By skyforbes Featured
Travel discovery is leaving Google behind. Expedia’s move into ChatGPT could redefine who owns the customer journey.
What is this?
Expedia has recently launched a groundbreaking integration allowing users to plan and book travel directly through ChatGPT. This move positions Expedia as one of the first major travel platforms to leverage in-chat AI to deliver a more conversational, intuitive, and seamless travel planning experience within the ChatGPT environment.
How the Expedia-ChatGPT App Works
The Expedia ChatGPT app is built via OpenAI’s new Apps SDK, letting users access real-time travel inventory, dynamic pricing, and rich visuals directly within a chat conversation. Here’s how it functions:
a. Conversational Planning: Users start planning their trips by asking open-ended questions in natural language (i.e. “Find me hotels in New York next weekend” or “Show me pet-friendly resorts in Spain”).
b. Instant Recommendations: The app delivers tailored hotel, flight, and activity recommendations from Expedia’s inventory, with dynamic pricing and availability updates embedded in the chat interface.
c. Booking Flow: When a traveler is ready, they can click directly from the chat to “Book on Expedia” and complete their booking with a seamless handoff. The selected options are saved as “Trips” in the Expedia system for easy management.
d. Multimodal Experience: In addition to text-based suggestions, users may see visuals like property images and interactive maps.
e. App Discovery: Users can invoke the Expedia app by name in ChatGPT, or ChatGPT may suggest it contextually if the conversation is about travel. The integration uses the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to connect ChatGPT live to Expedia’s data infrastructure.
Distribution and User Access
The feature is currently available for all logged-in ChatGPT users outside the EU, accessible on Free, Plus, and Pro plans.
Other travel providers like Booking.com, Tripadvisor, Uber, and TheFork are also developing similar integrations, broadening AI-powered chat distribution channels in travel.
Strategic Effects on the Travel Distribution Landscape
A Closed-Loop Ecosystem
Expedia’s ChatGPT integration shifts the travel booking funnel from traditional discovery (Google, meta-search, OTA browsing) to a closed-loop conversation. This means consumers can complete much of their journey, from inspiration to booking, without ever visiting a travel supplier’s website or traditional OTA app.
Increased Reliance on OTAs
For hotels, this shift means increased reliance on OTAs for distribution, as AI-powered chat recommendations are drawn from platforms with optimized, structured data feeds (like Expedia). This may reduce direct website traffic, limit upselling opportunities, and increase commissions payable to intermediaries.
Power of AI-Driven Personalization
The integration is driven by structured listings optimized for machines, entity-based SEO, live pricing feeds, and a rich dataset of reviews. As a result, hotels that invest in such data hygiene are more likely to appear in AI-driven recommendations.
Democratizing Access and Disintermediation Risks
While this shift may threaten direct hotel bookings, it also creates new opportunities. Hotels of all sizes that ensure their inventory is well-optimized for AI will compete on a more level playing field for guest visibility in the chat funnel. At the same time, the “answer box” nature of conversational AI means only a handful of properties are surfaced per query, compressing competition. And yes, those surfaced properties would more than less, those in which Expedia possesses a bigger margin.
Data and Relationship Ownership
OTAs like Expedia will now “own” the search, recommendation, and booking relationship within the chat environment, giving them enhanced data flows and customer loyalty opportunities, at the expense of first-party relationships hotels previously enjoyed.
Broader Industry Impacts
1. Channel Shift: Major traffic and booking volume will flow from search engines and OTA apps/websites to chat-based applications powered by AI.
2. Distribution Arms Race: Travel suppliers, hoteliers, and other OTAs will prioritize integrating with conversational platforms and optimizing for AI indexing.
3. Consumer Behavior: With 60% of travelers open to using AI for trip planning, widespread adoption is likely, especially for younger and tech-savvy travelers.
4. Competitive Differentiation: Suppliers who master structured data, dynamic pricing, and conversational AI presence will outmaneuver laggards dependent on legacy systems.
Conclusion
Expedia’s ChatGPT integration is not just a flashy feature, it signals a paradigm shift in travel planning and distribution. By making AI the “front door” to trip discovery and booking, Expedia and other early adopters are redefining how travelers interact with the marketplace, and setting new expectations for frictionless, personalized service. For the travel industry, the imperative is clear: adapt to the conversational era or risk being left out of the booking conversation entirely.
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