The Prompt

Google just shipped new commerce tools for retail. The travel industry is watching — and some developers aren't waiting for an invitation.

After Covid exposed how brittle travel's customer service infrastructure was, the industry pitched AI as the fix. Now, with the Middle East chaos, much of the tech that was supposed to help vanished from the narrative.

Marriott highlighted two forces shaping the hotel industry right now - geopolitical volatility and a race to build AI tools that keep travelers inside its direct channels.

The travel industry’s most important ecosystem story may be Montreal, where aviation DNA, patient capital, and a single Expedia office accidentally created a $15 billion infrastructure layer that much of the industry now runs on.

Hilton’s new AI trip planning tool reflects how hotel groups are trying to stay visible while travelers increasingly use conversational prompts to plan and search trips.

Consider the complexity that Fuldner is walking into. Airbnb is tasking him with reshaping the company's teams and systems into a unified "intelligent platform." All this, while Airbnb is launching new verticals, and trying to become a native AI app.

OpenAI built the checkout tech but couldn't get users to actually buy. That's a reprieve for OTAs, and a reality check for anyone assuming AI commerce is inevitable.

In the face of the LLM threat, Booking Holdings thinks it can repeatedly grow its top line 8% annually over the "medium term" and earnings per share 15% over the same timespan.

Expedia has been downsizing its workforce over the last year, and plowing some of the savings into machine learning and AI. It's a playbook that's taking place across industries.

Travelers say they aren't ready to let AI book a trip. The industry is spending billions anyway — and no one has answered the most basic question: who pays when AI agents get it wrong?