It may be a couple of months since the World Cup final, but Alfonso Paredes, Expedia Group’s President, B2B & Chief Commercial Officer, is still euphoric about his home country’s win.
Speaking to me from his Madrid office, he said, “Spain won not because they had the best individual players. They had the best team. Period. We might not have all the Mbappés, but as a team we killed it. Why? Because everybody had a responsibility, and everybody knew where to be.”
Without him saying it, I imagine that’s exactly how he wants to see his vastly-expanded B2B team performing.
The World Cup also confirmed something he already believed: travel and live experiences, sport included, are still among the most powerful things that get people moving. He caught nine games himself, “and the tickets weren’t cheap and whatever they cost, people were buying them.” Then Madrid hosted its first Formula One race, which he says brought US$500 million into the city, “money that the city never had before. People want these experiences.”
So never mind the political turbulence out there. Paredes is still bullish about people’s desire to travel. However they book, wherever they book, he wants Expedia Group B2B to be the connected, one-stop infrastructure that powers the transaction.
“AI is the interface,” he said. “Expedia B2B is the infrastructure.”
People before pipes
The CarTrawler acquisition closed on September 1. Tiqets, the other recent buy, is now fully integrated: Tiqets activities have gone live on Expedia’s Rapid API. A test is also running on the Travel Agent Affiliate Program (TAAP) in the UK, where a small group of hand-picked agencies are selling Tiqets inventory alongside Expedia’s existing activities.
For CarTrawler partners, it’s business as usual for now. “CarTrawler has the expertise, and Expedia B2B has the scale and the platform,” Paredes said. “That’s what we want to bring together.”
He wants to do that without losing the momentum of what he calls “an incredible business.”
Ask him what surprised him most about buying two specialists, and he doesn’t talk about the technology first.
“Expedia, we could say we’re a generalist. We sell cars, activities, but we don’t specialise,” he said. “Here, you’re acquiring people that are more knowledgeable than us, and that’s a reality. So how do you make sure you keep all these teams engaged, and make them feel part of the family as quickly as you can?”
“In this world of AI, it’s funny that the thing I’m telling you is most important is the people,” he said.
20 quarters and counting
Expedia Group’s B2B revenue grew 23% year-on-year in Q2. When I pushed on the possibility that it could be higher, he pushed back. “What do you mean it could be higher? We’ve been delivering double digits for 20 quarters. I don’t think there is a company in the travel industry today that has ever done that.”
Margins were squeezed in the quarter, which Expedia put down to partner mix and the cost of consolidating acquisitions. Paredes isn’t in a rush on that.
“There are times to accelerate and times to think, plan, strategise, so you can jump faster and longer,” he said. Once the integrations settle into a rhythm, “margins will go up. But first we want to do things well, and not be in a hurry.”
He said the pressure comes from inside the team as much as from outside. “Everybody’s like, okay, it’s gonna be the same story – 21, 22, 23 quarters. Trust me, we put enough pressure on ourselves.”
So what’s the biggest risk to breaking the streak? “Losing the focus,” he said. “There is a tendency to think too way above yourself. There is a need to be humble – there’s a lot of complexity in these new companies, you have to run your own business while integrating. Everybody needs to be sure of what they need to do and coordinate so that it flows smoothly.
“That’s what keeps me awake. How do I make sure we keep on focusing? There are so many things going on.”
Are there more deals coming? He admits there will always be gaps: “Whoever tells you they have the perfect machinery, it’s not true.” But for now, the Air API, cruises and the rest of what Expedia already offers need to be “positioned better, delivered better. Give me a break, at least until…”
Anniversary in heaven
Are AI and B2B a marriage made in heaven, I asked? “It’s not marriage in heaven, it’s a wedding anniversary,” Paredes said. Expedia used machine learning long before anyone called it AI. Now it’s helping his teams ship products and features “10 times faster.”
Speed and discipline don’t always go together, though. To explain how he balances them, he pointed to the Pirelli ad with Carl Lewis sprinting in red stilettos under the line “Power is nothing without control.”
“Speed without control is nothing,” he said. “Control, discipline, focus, and speed. That’s how we’re doing it.”
The same caution applies to agentic AI. Expedia now makes its inventory available to AI agents through an MCP server. Partners who want to plug in need a clear use case and the people and technology to connect agents safely. They also need identity, permissions, testing and monitoring in place “to make sure what agents do, they do it in the way that we want it.”
Booking? “Zero” change
What about Booking Holdings bringing its B2B businesses together under Agoda’s CEO Omri Morgenshtern? Paredes said it has changed his pitch to partners by “zero.”
“It’s good that you have people trying to copy or replicate what we have done,” he said. “This is a $2 trillion business. There is space for everybody.”
He added that Booking has been a B2B competitor since 2020, “maybe with a different name, a different colour, different people. I’m excited that we have competition. The more the better.”
Asia Pacific: Louder than it looks
While Asia Pacific is Expedia B2B’s fastest-growing region, its consumer brands are not as well-known as the incumbents in the region, I suggested, and I asked him if this was a disadvantage and what was more important in running a B2B business – connectivity and content vs distribution?
Firstly, he said both are equally important and secondly, he pushed back on the idea that Expedia’s consumer brands don’t count for much in the region: “Don’t underestimate our presence in APAC. It might not be the place where we make the most noise, but it’s still relevant.”
Whatever the case, Expedia B2B has just landed two major deals in APAC, both of which Paredes said are ground-breaking.
On September 17, Expedia Group B2B launched NAB Travel with National Australia Bank. It’s the first arrangement of its kind between Expedia B2B and an Australian bank, putting Expedia’s technology, inventory and customer support inside NAB’s banking app. The timing fits the data: Expedia’s 2025 Traveller Value Index found that 72% of Australians would book travel through a non-travel loyalty programme if they could earn points.
“Australians haven’t stopped wanting to travel, but they are making more considered choices about where and how they book,” said Sweta Mehra, NAB’s Executive, Personal Everyday Banking.
And just announced today, in what Paredes calls “one of the biggest deals in APAC”, a strategic technology partnership with Qantas Loyalty, set to transform the digital booking experience and technology capabilities across the Qantas Hotels & Holidays and Jetstar Holidays platforms.
Under the agreement, Expedia Group B2B will power Qantas’ end-to-end travel experience designed specifically for the Qantas Hotels and Holidays ecosystem. Built on Expedia Group B2B’s Composable Agentic Template, customers will have a single place to book hotels and holiday packages, earn and redeem Qantas Points, and manage their entire trip.
“This has never been done before in the industry,” said Paredes. “Without AI, we would not have been able to do it as fast.”
With CarTrawler and Tiqets in the stack, the pitch to Asian partners is one infrastructure covering hotels, flights, cars, experiences and insurance. The CarTrawler technology and inventory will come to Rapid API next year.
The Uber partnership in North America was a deal Paredes negotiated. Could that model work with similar models elsewhere, such as Grab in South-east Asia, I asked. “Any mobility company is an interesting proposition for us,” he said.
And he brings the conversation back to the World Cup. “We now have to focus and deliver and play the long game.”
