Booking Holdings faces a valid long-term bear case as AI agents could take a share of the 13-18% online travel take rate. Testing Meta's Muse and Instinct for a hotel search showed them drawing on Booking and Expedia inventory for now, but agents could eventually build direct ties with long-tail hotels, better reviews and pre- and post-booking service at lower fees. OTAs' own agents look mediocre and lack users' context. At 13x 2027 EPS it tempts as a contrarian long, but looks too tough. x.com  … Show more

Expedia is unattractive from both an investment and a user perspective, with offerings less proprietary than Booking Holdings'. x.com 

Booking Holdings looks ridiculously cheap against its own history, and its business and moat inspire much more confidence than Uber's even with AI risk. Its P/FCF is 11.94, versus a ten-year median of 18.85. x.com 

Booking Holdings and Expedia look like a secular short with capped upside as their take rates come under pressure, though probably not within the next 60 days. As with Salesforce, the argument that they could simply run headless will be raised, and the market knows it from SaaS. Take rates should compress first where barriers to bringing inventory online are lowest; the platforms would then respond with aggressive marketing and margin dilution, extending their growth runway somewhat. x.com 

Booking Holdings faces a big risk from Meta's Muse and other AI agents that will find bookings without a middleman. x.com 

Booking Holdings' valuation is quite clearly attractive, though AI agents may roam around and book hotels directly for people. Google I/O raised concerns about most internet names, leaving it unclear whether agentic AI will really hurt Booking. x.com  x.com 

Booking Holdings, Tripadvisor, Expedia and Trip.com are in AI's crosshairs as AI apps make booking travel easy without them. In quick testing, booking a flight on Meta's new app was very easy, working through Duffel or the carrier's own website. x.com 

AI agents may be turning deflationary, which could disrupt Booking, Expedia and other businesses with undifferentiated supply and low switching costs as agents drive industry-wide GMV deflation through price discovery. Per @JosephDevoy, Meta's Muse found and bought an auto policy saving $3,500 a year in minutes. Agents let anyone compare all inventory and book instantly, so friction is falling fast. Per HOTREC, most European hotels already have booking engines that agents could reach directly. … Show more

AI price-comparison risk to Booking Holdings is a big nothing burger, since Google and Google Maps have offered comparisons for ages. Personal checks find Google showing no better price than Booking about two-thirds of the time, and saving a few euros is not worth another spam account or the lost time. Having all bookings in one app is also far more convenient than digging through a messy Gmail inbox. x.com  x.com 

Booking Holdings sits squarely in the middle of a European summer travel nightmare and large language models' attack on online travel agencies. Its business model, exposure to the LLM threat and European exposure, given recession chances in Europe, make it the preferred travel short. x.com  x.com  x.com