$6 billion. That’s what Expedia says AI recommendations added in booking volume for partners this year.
In this WiT Studio session, Golan Shakéd, VP of Hotel Management Partnerships and Air at Expedia Group, talks about what AI means for hotels big and small, who pays for it, and what the next five years could look like.
Expedia Group is, in a way, changing what its Partner Central dashboard is for. Instead of just showing hotels their numbers, it’s starting to tell them what to do with those numbers. Shakéd says the company has surfaced over 1 million AI-driven data points to partners this year, through Partner Central and field teams, and he calls it “just the beginning.” So, what kinds of recommendations are moving the needle that much? And why does he think many partners haven’t even started?
Then there’s the question of who gets seen. When AI does the searching, the app or website no longer has the same limited screen space, and a one-to-one chat could put a small independent hotel in front of a traveller ahead of a big chain. Shakéd says what will matter is how good and how relevant a hotel’s content is, not its size. But AI isn’t free. Tokens cost money, and AI agents can blow past the look-to-book limits that airline partners set. Who ends up footing that bill? Shakéd names a couple of ways Expedia hopes to offset it.
Looking five years out, Shakéd sees the hotel-OTA relationship changing in ways that go beyond faster and more automated. What happens when agentic booking gives hotels far more traveller data than they’ve ever had? What does it mean for room types and extras to show up only for the travelers most likely to want them? And could travel servicing start fixing problems before a trip even begins?
Watch the full interview:
