The AI advantage in travel

The buzz around AI is everywhere. But what does it really mean for the future of travel and for Expedia Group’s B2B partners?

Imagine a scenario like this: a traveller types, into their travel app, ‘I have 48 hours in Chicago, I love deep-dish pizza, but not early mornings, and I’m traveling with my mother, so I don’t want to go anywhere with stairs.’

Behind the scenes, our AI composes an end-to-end trip itinerary, including ranking flights by on-time performance; filtering hotels for accessibility via images on hotel websites or consumer reviews; bundling experiences with dynamic packaging to create the best value; and, if a snowstorm hits the region, the AI agent could rebook, shift activities and message the traveller before they even return to the app.

That’s the future of travel. And it’s the future we’re building right now, every day.

Effective AI systems don’t rely on generic algorithms; they need specifics. In travel specifically, that comes from consumer and corporate data, like decades of insights into booking patterns, traveller behaviour and partner performance.

That’s where Expedia Group comes in.

With more than 70 petabytes¹ of historical and real-time travel data – the equivalent of more than 23 billion photos – Expedia Group has the foundation to train AI models that deeply understand traveller intent. From helping travellers find the right hotels to helping partners optimise listings, hundreds of AI models each year are making more than 900 billion predictions² across Expedia Group’s ecosystem.

And AI isn’t just transforming the traveller experience, it’s also reshaping Expedia Group’s technology behind the scenes. AI can speed up developer release cycles by up to 20%², delivering new features faster while also safeguarding the entire Expedia Group marketplace by detecting potential fraud before it happens.

Our Merchandising API uses AI to ensure that the right offers reach the right audiences. By learning from engagement and booking patterns, it can rank and surface the most relevant promotions so that partners increase conversion rates while improving the traveller experience by showing the most relevant options.

We’re also expanding how we experiment and build with partners through B2B Labs, our innovation space for co-developing and testing new AI-driven solutions. One of our first pilots, Smart Trip AI™, blends conversational interfaces with partner loyalty programmes and live travel supply to deliver dynamic, personalised trip recommendations. It’s a glimpse into what happens when deep travel expertise meets the next generation of AI tools – more tailored, more flexible and more intuitive experiences for everyone involved.

As AI takes on a larger role in how we make decisions at Expedia Group, transparency and fairness are non-negotiable. Simply, building trust isn’t a single step; it’s a design principle. That’s why Expedia Group embeds legal, ethical and technical guardrails directly into AI workflows, ensuring that systems are explainable, auditable and accountable from day one.

Responsible AI practices are also about making sure that partners and travellers are confident in the Expedia Group marketplace. And in a space as personal and emotional as travel, trust is what allows innovation to scale.

AI won’t replace the human side of travel; it will amplify it. The opportunity now is to apply AI tools thoughtfully: to connect travellers to the right experiences, empower advisors with better insights and help partners grow in ways that weren’t possible before.