Duff on Hospitality Law

Good Monday morning from Seattle . . . Our Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, October 24, 2025, is below. This week’s Update introduces readers to ChatGPT’s new browser, ChatGPT Atlas (and its new Agent Mode), and offers varying views on ChatGPT’s (and similar AI powered platforms’) long term effect on travel, the future role, if any, for today’s travel intermediaries and when/how the industry should respond. I hope you enjoy.

• • Should Suppliers Race to Make Inventory Available on ChatGPT? That’s the million dollar question. Faced with successive announcements from OpenAI over the past few weeks, including, the recent introduction of new ChatGPT travel apps from Expedia and Booking.com, hoteliers, short term rental companies and other travel suppliers face a dilemma. Do they push ahead now to do anything possible to ensure their inventory is available in some form on these new platforms or do they wait? Does waiting give early adopters (OTAs) even more of an insurmountable advantage? For some, like Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, the answer appears to be to wait (at least for now). Others are convinced that suppliers must move now, and companies like Direct Booker seek to provide suppliers the tools to do so.
  • Can ChatGPT and Others Like It Reduce the Travel Industry’s Dependence on Today’s Powerful Intermediaries? Or will these platforms only serve to cement intermediaries’ already outsized control and influence? (I’m full of questions this week.) Answers to these important questions also vary, but I tend to believe (as does Brian Chesky and the author of one of our stories below) that OTAs are too large (and too smart) to be displaced by these new AI platforms and if anyone is well positioned to leverage the platforms to their benefit, the OTAs are. Search has not displaced the OTAs (and in fact, the largest search engines and OTAs have a well-documented symbiotic relationship), so why should these new tools, particularly as they become more commercialized.
  • Introducing ChatGPT Atlas. On the heels of ChatGPT’s announcement of its new app store, ChatGPT introduced this past week a new web browser, ChatGPT Atlas, that allows users to use natural language searches to browse the internet. Users can also use the browser to complete certain tasks on the user’s behalf through the browser’s new feature, Agent Mode. Of course, OpenAI’s video demonstration of the new product featured (once again) a travel application as ChatGPT’s lead software designer for the project demonstrated the new agent tool being used to complete bookings on Air France. The introductory demonstration and other travel examples (one using Expedia’s VRBO platform) are available in the stories below. Atlas is now available in preview for ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Business users.

Have a great week everyone.