Expedia Embraces Agentic Commerce to Fight Platform Disruption

Expedia Group is responding to the rise of artificial intelligence assistants and agentic commerce both by embracing them and by providing services that draw travelers directly to its own platforms, executives said Thursday (Feb. 12) during the company’s quarter earnings call.

“As gen AI changes how travelers do trip discovery, it opens up new growth opportunities for us,” Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin said during the call. “We’re working with all the major platforms to capture traveler demand, ensuring our brands show up prominently in gen AI searches and function effectively with agentic browsers.”

Expedia Group’s global travel marketplace includes its flagship consumer brands Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo, as well as a B2B travel business and an advertising network, according to a Thursday earnings release.

Amazon reported in December that Expedia is one of the brands building agentic AI capabilities for Amazon’s Alexa+ virtual assistant device.

Gorin said Thursday: “We’re experimenting aggressively, and while volume is still small, every additional integration gives us data and learnings about how to better surface our brands and how consumer behaviors are evolving.”

Expedia Group is using these insights, together with those from its own brands, to inform the development of AI experiences on its own platforms, Gorin said.

At the same time, the company identified competition from “emerging AI-powered platforms” as a source of potential risks or uncertainties that could impact its results, according to a presentation released Thursday in conjunction with the earnings call.

PYMNTS Intelligence found that nearly 25% of consumers said they would be comfortable letting an AI agent plan their travel. The report said that is a notable finding because travel is a high-stakes, multi-transaction category.

Asked by an analyst during Thursday’s earnings call how Expedia Holdings is responding to customers’ growing use of chatbots, Gorin said that the company always feels a sense of urgency about delivering more value and trust to its customers.

Trust is important in the travel industry because when something goes wrong on a trip, travelers cannot get back the time they lose, Gorin said. For that reason, Expedia Holdings offers proprietary verified reviews that travelers can check before booking a trip. The company also offers support via app or phone if something goes wrong. During the challenges of recent winter storms and the government shutdown, Expedia answered phone calls in between one and three minutes, on average, Gorin said.

“Travelers want to know that we’ve got their back,” Gorin said. “So, of course, continuing to enhance the loyalty program is one piece of our offer, but there’s a lot of different parts that we believe make travelers want to continue a deep relationship with us.”