Good Sunday afternoon (for some of us, a dreaded “spring forward” afternoon) from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, March 6, 2026, is below. This past week began with news out of the UK of a new CMA investigation into the hotel industry and ended with ChatGPT’s
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The $20B Year for OTAs: Marketing at Scale in the Age of AI
By Greg Duff
Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for Friday, February 27, 2026, is below. This week’s Update features a variety of stories, including a few new perspectives on the existential threat posed by AI to the existing online travel behemoths. For reasons I cannot explain, this week’s Update features…
Wyndham and IHG Join the AI Conversation While Booking Holds Its Ground
By Greg Duff
Good Sunday evening from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, February 20, 2026, is below. Last week we featured stories on the reported AI activities of Marriott and Hyatt, and this week we feature updates on both Wyndham and IHG. This week’s Update also offers a…
A Busy Week in Online Travel: Expedia Earnings, Hotelier AI Developments and Renewed Parity Concerns
By Greg Duff
Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, February 13, 2026, is below. What started out as a quiet week in the online travel industry changed considerably as the week progressed. Earnings releases from the major lodging suppliers and Expedia garnered much of the week’s…
A Week of Rising Pressure in Online Travel as Pricing Rules Advance and Platform Competition Evolves
By Greg Duff
Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . . For those of you who follow American football, Happy Superbowl Sunday (apparently the number one sports betting day of the year). Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, February 6, 2026, is below. This week’s Update features a new story from the Technology Travel…
Accor Makes Its Move in AI Travel With a New Booking Experience in ChatGPT
By Greg Duff
Good Sunday afternoon from Manson, Washington . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, January 30, 2026, is below. Accor garnered much of the travel industry’s attention this past week as it became the first lodging supplier to announce the launch of its own ChatGPT mobile app. Other headlines underscore…
The Growing Role of AI Agents in Online Travel and ChatGPT’s Ad Plans
By Greg Duff
Good evening from the ALIS Conference in Los Angeles . . . Our travel-shortened Online Travel Update for the week ending January 23, 2026, is below. This week’s Update features a wide variety of stories, including updates on two stories we featured last week – Airbnb’s evolving hotel aspirations and investigations into Trip.com’s allegedly anti-competitive…
A Defining Start to 2026 for Online Travel: China Probes Trip.com, Airbnb Expands Its Hotel Ambitions and Google Unveils Its Agentic Booking Protocol
By Greg Duff
Good Sunday evening from a sunny Seattle . . . Our first Online Travel Update for 2026 is below. This week’s Update features new stories on China’s possible crack down on Trip.com, an update on Airbnb and its plans for hotels and the latest from Google and its rapidly evolving agentic platform. I hope you…
The Next Phase of Travel Distribution Rekindles Pricing and Parity Debates
By Greg Duff
Happy Monday evening from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, December 19, 2025, is below. This week’s Update features a heavy concentration of important legal updates on local Chinese efforts to investigate the practices of OTAs, the FTC’s newly announced investigation into Instacart and its alleged surveillance…
AI Turns Up the Heat: OTAs Defend Their Turf as Big Tech Redraws the Map
By Greg Duff
Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, December 12, 2025, is below. This week’s Update includes a number of updates to stories we featured previously, including stories on the existential threat (or not) to OTAs posed by new AI platforms and the Trump administration’s…