Travel
Airbnb Sells IP to AI Lab Owned by Its CEO and CTO
Airbnb’s CEO and CTO both own part of the lab buying its IP, but the filing gives shareholders little detail on what changed hands.
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Topic
artificial intelligence
Travel
Airbnb Outpaces Rivals With Its Fastest Revenue Growth in 3 Years
Airbnb is making its rivals look relatively sluggish. Is it affordability that's kickstarting demand across regions?
Travel
Airbnb CEO: Our Specialized AI Agents Will Handle ‘Every Vertical in Travel’
There's been speculation for years about whether Airbnb would launch flights. Such small-minded speculation: Airbnb intends to use specialized AI agents to do every travel vertical. Airbnb Cruise, anyone?
Travel
EU’s Sustainable Tourism Plan Aims to Spread Visitors Out — With No Funding or Targets
The EU Sustainable Tourism Strategy sits on top of existing tourism strategies released by the economic bloc’s Commission. But it still falls short of presenting measurable targets that would actually support its implementation.
Business
Expedia Expects Attractive Deals From Meta’s Muse and Google’s AI Overviews
Will Expedia's advertising on Meta's Muse and Google AI Overviews be the new Google Search? Ariane Gorin is hopeful, citing Expedia proven track record in these sorts of deals. On the other hand, in years' past Expedia officials complained about the high cost of Google marketing.
Travel
What the FTC Wants to Know About How Airlines Set Fares
Airline pricing has come under more scrutiny in recent years after Delta disclosed it was using AI to price some fares and a lawsuit was filed against JetBlue, alleging that the company uses personal data to price airfares. The airline industry has said it uses no personal data to determine pricing.
Travel
Why Scaling AI Agents Is Harder Than Building Them
Scaling AI agents is less about the model than the systems, talent, and infrastructure around it. As travel companies move from pilots into production, they must decide which capabilities differentiate the business and which are better handled by a specialist.
Travel
Booking.com Bets It Can Close the Trips That ChatGPT and Gemini Start
AI may own the start of the trip, but Booking.com is betting trust and payments decide who gets the booking. Its experience with superapps, where daily use never became travel spending, suggests generative chatbots may face the same problem.
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Travel
Why AI Agents Could Become Travel’s New Digital Front Door: Watch Video
At Skift Global Forum, Sierra CEO Bret Taylor argued that AI agents could connect booking, service, sales, and loyalty into a more seamless customer relationship, organized around the traveler rather than a company’s internal structure.
Travel
Vrbo Launches Reserve Now, Pay Later — With a Twist on Airbnb’s Approach
Paying nothing up-front has been one of Airbnb's clearest growth levers. Will Vrbo get the substantial lift that Airbnb got when it introduced Reserve Now, Pay Later last year?
Travel
The New Math Behind Travel’s AI Roll-Ups
AI could give travel consolidators a new way to improve the companies they buy. The question is whether the gains are real, repeatable, and worth the price of admission.
Travel
A New CTO, a Nasdaq Move and AI Agents: Hilton Makes Its Tech Pitch
Hilton wants to be valued like a technology platform. Owners will judge it by whether lower distribution costs actually reach them.
Entertainment
Trump Says ‘Artificial Intelligence’ Is ‘a Very Bad and Inaccurate Name,’ and That He Wants to Officially Ban the Term ‘AI’
President Donald Trump doesn’t like the term “artificial intelligence” — which was coined more than 70 years ago and is widely used by computer scientists and the tech industry — and says he wants to ban the usage of “AI” in favor of “super intelligence.” In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, with one week […]
Travel
MakeMyTrip Uses an Air Travel Dip to Reach Beyond Flights
The fight in Indian online travel is moving away from flights and hotels toward the supply nobody has fully digitized yet.
Travel
Wyndham Courts AI Booking Agents in Push for Direct Bookings
The Super 8 and La Quinta franchiser is opening its inventory to Meta's Muse, OpenAI, and Instinct. Morgan Stanley analysts think AI agents could cost hotel groups less per booking than online travel agencies do.
Travel
IHG Says It’s Winning Hotels From Rival Brands
IHG’s conversion machine is firing in the Americas, but its growth story ultimately depends on a pipeline to the east of Europe that had a difficult Q3.
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Travel
Skift Global Forum 2026: 7 Insights From Travel Industry Leaders
The travel industry is racing to embrace AI, but still struggling with fundamental questions of trust, coordination, and commercial returns. We surveyed executives at Skift Global Forum 2026 to understand where the industry sees opportunity and where its biggest concerns lie.
Travel
Meta Calls Travel ‘a Top Use Case’ for Muse — and Zuck Wants a Cut
Meta already influences where people want to go. Its AI agent is primed to help it take a cut when they book.
Travel
Independence at Scale — Paradox or Opportunity? Watch Video
Independent hotel brands don’t have to choose between scale and identity. Shared loyalty, distribution, and technology can help them compete with the major global groups while preserving the local character and direct customer relationships that set them apart.
Travel
AI Will Know Your Travelers. And the World’s Travelers. Will You?
AI discovery is moving closer to transaction. Travel brands must become legible to machines without surrendering the memory, service, and loyalty advantages that set them apart.