How Expedia and Booking.com now work inside ChatGPT
OpenAI's new integrations turn AI conversations into live hotel searches — signaling a new discovery and booking frontier for hoteliers
OpenAI’s ChatGPT now hosts integrated apps from Expedia and Booking.com, turning chat into a conversational interface for hotel search and trip planning. For hoteliers, this opens up a fresh channel of visibility — but also demands new thinking about how your property is surfaced and represented.
Key takeaways
- Conversational booking becomes real: Travelers can ask ChatGPT for hotel suggestions using natural language (e.g. “show me family hotels in Orlando this weekend”), and the OTA apps display live listings with rates, photos, and availability.
- Click-through fulfillment: Users inspect options within ChatGPT, then click through to the OTA to finalize the reservation — bookings are processed on Expedia or Booking.com.
- Live OTA integration under the hood: The apps are connected to OTA inventory systems (not static data), enabling real-time pricing and availability.
- Booking.com’s prior AI experiment: Booking.com earlier tested a ChatGPT-based trip planner for select users, letting travelers ask conversational questions and see recommendations integrated into the Booking.com app.
- Increasing reliance on AI intermediaries: As ChatGPT evolves into a platform of apps, travel planning may shift from search engines and OTAs to AI as the new interface.
- Implications for hoteliers: Your hotel’s discoverability may depend increasingly on the quality of your metadata, images, and how well you are integrated (or ranked) within AI-driven listings.
- Caution: still early stage: While these are exciting moves, actual conversions will continue to rely on OTAs and direct channels — so hotels shouldn’t cede strategy to AI platforms just yet.
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