Duff on Hospitality Law

Good evening from the ALIS Conference in Los Angeles . . . Our travel-shortened Online Travel Update for the week ending January 23, 2026, is below. This week’s Update features a wide variety of stories, including updates on two stories we featured last week – Airbnb’s evolving hotel aspirations and investigations into Trip.com’s allegedly anti-competitive practices. I hope you enjoy.

• • To Allow AI Agents or Not to Allow AI Agents – That Is the Question. I’ve been a part of these discussions with several clients over the past few weeks. We definitely know Amazon’s perspective on this question, though as Perplexity has argued in recent court filings, Amazon appears to be engaged in the very same behavior that it is now seeking to stop by Perplexity. This week’s first story from PhocusWire provides a number of arguments in favor of allowing AI agents.
  • ChatGPT to Test Advertising. This past week, OpenAI announced that it would soon test sponsored ads in responses delivered to logged-in users of ChatGPT’s free and new Go tiers (users of ChatGPT’s higher subscription tiers will continue to enjoy ad free responses). No one should be surprised. At some point, these platforms, which require huge financial investments to sustain and grow, had to commercialize their platforms and extensive user bases. Significant questions remain about the newly announced advertising product (including, most importantly for hoteliers, how ads may be purchased, prioritized, etc.), but OpenAI did share some initial guiding principles about the product:
    
    • “Organic” AI responses will not be influenced by the advertisements
    • OpenAI will not sell users’ personal information to advertisers
    • Advertisements will only appear for logged-in users and will not appear alongside sensitive topics like personal health or politics

While travel was not specifically identified in the announcement, a sample screen shot included in the announcement featured a sample travel response and related advertising. For anyone still debating whether AI platforms (and related advertising) need to be addressed in your internal and external distribution discussions, this latest OpenAI announcement should be a call to action.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday evening from a sunny Seattle . . . Our first Online Travel Update for 2026 is below. This week’s Update features new stories on China’s possible crack down on Trip.com, an update on Airbnb and its plans for hotels and the latest from Google and its rapidly evolving agentic platform. I hope you enjoy.

• • Trip.com Under Investigation for Alleged Monopolistic Practices. Trip.com announced this past week that it had received a notice of investigation from the State Administration for Market Regulations of the People’s Republic of China (“SAMR”). According to the notice, the investigation stems from Trip.com’s alleged abuse of its dominant market position through coercive contract terms, arbitrary increases in commission fees and the blocking of internet traffic. If found guilty of violating China’s Anti-Monopoly Law, Trip.com can be fined between 1% and 10% of its total annual revenue from the previous year (a similar investigation into the practices of Alibaba resulted in record $2.5 billion fine).
  • Changes Afoot at Airbnb. Last week, Airbnb announced that it had hired Meta’s former head of generative AI, Ahmad Al-Dahle, as its new CTO. According to CEO Brian Chesky’s letter to employees introducing Ahmad, Ahmad “connects big ideas with technical depth, highly values design, and believes engineering should be a true strategic partner.” Perhaps more important for my readers, our friend and industry colleague, Lou Zameryka, announced this week on LinkedIn that he is joining Airbnb to lead its hotel efforts (Lou’s announcement was confirmed by an announcement yesterday from Airbnb where it announced Lou as its new Global Head – Hotel Enterprises and Connectivity Partnerships). Congratulations to Lou. If anyone still doubts Airbnb’s intentions with regard to AI or its move (again) into hotels, it may be time to re-consider. There was a reason why we included an Airbnb story on its re-entry into hotels as one of seven featured stories in our 2025 year-end review.
  • Google’s Latest Agentic Announcement Presents New Opportunities for Travelers and Suppliers. At last week’s National Retail Federation annual conference, Google introduced its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), which is designed to allow AI agents to complete purchases (or bookings) within a conversational user interface. Although UCP was developed with retail product purchases in mind (and the announcement featured some of the country’s largest retailers – including Target and Walmart (though, interestingly, not Amazon)), the protocol was developed to handle more complex transactions (i.e., travel). In theory, the newly announced protocol should allow travelers to discover, search, select and book (the entire sales funnel) travel within a single platform without the need to jump from platform to platform (which we’ve noted in multiple previous posts as being one of the biggest challenges to currently available AI platforms). For suppliers, the new protocol allows them to remain the merchant of record and “own” the customer relationship, fulfillment and post-purchase relationship.

Have a great week.

Happy New Year . . . Our annual “year in review” Online Travel Update is below. We’ve enjoyed having the opportunity to work with many of you this past year and look forward to working with you in 2026.

Here’s to a great and successful year.

Happy Monday evening from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, December 19, 2025, is below. This week’s Update features a heavy concentration of important legal updates on local Chinese efforts to investigate the practices of OTAs, the FTC’s newly announced investigation into Instacart and its alleged surveillance pricing practices and an important German court decision that may have wide ranging effects across Europe on pending class actions against Booking.com. Enjoy.

• • ChatGPT’s App Store Is Open for Business – Everyone’s Business. OpenAI announced this past week that it is now allowing third party developers to build and list apps inside ChatGPT. Once approved, the apps will be listed in ChatGPT’s App Directory. Users can summon these news apps via the ChatGPT tools menu, via @mentions or when ChatGPT deems the app relevant to the current session. In theory, a single vacation planning session could trigger multiple travel apps – competing OTAs, suppliers, etc. So much for ChatGPT’s initial pilot partners – Expedia and Booking.com – and let the battle for session relevance among competing apps on ChatGPT begin.
  • FTC Launches Investigation into Instacart Pricing Practices. It was just two weeks ago that we committed to exploring further the practice of personalized (or “surveillance”) pricing, its use in online transactions (specifically travel) and likely regulation. With the addition of personalized pricing to our daily news searches, my inbox is already being inundated with personalized pricing stories and newly announced regulations. Instacart has featured prominently these past two weeks as a study two weeks ago claimed to demonstrate the wide variety in pricing among users for the same items and then this week, likely in reaction to the announced study, the FTC has reportedly sent Instacart a civil investigation demand to investigate the online retailer’s pricing practices.
  • German Court Allows Hoteliers’ Claims Against Booking.com To Proceed. In a ruling last week, a Berlin court found that Booking.com’s use of rate parity provisions between January 2013 and January 2016 restricted German hotels’ ability to set competitive prices in violation of EC competition laws. According to the court’s decision, the OTA’s use of both broad parity provisions and later, narrow party provisions, unlawfully constrained hotels’ pricing freedom. The ruling clears the way for nearly 1,100 German hotels to proceed with competition claims against the OTA. The Berlin court’s decision follows an earlier 2024 decision by the European Court of Justice that found that Booking.com’s use of rate parity provisions violated competition law across Europe. This latest decision could prove quite helpful to other EU hoteliers and their pending class action claims against Booking.com arising, in part, out of its use of the same rate parity provisions.

Have a great week everyone, and Happy Holidays.

Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, December 12, 2025, is below. This week’s Update includes a number of updates to stories we featured previously, including stories on the existential threat (or not) to OTAs posed by new AI platforms and the Trump administration’s threatened takeover of state-level AI regulation (no longer a threat, but a reality). Enjoy.

• • Do AI Platforms Really Pose an Existential Threat to OTAs? This week we offer several conflicting perspectives on the question from Booking Holdings’ CFO (who believes, among other things, that AI will expand the overall market of online travel benefiting Booking Holdings and other online intermediaries (“rising tides”)) and Skift’s Dennis Schaal (who, I believe has a far more realistic and less vested perspective, believes that change for the OTAs is unavoidable).
  • Google Ties AI Overviews with AI Mode. For those of you who have seen my presentation on AI and distribution, you’ll understand the significance with which I viewed this latest announcement from Google. Mobile users of Google’s AI Overviews (which is just about everyone) will now be able to seamlessly transition from AI Overviews to AI Mode for further detail or clarification on their initial query. Users of AI Overviews will be able to “Ask a follow up,” which will take them directly into AI Mode. Together, this latest announcement and Google’s previously announced plans to position its AI mode as a complete travel planning and booking platform will only further threaten the relevancy of traditional online search.
  • Amazon vs. Perplexity. In early November, Amazon filed suit against Perplexity in Northern California District Court alleging that the AI platform’s use of AI agents (Comet AI Agents) on Amazon’s website not only violates Amazon’s terms and conditions but also constitutes violations of federal (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) and California state (California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act) law. Amazon seeks both special (injunction) and monetary (damages) relief. How might such a lawsuit (or its outcome) affect online travel? Great question. We see many potential parallels to be drawn and potential lessons to be learned. For anyone concerned about how AI agents might access and use their websites, I’d encourage you to read the complaint and specifically, those sections detailing Amazon’s efforts to restrict AI agents’ access. Expect to see updates on Amazon’s claim in future Online Travel Updates. A copy of Amazon’s complaint is linked below.
  • OpenAI Curtails App Suggestions – For Now. By now, most everyone is probably familiar with the recent launch of apps (including Expedia and Booking.com) within ChatGPT’s ecosystem. Not only can users “summon” these apps through various means, but the apps can also be offered up by ChatGPT whenever ChatGPT believes that the app may be relevant to the user’s prompts. Apparently, these app suggests look strikingly similar to advertisements and as a result have created quite a backlash among ChapGPT users (who naively believe that ChatGPT will remain forever ad free). For now, OpenAI is turning off the app suggestions and may even allow users to permanently turn off app suggestions (or at least tailor which apps are suggested) in the future.

We have a lot in store for 2026, including the introduction of a new Online Trave Update podcast.

Have a great week everyone.

Good Sunday evening from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, December 5, 2025, is below. With last week’s Thanksgiving holiday break, our list of stories this week is longer than usual. Enjoy.

• • Otto Introduces AI Assistant for Business Travel. Seattle-based Otto’s release this past week of its new AI-enabled business travel assistant, Otto the Agent, garnered many of the industry’s headlines, including headlines by Seattle’s own Geekwire. If you are a regular reader of our Updates, you know that Geekwire is Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Focused technology news service. Those behind the new startup include a who’s who of travel industry veterans, including Spotnana’s Steve Singh, Orbitz’s Barney Harford and Expedia’s Michael Gulmann. The platform, which has been in beta tests since August 2024, is designed to learn travelers’ travel habits and then apply those learnings to planning and booking (without leaving the platform) travel – for now, flights and hotels. For the next 12 months, the platform will be free to individual users and small businesses. 

• • Personalized Pricing in Legislative and Regulatory Crosshairs. Given the number of questions we’ve fielded over the past few weeks regarding personalized pricing and now New York’s recently enacted legislation, I think it time to put personalized pricing on our distribution radar and list of “distribution” related topics that we monitor daily. This week, we feature two stories on the growing calls to regulate so-called “surveillance” pricing, including New York’s October passage of surveillance legislation that requires New York businesses to notify consumers whenever personal information is used when setting pricing. New York is not alone is considering steps to combat this allegedly abusive practice as several states considered similar (often bipartisan) legislation this past year. Much of this legislation activity is built on earlier efforts by the FTC that were abandoned with the change in administrations. How these state-level efforts might fair in light of the Trump Administration’s threatened Executive Order limiting state-level regulation of artificial intelligence remains to be seen. How these rules might affect the travel industry, including the use of personalized offers and promotions (think targeted loyalty program promotions) also remains to be seen. We plan to cover all of these topics and more in future Updates.

• • Confusing Headline Calls into Question Hopper’s Long Term Travel Plans. On November 24, Skift ran a story stating that Capital One (one of the largest known users of Hopper’s B2B booking platform and Hopper investor) was “buying” (not licensing, as it already likely does) Hopper’s software that powers Capital One’s cardholder travel platform and hiring several members of Hopper’s hotel and engineering teams.  What this change might mean for Hopper’s declining B2C and remaining B2B distribution business is unclear. 

• • Power of Event Based Travel Leads Trip.com to Add Tickets to Its Online Inventory. Trip.com recently announced a new partnership with Ireland-based ticketing company, Coras, that will provide the traditional OTA and its users with access to tickets for major concerts, sports and theater events. Users of Trip.com will now be able to see real time availability and pricing for events “in path” without being re-directed to another booking website. According to Coras CEO, Mark McLaughlin, events (thank Taylor Swift and her recent Eras tour) have become a huge motivator for travel and event tickets are often the first product that a user purchases. Combining event tickets with other travel products provides travel suppliers an opportunity to upsell flights, hotels and transfers (and not vice versa). From what we’ve learned recently, event ticket sales and distribution can be very different than the distribution of traditional travel products.

• • ARC Shuts Down Program Selling Traveler Data to Department of Homeland Security. This hopefully brings an end to the controversial practice by the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) that several of you brought to my attention over the past few weeks.    

Have a great week.

Good Saturday afternoon from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, November 21, 2025, is below. Google captured much of the industry’s attention and imagination early in the week with its announcement of new AI-enabled travel booking tools, but it then spent much of the remainder of the week walking back its travel industry intentions. Never a dull moment. Enjoy.

• • Trump Administration to Challenge State Regulation of AI. For those of you who have seen my presentation on AI and its effects on the travel industry, you will likely recall the uncertainty that I expressed about future regulation of AI, particularly at the state level. While there are numerous examples of states legislating in this area (Colorado being the example that I tend to discuss most in my presentations), the future of those efforts is in jeopardy. Having failed to include language prohibiting state regulation of AI generally in its “Big Beautiful Bill,” the Trump administration is now considering an executive order directing the Department of Justice to create an “AI Litigation Task Force” to sue states for adopting AI legislation or regulation that allegedly violates federal law, including Constitutional protections around free speech and interstate commerce. The order also directs the Department of Commerce to explore options for withholding federal funds from states that legislate in the AI arena and tasks advisors to the administration to draft federal legislation establishing a federal regulatory framework for AI. President Trump is expected to sign the executive order as early as this next week. Bottom line, don’t expect to see meaningful US regulation or oversight of AI any time soon.
  • Travelers Increasingly Look to OTAs to Start Their Hotel Searches. In a report released this past week, Siteminder shared the results of its recent study of global travelers (12,000 travelers across 14 countries) and their booking and travel preferences. A complete copy of the report is available in the story below. A couple of key takeaways . . .
    • Travelers are now more likely to begin their search for hotels on OTAs (26%) versus search engines (21%)
    • Of those travelers who begin their search with OTAs, an increasing number (18%) elect to book direct (3.3% increase over last year)
    • Those using AI as a first step in their exploration has increased fourfold from 1% to 4% (and even higher among younger demographics), though those wanting AI-powered capabilities as part of their search (including price monitoring) has increased significantly (now 80%).
  • Consumer Class Action to Move Forward Against Booking.com. Separate and apart from the pending class action by European hoteliers against Booking.com, the Consumer Competition Claims Foundation (“CCC”) and Consumentenbond announced plans this past week to move forward after failed settlement discussions and to take their claims to a Dutch court. The claimants are demanding that Booking.com stop its alleged abusive and misleading practices and compensate Dutch consumers for damages suffered. The potential class includes all Dutch consumers who booked hotel rooms online through Booking.com or other online platforms. As of the date of last week’s announcement, 267,000 people had registered to be part of the class.
  • Google Launching AI Mode Flight and Hotel Booking Tools. In today’s Update, we offer several stories (including Google’s own press release) detailing Google’s announcement this past week of several new travel related tools, including, most notably, the upcoming release of new Google AI mode agentic booking tools that allow users to book reservations for flights and hotels. The announcement comes on the heels of Google’s recently announced agentic booking tools for booking restaurant reservations, buying event tickets and making beauty and wellness appointments. While Google is still developing the new tools (an official launch date was not provided), it did provide some details about the new tools and the anticipated user experience (which from this person’s viewpoint, sounds a lot like a natural language facilitated metasearch platform) . . .
    • Google is working with industry partners Booking.com, Expedia, Marriott, Choice, IHG and Wyndham in developing the new tools. Google expects to announce additional industry partners (“of every size” including aggregators) at the time of the launch.
    • Users will be able to select among identified travel partners based on price and other attributes.
    • Booking flows, payments, etc. still need to be worked out, though Google made clear that industry partners will serve as the merchant of record and will manage / service existing bookings.
    • Google wants to incorporate users’ previous interactions with AI Mode into the booking tools and user experience (e.g., preference for luxury travel, member of particular loyalty programs, etc.).

Following the announcement, both industry pundits and investors raised questions about the effects of the new Google tools on existing OTAs, which leads us to our final featured story below.

• • Google Walks Back Industry Intentions Following Latest Product Announcement. Facing questions about its long term industry intentions and possible OTA (also known as ADVERTISERS) disintermediation (and loss of market value) following its announcement of forthcoming agentic flight and hotel booking agents, Google was quick to clarify (walk back) its intentions. In a follow up interview with Skift, Google’s vice president of engineering for Travel and Local, Julie Farago, tried to clarify Google’s intentions – “Google has no intention of becoming an online travel agent.” According to Farago, even with the introduction of the new AI tools, users will continue to work with their partner of choice (whether OTA or direct channel) as they do now with standard search.

All of this leads the skeptic in me to question whether AI will really be the game changer that it is often promoted to be. Yes, it may present a far more useful and powerful form of search allowing users to access and organize content in ways never before seen, but will the dominant (and likely, most trusted) AI players really do or try anything that disrupts the current status (and financial benefits) of online search and booking? We know that the OTAs are working hard to ensure that outcome. Regardless, the next months and years will definitely be interesting. I love this job.

For those of you celebrating Thanksgiving, I hope you and your families have a wonderful holiday. Our next Online Travel Update will be on Friday, December 5. Have a great two weeks.

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, November 14, 2025, is below. This week’s Update features of variety of stories, including Apple’s recent Digital ID announcement. As promised last week, we’ve also included a copy of the transcript from last week’s Expedia earnings call. Finally, for our readers under the age of 18, you may want to consult with your parents before proceeding. Enjoy (but not too much).

• • Apple Announces New Digital ID Functionality. On Wednesday, Apple announced Digital ID, a new feature that allows iPhone users the opportunity to use digitally stored passport information to pass through TSA checkpoints without a physical passport of identification. Today, the functionality is limited to U.S. domestic travel (12 states and 250 airports (with more on the way)) and cannot yet be used for international border crossings. With important digital ID changes coming to the EU in the next few years, expect to see more about digital IDs in upcoming Updates.
  • Airbnb Sues Over Alleged Conspiracy Against Short Term Rentals. This past week, Airbnb sued the City of Biloxi, Mississippi, in federal court alleging that the City illegally conspired with the Mississippi Hotel & Lodging Association to severely limit short term rentals and thereby raise the Association’s members’ (local hoteliers) profits in violation of state and federal anti-trust law. According to Airbnb’s complaint, the Association, through its illegal conspiracy with the City, has prohibited short term rentals in large sections of the City, severely restricted short term rentals in others and inserted itself in unprecedented ways into the review and approval of new short term rentals applications. For those of you interested, a copy of the complaint is linked in the story below.
  • Airbnb Launches Hotel Pilot. Airbnb is moving ahead with its previously announced plans to re-enter the hotel industry. Airbnb has launched a pilot program in three cities – New York, Los Angeles and Madrid – where restrictive short term rental regulations have severely limited inventory. For now, the pilot is focused on independent and boutique hotels. Recent changes to the Airbnb platform now allow users to view room types and other detailed property information (unlike Airbnb’s first foray into hotels) like more traditional hotel booking platforms. According to Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky, the addition of hotels presents a multi-billion dollar opportunity that won’t be dilutive to its existing short term rental business. Chesky further believes that Airbnb won’t need to invest the billions of dollars in marketing that its competitors (Expedia and Booking.com) do because of its existing strong brand identity (and resulting direct traffic). Stay tuned.
  • Want to Get Lucky? Plan a Vacation. Every now and then we encounter a story that creates far more questions than it answers. Last week was one of those moments when we came across a press release on the Booking.com website claiming that for the majority of American women (56%), a partner planning and booking a trip is just as arousing, if not more, than foreplay. What? Let the questions begin. I cannot wait to raise this nugget in my next Booking.com negotiation.

Have a great week everyone. I’m booking a trip on Booking.com. 

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, November 7, 2025, is below. Expedia’s quarterly earnings report garnered most of the attention this week as Expedia reported relatively strong third quarter results. We’ll include a transcript from this week’s earning release call in next week’s Update. Enjoy.

• • Expedia Posts Better Than Expected Quarterly Earnings. Expedia’s third quarter earnings reflected continued strength in its B2B business and a stabilizing B2C business. Here are a few of the key numbers:
    • Company-wide revenue grew 9% YOY to $4.4 billion (B2B revenue grew 18% YOY)
    • Advertising revenue grew 16% YOY
    • Company-wide gross bookings grew 12% YOY (B2B bookings grew 26% and B2C bookings grew by 7%)
    • Booked room nights grew by 11% (outpacing competitors Airbnb and Booking.com for the quarter)

When asked during the earnings call about Expedia’s current AI efforts, CEO Ariane Goren noted that the Company had two primary priorities – ensuring that its brands and content appeared in responses to users’ prompts on the major AI platforms and directing traffic from those platforms back to Expedia. Goren’s comments regarding the leads received by Expedia from popular AI platforms mirrored those of Booking Holdings’ Glenn Fogel just a week earlier - few leads today but growing and good quality.

• • AI, AI Agents and Corporate Travel. For the past few months now, the industry (us too) has focused almost exclusively on AI and AI agents and their effect on leisure travel. What about managed and corporate travel? What complexities do travel policy compliance, expense management and duty of care obligations introduce? According to recent comments from some of the largest corporate travel players, these added complications will make it impossible to replace TMCs and expense platforms entirely. Sounds like self-preservation talk to me. From my perspective, as AI tools are perfected in leisure travel, their extension into corporate and managed travel (and their complex data sets, which seem like natural fits for AI) seems inevitable. Anyone agree?
  • What Lessons Can Be Learned from Airlines and ChatGPT? According to recent research conducted by PROS, an airline retailing and revenue management company, referrals from leading AI platforms to airline websites is growing quickly. In September of this year, ChatGPT accounted for 2.3% of all referral traffic from search engines to airline websites (this number is up from 1.8% in August). While the importance of AI platforms may be increasingly generally, airlines may have a hard time benefitting from the increased usage. According to PROS, a wide margin of the traffic generated through ChatGPT today goes to OTAs and metasearch sites and not airlines themselves. Note that these results are quite different than the results of the AI behavioral study by Propellic that we featured in an earlier post, but they may be indicative of where hotel search is going in the future.

Have a great week everyone. 

Good Sunday morning from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, October 31, 2025, is below. Booking Holdings garnered most of the attention this past week as it reported its third quarter earnings and updated investors on its ongoing artificial intelligence efforts. A copy of the earnings release call transcript is linked below. Enjoy.

• • Updates on Booking.com’s Payments Business. With so much attention being paid these days to Booking.com’s AI announcements, we’ve all lost track of Booking.com’s ongoing efforts to stand up a successful payments’ platform. Anyone remember “Facilitated Payments?” Payments remain a critical component of Booking.com’s overall connected trip strategy and is likely one area (at least according to Booking.com) where AI platforms won’t be racing to displace existing players or structures.
  • Is Organic Search Dead? According to Kayak’s CEO, Steve Hafner, organic search is at least dying. In a recent Skift interview, Haftner shared that large language models (LLMs), including Google’s AI Overviews, are to blame for rising customer acquisition costs. With Google’s placement of entirely self-contained AI driven responses at the top of users’ search results, organic search is becoming less relevant and forcing advertisers like Kayak to invest more in paid search. According to Haftner, anyone who has previously relied on organic links is likely to suffer the same consequences. The result? At least for Kayak, the changes resulted in a recent $457 million accounting write down on its brand. With these important changes in search being brought about by AI (and in particular, Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode), one must ask how relevant are Google’s newly proposed search boxes (see story below) other than to satisfy EU regulators?
  • Booking Holdings Updates Investors on AI Efforts (and Reports Quarterly Earnings). Booking Holdings released its third quarter earnings report this past week and while Booking reported a relatively strong third quarter (including some first time comments on its growing B2B business), most of the industry’s attention was focused on CEO Glenn Fogel’s comments on AI. A few takeaways . . .
    
    • It remains far too early to say with any certainty that AI is the travel industry disrupter that everyone claims it is. Yes, Booking.com is enjoying great PR (“first wave”) with regard to its new ChatGPT app, but what that app actually means for new customer acquisitions or direct channel growth remains unknown.
    • Bookings generated through AI enabled platforms reflect higher user engagement – better conversion, fewer cancellations and high customer satisfaction. All good things.
    • Booking believes that irrespective of where travelers may actually begin their search, platforms like Booking.com will continue to serve a critical (irreplaceable?) role in fulfilling and servicing the bookings (and the many complex relationships that are required to create and pay for those bookings) that ultimately result from those searches.
    • My two cents . . . Despite Glenn Fogel’s seemingly dismissal of the threat posed by AI platforms, I believe Booking.com is as afraid of AI and its possible disintermediation of travel intermediaries like Booking.com as it is excited about the potential opportunities presented by AI. I also believe that the outcome here will depend more on the aspirations (and existing or future business models) of the AI platforms versus anything that Booking or other intermediaries might ever do. Walking away from billions of dollars of ad revenue (or possible revenue) generated through the intermediaries will be difficult for any platform player. Google never made that kind of leap with traditional search. Will Google (or other newcomer AI platforms) behave differently with AI?
  • TripAdvisor to Soon Launch Its Own ChatGPT App. How relevant will this app actually be? See discussion above.

Have a great week everyone.