Uber’s CEO is asking a quiet question that’s louder than it seems. Is AI actually helping? It’s a good question. Especially when you look at what the rest of the travel industry is doing.
Hotels Shift in Asia
Asia isn’t sleeping on it. The hotel market is moving.
Andrew Langdon from Accor spoke at Skift Asia Forum 26. He laid out the reality. Generations change. Competition rises. Brands switch sides to keep up. It’s happening fast. Mostly in mid-scale spots. Or the cheap stuff. Economy properties are the engine now. The fancy stuff? Less so.
“Generational shifts accelerate conversions.”
Simple enough. If you don’t change your flag, you lose the room.
Google Plays the Agent
Google has been sneaking toward agentic shopping for hotels. Now? They said it out loud. No hiding.
Agentic shopping means the bot decides. You give a goal. The machine finds the deal. Google is positioning itself right at that gate.
The Chatbot Lie
Ariane Gorin from Expedia dropped a bomb on chatbots. Everyone thinks an AI agent will book, confirm, check in, and fix the Wi-Fi in one smooth chat.
She called out the test-and-learn culture. Roamie? It was the casualty. An end-to-end solution just doesn’t work right now. The tech isn’t ready. Or the humans aren’t. Probably both.
So what do we have?
Broken bits. Good parts, but not the whole package. The dream of a single bot handling everything? That’s later. Maybe next decade.
Expedia Stretches
Expedia knows it’s not an OTA anymore. Or at least, it doesn’t want to be just that.
They are pushing boundaries. Upstream to where you find ideas. Downstream to when you’re actually standing in line. Meta. Uber. Clear. Partnerships. They aren’t reinventing the wheel. They are just making the wheel touch everything you own.
Booking isn’t a transaction. It’s a moment in a longer chain.
If Google owns the agent, and Expedia owns the journey, and Uber questions the point… who owns the traveler?
