Several travel companies said on their latest earnings calls that discussions about partnerships with personal AI assistants are widespread, but actual booking volumes remain very small. During Halloween week, out of roughly 320 million trips and orders at Uber, only 500 food-delivery orders and 4 rides were completed by AI agents; at Booking.com, the share of room nights coming from large language models and new types of personal assistants remains significantly below 1%.
Why recommended:Several travel companies' earnings calls disclosed that booking volumes brought by personal AI assistants remain extremely low, while also showing early differences in conversion rates and distribution paths.
Expedia Group reported results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2026, with gross bookings of $34.008 billion, up 11% year over year, and revenue of $4.938 billion, up 12% year over year.
Why recommended:The earnings disclosure shows B2B gross bookings grew 19% and revenue grew 23%, which can be used to observe the growth rate and structural changes of corporate travel distribution channels.
Meta launched its personal AI agent Muse in the United States on September 8, and Zuckerberg listed travel as one of its main use cases; within about two weeks, the market value of travel aggregation platforms evaporated by about $54 billion, and Booking and Expedia each fell more than 7% over two trading days.
Why recommended:The article sorts out the positioning choices and changes in bargaining power of OTAs, suppliers and distribution channels after AI agents become a new entry point for travel booking.