo devices with screens.
  • Six Weeks and One Hundred Million Dollars. Only six weeks after OpenAI’s commencement of an advertising pilot on its popular ChatGPT platform, OpenAI announced it had crossed $100 million in annualized revenue from the pilot. With that kind of immediate success, it is no surprise that OpenAI is rapidly building out its advertising infrastructure through recent hires and announced partnerships with Smartly and Criteo. Think advertising on popular AI platforms is a thing of the future? Think again.
  • What About Corporate and Managed Travel? Like so many others following the rapid rise of AI and its effects on travel, we’ve been largely focused on AI’s effects on leisure travel. What about corporate and managed travel? Changes are coming.
  • Hoteliers and Amadeus Obtain District Court’s Dismissal of Anti-Trust Case. This past week, an Illinois federal district court dismissed a proposed class action by guests alleging that hoteliers’ sharing of certain future occupancy information through Amadeus’ Demand360 product violated federal antitrust laws. The proposed class action was one of several similar cases brought over the past year or two against hoteliers, casino owners/operators and multi-family owners. Citing a Seventh Circuit decision, the Illinois court held that while the sharing of information can be evidence of an illegal conspiracy, sharing alone is not sufficient evidence of an actual agreement. For our law nerd readers, we’ve linked below the court’s opinion and dismissal order.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, March 27, 2026, is below. This week’s Update highlights the different approaches currently being taken by the two AI heavyweights, Google and OpenAI, over AI commerce. Enjoy.

• • OpenAI Builds Out Advertising Team with Key Meta Hire. Over the past several weeks, we’ve featured several stories detailing OpenAI’s plans for advertising within the ChatGPT ecosystem. Those plans took a significant step forward this past week with its hiring of Dave Dugan, the former Vice President of Global Clients and Agencies at Meta, to run global ad solutions at OpenAI. According to his recent LinkedIn post, Dave’s first order of business will be turning ChatGPT ads into a commercial reality, while at the same time maintaining the organic nature of ChatGPT’s chats. For OpenAI, this type of hire seems inevitable, particularly if you consider OpenAI’s recently announced re-focus on user discovery (as opposed to commerce), and the desire to generate revenue outside of transactions. For hoteliers, this means that (a) some form of AI advertising will soon become a mainstay for every hotel marketer and (b) intermediaries with their billion-dollar marketing budgets will inevitably become big players in this space, potentially on the backs of hoteliers and their valuable IP (remember paid search?). If you’ve not started thinking about how this new “top of funnel” customer acquisition opportunity will affect your current marketing strategy (or the strategies of your competitors and intermediaries), I encourage you to do so. Now is the time to pay attention.
  • Think Google Search Is a Late 90’s Phenomenon Whose Best Times Are Behind It? Think Again. For some time now, I’ve been of the opinion that Google will be the inevitable winner of the AI arms race. Mario Gavira’s opinion piece published this past week on PhocusWire provides a compelling argument in support of Google’s inevitable dominance.
  • What Matters Most in this New AI World – Discovery or Transacting? We know OpenAI’s answer – at least for now. What about Google? For now, it appears that Google values both as it continues to develop and improve its LLM user experience (discovery) while at the same time improving its commercial back end with recent improvements to its Uniform Commerce Protocol (transacting). How far Google might take its commercial efforts, particularly in travel, is unknown. We’ve already seen how quickly Google backtracked reports that it was poised to become the next major OTA. What about suppliers? Suppliers find themselves in the position of needing to focus on both – either directly or through trusted partner proxies. The very nature of hotel bookings (i.e., legally enforceable contracts between travelers and suppliers) often puts the supplier squarely in the transaction bucket. As for discovery? To the extent direct bookings (and their generally lower booking costs) remain of value, suppliers have no choice. For now, this is the key AI battleground as intermediaries will assuredly do everything they can to cement their supremacy.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, March 20, 2026, is below. This week’s Update features a wide variety of stories, includes updates from OpenAI, Google and Hopper (sort of). Enjoy.

• • Google Doubles Down on Agentic Commerce. As OpenAI re-thinks (perhaps only temporarily) its approach to AI driven online commerce, Google appears to be heading in the opposite direction, at least with regard to traditional retailing. This past week, Google announced new capabilities for its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), including cart management (allowing purchases of multiple items from the same retailer), real time catalogue access and loyalty program integration. While travel remains on UCP’s official list of excluded products and services, many expect that to change soon once the platform learns traditional retail.
  • European Law Makers Urge Stricter Enforcement of DMA. Two key European Parliament members have authored a paper encouraging “rigorous enforcement” of the DMA’s provisions against gatekeepers, including Booking.com. The paper is set for a vote by the Parliament’s Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection this next week, and if adopted, the paper will become part of the European Commission’s larger review of the DMA. The DMA has come under increasing attack by members of the Trump administration, which according to some, has caused EU lawmakers to hold back on imposing fines for fear of retaliatory tariffs. According to the paper, European lawmakers “must not compromise the EU’s sovereignty and its autonomy to define and enforce its own rules.” With regard to Booking, the authors allege that some of Booking’s practices, like performance-based programs for hotels, might be equivalent to parity provisions that the DMA expressly prohibits.
  • Hilton Launches New “Select by Hilton” with Yotel Franchise. You might ask why this story is relevant to our weekly Online Travel Update. This “unique” model allows Yotel to maintain independent operational control across its portfolio , while at the same time leveraging Hilton’s sophisticated loyalty and distribution systems (and presumably, preferential distribution terms and conditions). Size matters in the loyalty and distribution worlds and those without size must continue to look for creative solutions and structures to drive direct bookings while lowering the cost (and challenges) of third party bookings. For those with size, structures like the newly announced “Select by Hilton” brand allows Hilton to realize a return on its large loyalty and distribution investments, but at the same time, may create administrative challenges as it assumes some level of responsibility for the new portfolio’s compliance with existing practices and contractual requirements.
  • Capital One Acquires Hopper Technology Behind Capital One Platform. When rumors of this transaction were first announced last November it created considerable confusion among many industry suppliers, particularly those with direct distribution relationships with Hopper. Now that the rumored deal has been officially confirmed and closing is imminent, I’m still not sure anyone really knows what is happening.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, March 13, is below. Given everything else going on the world (none of which is very helpful to travel), it was a relatively quiet week in online travel. Much was written about Amazon’s preliminary victory over Perplexity early in the week, but little else gained much attention. Enjoy.

• • Hilton Introduces AI Trip Planner While Marriott Plans Launch of Conversational Search. Hilton announced this past week that it was beta testing a new AI enabled trip planner (“Hilton AI Planner”) that would allow users to use conversational tools to search destinations, hotels and amenities across the entire Hilton portfolio. The beta version is currently available to select users of Hilton.com. Hilton expects to gradually expand the rollout as it improves the platform based on early beta interactions. Marriott plans to rollout similar technology to its website and mobile app in pilot form in the next months and then a wider rollout later this year.
  • Amex GBT Share AI Enabled Efficiencies. During Amex GBT’s fourth quarter earnings call this past week, Amex GBT CEO, Paul Abbot, shared details about the TMC’s increasing leverage of AI. Some key takeaways:
    • 83% of the TMC’s total transactions are now digital transactions with that number expected to increase with the increasing reliance on AI
    • Amex GBT expects to launch Egencia AI next month, which will allow users to use natural language queries for both bookings and travel management (all in accordance with applicable travel policies)
    • Egencia’s current average booking time is 3 minutes, with that number expected to go down as fewer bookings require human intervention
  • Amazon Claims Early Round One Victory in Ongoing Agentic Lawsuit Against Perplexity. This past week, a U.S. federal district court issued an order temporarily enjoining Perplexity’s Comet web browser agents from accessing certain password protected sections of Amazon’s systems to complete purchases on behalf of Perplexity users. According to Amazon, Perplexity’s failure to disclose its agents’ activities on behalf of shoppers and subsequent failure to stop the activity when asked by Amazon constituted computer fraud. The court’s order is only temporary, however, while to the two sides continue to argue over the legality of Perplexity’s actions. Perplexity has vowed to appeal the order, the effect of which was suspended specifically to allow Perplexity to file an appeal. For those of you interested in the recent order, we’ve linked to a copy of the court’s order below.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday afternoon (for some of us, a dreaded “spring forward” afternoon) from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, March 6, 2026, is below. This past week began with news out of the UK of a new CMA investigation into the hotel industry and ended with ChatGPT’s apparent recognition that platform transactions may be harder than first thought. Our stories below provide the details. Enjoy.

• • ChatGPT Scales Back Platform Purchasing – For Now. A report this past week by The Information (which was later confirmed by ChatGPT to Skift) indicated that ChatGPT is scaling back efforts to provide users the opportunity to buy (or book) directly within the platform. Instead, ChatGPT intends to focus its efforts on product search and discovery while deferring to merchants to handle the actual booking process via their ChatGPT apps. Good news for Expedia and Booking.com, which in recent weeks have seen drops in their stock prices over disintermediation concerns. So why the change? Commentators suggest that “AI commerce” is far more difficult than originally anticipated – technology, user habits (and trust) and regulations all present significant hurdles. What does this mean for suppliers? My view of these platforms as natural language meta search sites continues to ring true. Assuming prospective travelers’ use and trust in AI continues to grow, I believe that it remains critical for suppliers to be present and part of travelers’ “search and discovery” on these platforms. Differentiation will become the challenge. In this world, OTAs will lean into the AI platforms and double their efforts to capture (and re-direct) as many travelers as possible early in the sales cycle/funnel via content, discounted pricing and ultimately advertising.
  • State and Federal Legislators Focused on Technology-Based Pricing. For the past several weeks, we have featured stories on state and local efforts regarding technology-based pricing (sometimes referred to as “surveillance pricing”). This past week, the U.S. House Oversight Committee sent letters to the CEOs of five companies, including Expedia and Booking.com, asking whether they used surveillance pricing (in the form of pricing algorithms and personal data) in setting online prices. At the state level, pending legislation in Connecticut, Maryland, Ohio and Tennessee prompted the Travel Technology Association to send letters to legislators in each state warning that the proposed legislation would limit the ability for online retailers to offer consumers discounts, loyalty programs and other promotions.
  • Booking Holdings Claims Partial Victory in Ongoing Hotelier Claims. In a press release last week, Booking Holdings claimed that the Dutch court overseeing competition claims by German hoteliers has agreed with several of its positions, including the fact that German hotels have yet to provide enough evidence that Booking.com’s use of rate parity provisions prior to 2016 violated competition laws. More importantly, according to Booking, the court expressed concerns regarding the narrow market definition applied by German competition authorities and courts, suggesting that they failed to take in account the threat posed to Booking by other available sales channels as required by the European Court of Justice’s ruling in 2024. Expect more on this case and others currently pending against Booking Holdings in the weeks to come.
  • UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Opens Investigation. Hoteliers Hilton, Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) and Marriott, together with real estate analytics firm, CoStar (owner of STR), are under investigation in the UK. According to the CMA’s statement announcing the investigation, the sharing of competitively sensitive information among competing companies, even via a third party services provide, has the possibility of reducing how strongly the companies will compete. Recall that similar claims were made (unsuccessfully) in the U.S. against hoteliers a year ago. The CMA’s investigation is expected to continue through August.

Have a great week.

Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . .  Our weekly Online Travel Update for Friday, February 27, 2026, is below. This week’s Update features a variety of stories, including a few new perspectives on the existential threat posed by AI to the existing online travel behemoths. For reasons I cannot explain, this week’s Update features as many questions (perhaps more) than answers. Enjoy.

• • Major OTAs Set New Record in Annual Marketing Spend. Booking Holdings, Expedia Group, Trip.com Group and Airbnb spent a combined $20 billion in sales and marketing in 2025. Despite OTAs’ efforts to boost direct bookings (through loyalty program expansion and other means), experiments with AI customer acquisition and changing sales and marketing investments, the amount spent on sales and marketing efforts continues to grow. It will be interesting to watch how these numbers change (and the detail behind these numbers) with OTAs’ much publicized AI efforts.
  • AI Not for You? Kayak Has an Answer. Are Kayak’s newest ad campaigns a true representation of “average” travelers’ fear and general distrust of AI or a desperate last gasp at meta site relevancy?
  • Effects of OTA Disintermediation Beyond Lower Stock Prices. This week we include one of the dozens of stories that came across our inbox detailing the financial fallout of travelers’ potential use and reliance on AI platforms. Are reports of the threats posed by AI to OTAs (or now public acknowledgements by the largest OTAs) overblown? If these threats are real, how will these threats affect OTA behavior in the months and years to come? In the face of an existential crises, will OTAs continue to honor “commercial” understandings or will they ultimately be forced to resort to nuclear options – price discounting, keyword (or AI equivalent) purchases, misuse of opaque or package rates, obscuring or blacklisting property listings?
  • Travel Ads Spotted on ChatGPT. Over the past few weeks, we’ve included several stories detailing OpenAI’s planned introduction of ads for its lowest tiers of ChatGPT users. Google too has discussed plans for introducing ads on its AI mode platform. Apparently, some of these ads on OpenAI are now live and of course, one of the first ads, is from Expedia.

Have a great week everyone.