Booking, Expedia and Airbnb want the trip. Your room is the way in.

The OTAs are packaging the whole trip for whoever builds the next front door, AI agents included

by Markus Busch

Expedia Group opened a beta this week for its new Rapid Activities API. A small group of partners can now sell museum tickets, tours and attractions through Expedia's connection, and Expedia plans to open it to everyone in early 2027. A handful of UK travel agencies also get curated tours inside the booking tool Expedia gives travel agents.

You already know that connection. Rapid is the pipe that puts your rooms inside other companies' websites, apps and booking tools: the advisor's screen, the airline's app, the bank's travel page. Expedia has pushed rooms down it for years. What changed this year is what travels down it next to your room. Expedia's own pitch, from its partner conference in May, fits in a sentence: "With one connection, partners can build more complete travel experiences."

Expedia bought the rest of the trip

Expedia paid for this in two steps. On February 18 it bought Tiqets, the Amsterdam company that sells tickets to museums and attractions. On May 20 it agreed to buy CarTrawler, which sells car hire, transfers and trip insurance, with the deal expected to close in the second half. Expedia said both purchases serve one plan: taking Rapid beyond lodging into cars, flights, activities and trip protection.

The same day it previewed an AI toolkit, still in development and rolling out to select partners, built to plug Expedia into other companies' AI assistants and agents. By its own count, the B2B side already serves 75,000 partners and 200,000 travel advisors.

One beta partner gave the story its shape. Peter Friend, chief executive of Global Hotel Card, says in Expedia's announcement that travelers increasingly book the activity first and fit the flight and the hotel around it. It is one partner's view, inside Expedia's own release. Expedia's May conference recap already listed Global Hotel Card as live on the new connections, and the release's headline figure, that 77% of travelers want to book on one platform, comes from Expedia's own research.

Booking sells the room inside an airline's app

Booking is doing the same thing through partners. On June 22, Air India opened a co-branded hotel site inside its website and app, powered by Booking.com. Its frequent flyers earn airline points on your room. Airlines have sold hotels this way for years. Booking presents it as part of what it calls the Connected Trip.

On its August 4 earnings call, Booking said trips combining more than one type of booking were a low double-digit share of Booking.com transactions. Its quarterly filing names the cost: the push means selling more things that earn lower margins than rooms do.

On its own site, the extras start at the confirmation. In select cities Booking gives guests a free taxi from the airport, redeemed through a link in the confirmation email. Booking's partner page tells the hotel no action is needed and no extra commission is charged.

Airbnb keeps the trip at home

Airbnb is stocking the same shelf inside its own app. Its May release added car hire, with 20% back in Airbnb credit on the first rental, plus grocery delivery and airport pickups. Nearly a quarter of its guests rent a car during a stay, Airbnb says.

The tours are slower. On August 11, Tripadvisor said a selection of its Viator tours would become bookable on Airbnb later this year. No number, no date, nothing live yet. And Airbnb's own data complicates the activity-first story. Last November the company said nearly half of its experience bookings had no Airbnb stay attached.

Viator itself shows where the tour business has gone. It has sold through Booking.com since 2021 and through Uber since 2022. In July it became the first experiences app connected to Google's Gemini assistant. The tour seller already sells wholesale, to every front door that will take it.

The chains built their shelf years ago

Marriott launched Bonvoy Tours & Activities in August 2017. Open the Lisbon Marriott's activities page and you get tours within two miles of the hotel, each listing the Bonvoy points it earns. Car hire runs through Sixt, Marriott Bonvoy's exclusive international car rental partner. The trip around the stay lives in the chain's app and is priced in the chain's points.

The chains bring something narrower to the AI agent: the room. Marriott told investors in February it was building a priority search experience for Google's AI. In August, Google switched on hotel booking inside AI Mode, with Choice, Hilton and Wyndham the first chains showing a price in points. The tours and the rental car stayed home.

What an agent wants is one connection

So far, agents buy wherever a connection exists. Meta's Muse agent books flights through a single connection to more than 500 airlines. For hotels it opened a browser and went to Expedia and Hotels.com. The OTAs are offering agents the whole trip through one pipe. The chains are offering the room and the points.

Whether an agent wants the whole trip from one seller is still open. Muse took its trip in pieces.

What it means for hotels

An independent hotel has no tours catalog and no points price to hand an agent. Its room reaches these new front doors mainly one way: inside an OTA's connection, at a rate set up for distribution, next to a transfer and a tour the hotel didn't sell, on a screen the hotel will never see.

Part of that is set in your own extranet. Expedia's rate plans come in types: standalone, package, B2B distribution. B2B distribution rates go out to Expedia's partner network, and Partner Central lets you filter performance by distribution rate plan. On Monday, list your rate plans by type and pull last quarter's bookings for each. Then you know which of your rooms already travel in someone else's trip.

The desk is your version of the shelf: the airport transfer, the tour your concierge books, the ski rental down the road. Booking's taxi link arrives with the confirmation email. If your offer arrives at check-in, the guest may already have been sold a ride.

Expedia plans to open its tours to every partner in early 2027. Your rooms are already in the pipe.

Read also: US hotels have the brands, the apps and the points. The OTAs still take the booking. · Meta pays to look at a flight. Looking at your hotel is free.

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