Duff on Hospitality Law

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.