The article argues that hotels lose direct bookings to OTAs because their websites fail to provide specific information to manage traveler expectations. By improving room, location, and offers pages, hotels can increase direct bookings and reduce OTA commissions.
Google has begun a limited US test of agentic hotel booking within Search's AI Mode, with Booking Holdings CEO confirming it as one of the first partners. This builds on Google's November plans for an AI-driven flight and hotel booking experience. Google's new Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) could enable agents to transact directly within a chat session. Major travel players including Booking, Expedia, Marriott, Wyndham, IHG, and infrastructure providers Amadeus and Sabre are collaborating. While Google insists it has no ambition to become an OTA, the infrastructure it is assembling could enable end-to-end AI travel booking in its flagship search engine.
GetYourGuide will begin passing its digital services tax (DST) costs to tour operators via a commission surcharge starting October 1, 2026, in five markets: France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the UK. The platform had absorbed these taxes since January 2025 and began listing them as a separate invoice line item in April 2026. Surcharges vary by market, with one UK operator quoted 1.8% on top of an existing 25% commission, while the underlying DST reaches 7% in Turkey. GetYourGuide opposes how DSTs are structured, arguing they tax revenue rather than profit and disproportionately hurt growth-stage European firms and small businesses, and is lobbying policymakers for alternatives.
Hilton has restructured its global B2B sales operation to reflect post-Covid changes in how corporations shop for and book hotels. The sales organization is now divided into three 'prongs': digital self-serve, digital buyers needing human support, and large accounts requiring direct-seller advisors. Hilton for Business has surpassed 400,000 enrolled companies but lacks budgeting, spend-tracking, payment, and travel-coordinator tools, with upgrades planned for late 2025/early 2026. Hilton's direct connection with Navan aims to reduce rate suppression and leakage, with competitors testing similar models.
At SAP Concur Fusion, SAP Concur and Amex GBT announced new advancements in Complete, their AI-enabled co-developed solution. Updates include integrated travel support with Joule AI and live counselor hand-off, a new home page for travel managers, expanded content across air, hotel, and ground including NDC and rail, and integration between Concur Expense and Amex GBT Egencia. These features aim to streamline booking, servicing, payments, and expensing, enhancing customer value.
PhocusWire rounds up earnings from major travel companies: Uber gross bookings up 24% to $58B; Amex GBT revenue up 35% with transactions up 41%; MakeMyTrip and Ixigo show mixed results in India; Lyft active riders exceed 30 million. AI adoption is key to improving efficiency and customer experience.
According to Preferred Hotels & Resorts' Luxury Travel Report, 62% of travelers surveyed agreed that hotels feel increasingly generic. I Prefer Hotel Rewards offers rewards and benefits at over 700 distinctive, independent hotels worldwide, including complimentary Wi-Fi, early check-in/late check-out, enhanced room upgrades, exclusive member rates, and points earned on eligible stays. Points can be used for personal travel.
Airbnb highlighted that its hotel initiative is exceeding expectations during its Q2 earnings call, partnering with Lark to add over 75 boutique properties. Hotels account for a single-digit percentage of nights but are growing three times faster than homes. Revenue rose 17% to $3.6 billion, and AI reduced customer service costs by 16%.
TravelDaily China compiled tourism capital activities for the second half of July 2026, including five M&A deals: CITIC Capital's 3 billion yuan acquisition of Jianye's theatrical project, Zhejiang Tourism Investment Group's 616 million yuan purchase of 10% of Xiangyuan Cultural Tourism, Travel + Leisure Co.'s $343 million acquisition of two resort operators, and five financing deals including Fora's $60 million Series D at a $1 billion valuation.
Alibaba Group announced it will report unaudited financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, before the U.S. market opens on August 20, 2026, and will hold a conference call at 7:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time (7:30 p.m. Hong Kong Time) the same day. Participants must pre-register and will receive dial-in numbers, a passcode and a unique PIN. A live webcast will be available, with a replay accessible for one week from the conference date.
Alibaba Group announced it will report its unaudited financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, before the U.S. market opens on August 20, 2026, and will hold a conference call at 7:30 a.m. ET the same day. Participants must pre-register.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says AI is dramatically speeding up product development, citing airport pickups launched in six weeks versus nine months for groceries. Core rental business grew nights and seats booked 10% in Q2, outpacing Expedia (6%) and Booking (5%). Expanding into hotels, experiences, and services as it builds a one-stop travel platform. Q2 revenue rose 17% to $3.6B, net income up 27% to $816M, and raised full-year guidance.
Tripadvisor Group reported Q2 2026 revenue of $441.9 million, down 7% year-over-year, and net income of $22.8 million, down from $36.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $76.4 million, down 21%. Experiences revenue grew 3% to $278.6 million, while hotels and other revenue declined 21%. The company is progressing with the sale of TheFork to American Express and focusing on experiences and AI innovation.
HeSi released a 2026 corporate travel platform selection guide, emphasizing the priority of integrated expense control. It points out that independent TMC solutions have long-term hidden costs over 25% higher than integrated solutions. The guide proposes four evaluation dimensions and shares a case of an East China equipment manufacturing group, where after deploying HeSi Smart Travel, pre-compliance rate increased from 64% to 99.2%, finance reconciliation hours dropped by 87%, and employee reimbursement cycle shortened to 0 days.
Expedia Group, in its Q2 2026 earnings call, said it is investing in two categories of AI: one for improving recommendations, ranking, and personalization, which is delivering immediate benefits; the other for conversational experiences like Vrbo's natural language search, which, while not yet driving conversion, provides over 60% more information about traveler intent, expected to yield compounding benefits over time. Q2 booked room nights grew 6% to 111.5 million, gross bookings up 12% to $33.9 billion.
Booking Holdings reported progress on its connected trip strategy in Q2, with connected trip transactions growing in the low double-digits, more than twice the rate of total transaction growth. The company leverages AI and its loyalty program, with higher-tier Genius members representing over 30% of active customers and accounting for a high 50% share of room nights. AI customer service is reducing contact rates and costs, while Booking.com tests AI discovery, Agoda launches Gallery View, and Priceline deploys agentic AI assistant Penny.
Trivago spent more than five times as much on internal AI tooling and tokens in the first seven months of 2026 as in all of 2025. CEO Johannes Thomas said 93% of employees use AI daily, up from 63% last year. Q2 revenue grew 21% to €168.4 million, with adjusted EBITDA turning positive at €1.1 million. Trivago also filed an antitrust suit against Google, alleging self-preferencing, and noted the EU fined Google €890 million.
Booking Holdings, in its Q2 earnings call, said referral traffic from LLMs (paid and unpaid) represents less than 1% of total room nights, with no material change recently. However, third-party data shows its brands appear frequently in LLMs. The company is working with third-party frontier players to ensure proper placement and launched initiatives like Priceline's Penny and Agoda's gallery view. Q2 gross bookings grew 9%, revenue up 8% to $7.4 billion.
Ctrip Corporate Travel and Yonyou BIP Travel Cloud have entered the fifth year of cooperation, completing deep integration of AI capabilities. Ctrip's intelligent itinerary planning AI Agent 'Chengxingtu' is now fully embedded in Yonyou's travel cloud, shifting travel management from human-operated systems to human-AI collaboration, enabling conversational booking and supporting global travel management.
Expedia Group's Q2 2026 results exceeded guidance: gross bookings grew 12% YoY, revenue grew 14%, and adjusted EBITDA grew 23%. B2B segment performed strongly with bookings up 21% and revenue up 23%. The company raised its full-year guidance.
Maycur published a 2026 AI expense control vendor review, proposing six core evaluation dimensions: smart receipt capture, AI form filling, AI audit, policy Q&A, AI data query, and system integration. The article compares four solution types: Maycur, travel consumption, project custom, and ERP subsidiary. Maycur serves over 4,500 large enterprises, 500+ listed companies, and 60,000+ paid legal entities, connecting 5 million+ global monthly active users. Its AI capabilities are embedded in expense application, receipt capture, audit, budget verification, supporting overseas receipt processing and multi-currency reimbursement.
Maycur published a 2026 mobile expense software recommendation guide, proposing seven experience criteria: receipt capture, mobile application and approval, itinerary association, budget alerts, mobile approval, cross-platform collaboration, and group adaptation. The article compares four solution types: Maycur, standard expense, travel portal, and ERP mobile. Maycur Expense supports iOS/Android clients and WeChat Work, DingTalk, Feishu, offering smart receipt capture, mobile approval, budget control, suitable for large groups, listed companies, SOEs, and global enterprises.
Maycur Technology published a 2026 selection guide for integrated business-finance-tax-archive solutions, comparing four types: Maycur, single-point expense control, ERP ecosystem, and custom integration. The article emphasizes that integration does not mean one vendor provides all software, but rather clear data sources and responsibility boundaries to reuse business information across reimbursement, invoicing, payment, accounting, and archiving. Maycur offers products including expense, cloud invoice, AP, AR, archive, AI, and BI, serving over 4,500 large enterprises, 500+ listed companies, and 60,000+ paid legal entities.
Airbnb has signed a distribution agreement with Lark, a boutique hotel operator based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to bring over 75 boutique hotels onto the Airbnb platform. Lark manages nearly 100 independent hotels across the U.S. and Mexico. The partnership aligns with Airbnb's strategy of offering unique, localized stays.
Navan announced it has been selected by Insight Enterprises as its partner for unified travel and expense management across 26 countries. With Navan's AI-powered platform, Insight expects to reduce total travel spend by over 8%, save more than 20,000 hours annually, including 6,300 hours on booking and 14,400 hours on expense management. Navan provides real-time financial control with policy enforcement at the point of sale for 98% of corporate spend.
BCD Travel published a guide to GBTA 2026, highlighting sessions led by its experts on topics such as using data and AI to influence traveler behavior, compliance risks, modernizing service expectations, and the future of airline retailing. It also showcases the newly launched Tripsource platform.
The article explores AI's impact on online booking tools (OBTs), noting the need for deep integration with enterprise tools like Teams and using AI to simplify booking, policy compliance, and risk management. Startups like Otto offer AI assistants that learn traveler preferences and automate bookings.
Booking Holdings reported Q2 2026 results. Room nights grew 5% to 325 million, gross bookings up 9% to $51.0 billion, revenue up 8% to $7.4 billion. Net income surged 118% to $2.0 billion. The company increased expected annual run-rate savings from its Transformation Program to approximately $650 million, to be realized by end of 2027.
American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) reported Q2 2026 results: revenue of $870 million, up 38% year-over-year; adjusted EBITDA of $178 million, up 34%. TTV grew 57% and transactions grew 45%. The company won major clients including Google, Koch, and Pfizer, maintaining a 95% customer retention rate. Shareholders approved the acquisition by Long Lake Management, expected to close in H2 2026.
Navan announced the launch of its most granular set of policy controls, giving global enterprises precise financial control while providing travelers with clearer choices. New capabilities include flight policies tailored by traveler group and flight duration, rail policies by journey duration and traveler group, and country-level hotel limits with city-specific exceptions. These features aim to help travel managers maintain compliance and cost control in a dynamic environment.
BCD Travel announced advancements in its Tripsource platform to expand travel content access, including a new direct connect agreement with United Airlines. This reinforces BCD's 'Open by Design' approach, supporting policy compliance, traveler safety, and program integrity. The direct connect will be available via online and offline channels, leveraging NDC capabilities. BCD has supported direct connections since 2019 and now has 22 airlines live in its NDC ecosystem.
Booking Holdings announced that its Q2 2026 financial results will be released on August 4, 2026, at approximately 4:00 p.m. ET via a press release on its investor relations website. A conference call will be held at 4:30 p.m. ET, webcasted and available for replay for seven days.
MakeMyTrip reported Q1 FY27 results with gross bookings up 19.9% YoY to approximately $2.9 billion, and revenue up 16.1%. Despite external headwinds, adjusted margins grew double digits across segments. The company launched Myra 2.0, an AI assistant handling over 85,000 daily conversations and resolving over 50% of post-booking queries.
BCD Travel launched Tripsource Insights this summer as a core capability within the Tripsource platform, integrating data from BCD systems and supplier sources into one interface. It provides corporate travel and finance leaders with a unified, real-time view of travel spend, payment activity, and traveler risk. Using AI and NLP, the platform supports daily program management, helping optimize spend, monitor performance, and ensure compliance.
Business travel and spend management platform Engine acquired Options Travel, a full-service TMC with over 30 years of experience, using its daily operations as a laboratory to build an AI-native Online Booking Tool (OBT). The tool consolidates booking, payments, reporting, customer management, and duty of care into a single dashboard, reducing agent booking times from an industry average of nearly 15 minutes to 2.5 minutes, with plans to license it to TMCs globally.
Travel and spend management platform Engine acquired TMC Options Travel, with terms not disclosed. Engine will use Options Travel's operations to develop an AI-native online booking tool (OBT) aimed at improving booking speed, personalization, and automated disruption handling. Options Travel will continue to operate independently, with its employees joining Engine.
Expedia Group has acquired AI travel planning and booking app Layla for an undisclosed amount. The move accelerates its AI strategy by combining Layla's planning and personalization capabilities with Expedia's supply, scale, and technology. Layla was founded in 2023 and attracted €3 million in seed funding with backers including Lastminute.com founder Brent Hoberman. Expedia unveiled a ChatGPT app in November 2025.
This week's travel tech news: Katanox names Rob Torres chairman; Airbnb appoints David Spielfogel as global head of public policy; Amex GBT launches Egencia AI connector; HBX Group partners with Sabre; RMS integrates with TrustYou; Atlas adds Volaris, and more.
Expedia Group has acquired Layla, an AI-native trip planning and booking platform, to accelerate its AI strategy. Layla, founded in 2023 and based in Berlin, helps travelers discover destinations, create personalized itineraries, and plan complete trips through a conversational travel agent. The acquisition combines Layla's advanced planning and personalization capabilities with Expedia Group's global supply, first-party traveler insights, marketplace scale, and booking technology, aiming to create richer, more personalized travel experiences and move travelers seamlessly from inspiration to booking.
BCD Travel has made a strategic investment in Amgine, an AI automation platform for corporate travel. The investment amount was not disclosed. The companies have an existing partnership, confirmed in July 2025. Amgine provides tools for TMCs and corporate travel departments to turn travel requests from email, Slack, WhatsApp, and group air into completed bookings. BCD said the platform has been used for group-air management, email automation, and other AI initiatives.