Duff on Hospitality Law

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, May 29, 2026, is below. The short week (at least for those of us in the U.S.) made for a relatively quiet week in the online travel world. Enjoy.

• • Has the Direct Booking Decade Turned Out as Planned? A story from Skift this past week purports to provide answers. Having had a front seat to the supplier-OTA give and take over the past decade, I can say that much of what Skift’s reports rang true for me. Yes, the percentage of direct bookings versus OTA facilitated bookings has remained relatively flat for the largest operators. But . . . the particulars of those OTA facilitated bookings has continued to change – commission levels, marketing commitments, parity obligations (not just rates and availability), resell price maintenance, payment tools, keyword protections (or not), EU competition laws, fintech and B2B distribution. The smartest hoteliers are rightly focused on more than OTA commission levels. The rapid change we’ve seen the past 10 years isn’t slowing anytime soon as the industry grapples with AI, evolving EU regulation and OTAs’ growing focus on B2B. And that just summarizes changes in leisure distribution. Don’t overlook corporate/managed travel – changes are coming.
  • Airbnb’s Hotel Efforts Continue to Show Momentum. This past week, Airbnb announced the hiring of Andrea D’Amico as the new Vice President of Hotels. Andrea’s hiring is a reunion of sorts as the former Booking.com executive will again work alongside fellow Booking.com alum, Lou Zameryka. Airbnb’s hotel efforts have also expanded beyond the handful of test markets in late 2025 to now over 30 markets globally.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Monday afternoon from Seattle . . . For those of you celebrating and/or who have served, happy Memorial Day. Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, May 22, 2026, is below. Expedia Group and Google garnered much of the attention this past week as Expedia held its annual Explore event and Google held its annual I/O Developer Conference where advancements in online travel took center stage. Enjoy.

• • Expedia Explore 26 Highlights. Expedia’s annual partner event this past week was the source of several announcements by the OTA behemoth.
    • Intelligent Experience Platform. Among its many announcements, Expedia announced the launch of an AI toolkit, which among other things, includes a soon to be available MCP server to improve Expedia’s B2B partners’ access and use of Expedia’s content. With the MCP server offering, Expedia can power partners’ own AI travel experiences.
    • New Meta Partnership. Not to be outdone by TikTok’s recently announced travel partnerships for its TikTok GO platform, Meta (and Expedia) announced a new partnership this past week through which users of Meta’s social media platforms can begin planning a travel itinerary or ask travel specific questions while using the popular platforms.
  • Booking Holdings to Soon to Consolidate Ad Sales Across Its Three OTA Platforms. For years now, Booking.com, Agoda and Priceline have rejected clients’ efforts to consolidate commercial terms, arguing that the three platforms are entirely separate and distinct. That may no longer be true as Booking Holdings announced last week the launch of BKNG Ads, a platform for customers to work with a single ad team to purchase and place advertising across all three platforms. Suppliers, it may soon be time to reconsider your advertising commitments to any one of the three platforms and explore how this latest announcement might affect your annual marketing commitment.
  • Hotels Are Next Industry Vertical for Google UCP. In a series of announcements (including blog posts) this past week, Google officially acknowledged that its agentic commercial infrastructure (UCP) would soon be available to those seeking (via agents) to book travel. Hints at the move were made public weeks ago, but this past week the move became official. Agent Payments Protocol, Google’s payment layer, is expected to be part of the same rollout. Timing for the expansion wasn’t announced. Partners featured in the announcements include Expedia Group, Booking.com, Wyndham, Marriott, Choice and IHG.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, May 15, 2026, is below. With quarterly earnings releases behind us, it was a much quieter week in the online travel world. TikTok garnered most of the industry’s attention this past week with its announced expansion of TikTok GO. Enjoy.

• • TikTok Announces In-App Booking with TikTok GO. For some time now, I’ve included references to social media platforms in my client presentations on the future of distribution and advised clients to keep an eye on popular social media platforms and their travel aspirations. While AI has garnered most of the distribution headlines over the past 18+ months, social media cannot be overlooked particularly for younger travelers. This past week, TikTok, announced partnerships with the many of the usual suspects – Expedia, Booking.com, Trip.com, Viator and GetYourGuide and Tiqets (now part of Expedia) - that will allow users (U.S. initially) of the popular social media platform to “look and book” accommodations and experiences. Creators who feature accommodations and activities in their posts will be able to earn commissions when their content is connected to a booking. According to Tik Tok, each of the announced partners underwent rolling testing over the past year with positive results (no details were provided). As the bright lines that once separated the phases of the traditional sales funnel are further eroded (first with AI and now these social media booking solutions), it will be interesting to watch whether these new tools actually produce additional bookings. For suppliers concerned about this latest booking tool and intermediaries’ seemingly headstart in leveraging its possible opportunities, it is time to review again the marketing and IP provisions in your favorite intermediary agreement. For years, suppliers have granted intermediaries broad discretion for social media platforms. Something to think about in your next renewal or extension.
  • Ever Wonder the Real Value of Booking.com’s Merchant Model (aka Facilitated Payment)? Skift’s Rafat Ali (one of my favorite industry observers) provides a deep dive into Booking Holdings’ financials and uncovers the real value of Booking.com’s growing merchant model (one of three interdependent “machines” identified by Ali within Booking). Yes, the merchant model may present additional operating costs and challenges (fraud, chargebacks, etc.), but don’t be fooled. The merchant model provides Booking.com greater control over its traveler relationships (e.g., rate discounting would be nearly impossible without the merchant model) and without the merchant model, Booking Holdings’ recent run of aggressive returns of shareholder capital would be impossible.
  • How Important is B2B to Expedia’s Future? Just look at this past week’s announced promotion of Alfonso Paredes, who formerly led Expedia’s B2B business, to President of B2B and Chief Commercial Officer. In his new role, Alfonso will have responsibility for both Expedia’s EPS platform and global supply (without which, the EPS platform could not function). Expedia’s former Chief Commercial Officer, Greg Schulze, a 20+ year veteran of Expedia, will be leaving the company.
  • OpenAI Seeks to Grow Enterprise Deployments and the Travel Industry May Have Shown Them How. Leveraging the experience gained by Tomoro and its team of AI experts and engineers deploying AI across Virgin Atlantic, OpenAI (which recently acquired Tomoro) plans to launch a new AI deployment company (OpenAI Deployment Company). According to OpenAI, the plan is to embed personnel from the new company directly inside client companies to identify the best AI use cases, facilitate AI (likely only OpenAI’s version) adoption and then grow it. With Tomoro’s assistance, Virgin Atlantic built an AI concierge (chatbot) that can handle bookings, loyalty accounts and customer support – all through natural language searches on Virgin Atlantic’s website and mobile application. Clients of the new OpenAI company are expected to have front row seats to OpenAI’s ongoing research and product pipeline.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle and happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, May 8, 2026, is below. It was another busy week in online travel as both Expedia and Airbnb released their quarterly earnings (transcripts from both earnings release calls are linked below). I’ve also included a few legal updates featuring everyone’s favorite – influencers –, Trivago’s anti-trust claims against Google and Google’s latest attempt at DMA compliance. Enjoy.

• • UK Authority Raises Concerns Over Influencer Posts. As influencers’ influence over important social media channels continues to grow, the UK’s advertising authority, Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), has issued a report detailing influencers’ failure to properly disclose their posts as travel ads. In its review of over 500 social media posts (Instagram and Tik Tok), the ASA found that only 20% of the posts were properly disclosed, 11% were disclosed, but inadequately, and 69% contained no disclosures. According to the report, ASA plans to contact both travel suppliers and influencers over the problematic posts. An important reminder for our US and UK readers, travel suppliers in the US and UK can be held responsible for influencers’ failure to properly disclose, so due diligence and oversight is critical.
  • Expedia Posts Strong 1Q26 Financial Results. Again, we’re not going to dive into the financial results of Expedia’s first quarter – there are many (far more qualified) resources to provide those details. Highlights for me from this past quarter’s earnings release include the following:
    
    • According to Expedia CEO, Ariane Gorin, the use of AI is benefiting Expedia many ways including higher conversions on VRBO via servicing agents and AI filters, faster onboarding of new properties, increasing numbers (30%) of service interactions powered by AI, improved marketing value and increased traffic volumes and acquisition. Answer engine optimization (e.g., ChatGPT ads) is now Expedia’s “fastest growing channel.”
    • B2B continues to be a primary growth engine (see recent Uber announcement). Revenue in the first quarter grew 25% (to $1.2 billion). Ariane now views Expedia’s B2B business as an entirely separate line of business.
  • Meet Lola, Booking Holdings' “East Coast” Startup. Skift this past week revealed further details on one of Booking Holdings’ startups (the “East Coast” startup), Lola. The “stealth” project features two online travel industry veterans, Kayak’s Steve Hafner and Paul English. A new splash page for the startup appeared this past week featuring brand banners for Booking.com, Kayak, OpenTable, FareHarbor and SeatGeek. Our readers might remember an earlier version of “Lola,” which was launched in 2015 and featured a combination of digital online travel services and human agents. That effort was ultimately purchased by Capital One in 2021.
  • William Shatner is Back. Sorry, I cannot pass up a story featuring the original online price negotiator. He’s now 95.
  • Trivago Brings Anti-Trust Claims Against Google. Trivago this past week filed suit against Google in a German Court alleging that the search giant favored its own hotel metasearch products over those of its competitors (which is prohibited under the DMA), like Trivago. The suit covers the period of January 2024 – December 2025 and seeks damages as well as the disclosure of traffic and revenue data.
  • Google Testing New Search Box in Latest Attempt to Comply with DMA. Google’s ongoing efforts to satisfy its DMA obligations and major advertisers continues. Google’s latest effort includes a box at the top of search results that features a single comparison website (e.g., Booking.com). The featured comparison website will be determined based on relevance to the specific search query, not an auction. Suppliers will be given a separate second box under the initial comparison website’s box. With the success of Google AI mode, one has to ask how much longer the current iteration of the DMA and the EU’s enforcement efforts will even be relevant.
  • Takeaways from Recent AmexGBT Announcement. Much has been written this past week over Long Lake Management’s announced private takeover of the corporate travel platform, Amex GBT. While the takeover represents the latest chapter in the platform’s long and storied history, it also sends a strong message about corporate travel and the belief, at least by certain investors, that corporate travel is a prime candidate for AI automation. Long Lake Management was formed in 2023 and is backed by many of the same investors behind several prominent AI companies, including ChatGPT. Long Lake Management’s previous endeavors have focused on traditional service businesses that it believed could benefit from the introduction and use of AI. Its latest efforts in the homeowner association management business produced 25-30 percent productivity gains. Now Long Lake Management is focused on another service business, corporate travel. What this means for Amex GBT and its 22,000 employees and corporate/managed travel generally will be watched by many in the months and years to come. Stay tuned.

Have a great week everyone.

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.