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

Expedia is underrated next to Booking and Airbnb, yet still a solid way into the travel industry. It owns a strong portfolio of brands such as Expedia and Vrbo covering every travel need, is merging onto a single tech platform that cuts costs and speeds its AI rollout, and sells its technology to banks, airlines and other businesses for steady, high-margin B2B revenue. 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 

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 

As consumer AI agents become the new battleground, booking aggregators Booking and Expedia look like clear losers, facing margin compression and more comparison shopping. Ad platforms such as Meta should thrive on entertainment-first ad consumption, while businesses that depend on humans using their own interfaces face pressure. OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to launch consumer agents to compete with Muse and Grok Bot in the coming weeks. 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 

Meta's Muse is gaining a potential toll booth on online checkout, which squeezes Booking and Airbnb. Within 48 hours Shopify, PayPal and Expedia joined Muse checkout, since each merchant has reason to join early if agents steer demand. For Booking and Airbnb, joining could mean paying fees on bookings that would have come direct anyway, about 90% of Airbnb's traffic as of Q3 2023; staying out bets booking habits won't move to Muse. No deal has disclosed economics, the number to watch. x.com 

Adobe and Expedia belong on a short list of businesses AI is going to disrupt, a basket better shorted to hedge long exposure than bought as falling knives. Per Barchart, Adobe has fallen to its lowest price in more than eight years, over 70% below its 2021 high, and @AtlasShrug1 finds it hard to see how Booking and Expedia escape AI travel agents. There are many better places to allocate capital. x.com  x.com  x.com 

Agentic commerce is a bloodbath for online middlemen because AI agents that buy on a user's behalf skip the steps these companies monetize. No Google ad gets clicked, no Pinterest board gets scrolled and nobody opens Booking.com; the agent just buys the thing. Year to date, The Trade Desk is down 66%, Chewy 44%, Pinterest 31% and Booking 23%. x.com