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From mainstage moments to partner takeaways, see how Explore 2026 celebrated 30 years and looked ahead.
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AI at Explore 2026: what partners need to know
Learn what’s on Expedia Group’s AI roadmap in 2026, from reinforcing trust to building AI-powered tools and platforms.
At Explore 2026, Expedia Group’s annual partner conference, what came into sharp focus is how Expedia Group is innovating with AI — not as a future vision, but as the path partners can use now to grow and succeed.
Across the two-day partner conference in Las Vegas, the announcements and product demos pointed to the same shift: that AI is embedded across traveler experiences, partner workflows, developer tools, and marketing strategies with clearer, cleaner ways for partners to plug in now.
Key announcements
New agents in Partner Central
Three new agents that will support partners in spotting issues, improving content, and accelerating onboarding.
B2B AI toolkits
New composable tools to help partners launch branded travel experiences faster.
AI-powered marketing
New discovery and marketing strategies that allow partners to show up and capture demand sooner.
Trust is the foundation
If the announcements were the headline, trust was the throughline. Explore 2026 reinforced the idea that AI only works when grounded in trusted data, reliable inventory, deep expertise, and dependable support when plans change.
Chief AI and Data Officer Xavi Amatriain shared new research at Explore 2026 showing that while travelers increasingly use AI for inspiration and planning, they still don’t rely on AI to make actual bookings.
This is because the trip doesn’t end at checkout. Travelers want to know that a trusted travel company has their back if something goes wrong. And that’s why nearly 70% of travelers still turn to trusted travel companies over AI chatbots and agents.
“This moment is not just about becoming more intelligent. It is about becoming more trusted.”
The next wave of value will come not simply from using AI, but from applying it in ways that help partners grow without weakening the trust the travel industry depends on. Expedia Group noted how its dedicated Responsible AI council carefully reviews all high-risk AI deployments before scaling across the ecosystem.
AI products in Partner Central
Much of the AI narrative centered on tools Expedia Group is building directly into its partner platform. In her keynote, Chief Product Officer Shilpa Ranganathan announced new AI agents coming to the Partner Central website to help partners move faster and make better decisions.
Partner Companion
For identifying performance issues and commercial opportunities so that fixes can be applied faster.
Content Agent
For automatically detecting what information travelers still need and strengthening listing content.
Autonomous Distribution
For speeding up onboarding by pre-filling listings from trusted sources.
AI is built into Expedia Group’s marketplace. For partners, that means tools built on decades of travel data resulting in less manual work, faster action, more demand, and content that performs better.
“Our north star is simple: an always-on intelligent companion for travelers and a smarter revenue engine for you, present throughout the journey and quietly powering the entire trip behind the scenes.”
AI-ready B2B partner experiences
For B2B partners, Karen Bolda (Chief Product & Technology Officer, Expedia Group B2B) introduced new tools designed to help partners build travel experiences that feel like a natural part of their own brand.
Intelligent Experience Platform
A set of composable AI components that can launch branded travel experiences with less time and investment.
AI Toolkit
For speeding up onboarding by pre-filling listings from trusted sources.
Connectivity also received an AI upgrade. Expedia Group’s Dev MCP server helps developers find documentation, test integrations, and troubleshoot issues in one place. For partners, that means less time piecing tools together and a faster path to bringing Expedia Group capabilities into their own digital experiences.
AI across the traveler journey
Explore 2026 also showed where AI is already offering benefits to travelers.
Expedia Group shared that the most effective traveler-facing AI tools should feel more personalized, predictive, and proactive — while still improving usability, ease, and trust. That approach was reflected in products discussed at the conference including:
- Virtual Agent for disruptions
- Property Expert for property questions
- AI Compare for weighing tradeoffs
- Activity Planner for turning ideas into realistic trip plans
Together, these tools do more than solve isolated pain points. They help travelers get faster answers, make clearer decisions, and move forward with greater confidence. For partners, that creates better-informed travelers, fewer moments of hesitation, and smoother conversion paths.
Marketing in the AI era
AI in marketing emerged at Explore 2026 as another major theme, especially with the rise of the business-to-agent (B2A) technologies. Partners now need to be discoverable not only to travelers, but also to the AI-powered surfaces where planning and booking increasingly happen. That raises the bar for content quality and discoverability.
Discussions at Explore 2026 highlighted the growing importance of richer, more structured, and more relevant content that helps AI systems better understand what makes a product, destination, or offer worth surfacing.
Expedia Group outlined parallel B2A marketing capabilities designed to help partners generate and capture demand more effectively in the AI era.
New tools like OpenAI Ads and Trip Matching with Meta help partners expand discoverability and capture traveler intent. Meanwhile, the Travel Media Network unlocks massive reach, extending beyond Expedia Group’s own platforms to its extensive B2B network and trusted third-party publishers.
“At the center of all of this is a simple goal: putting your brands first and creating more value, faster.”
AI in the workflow
The AI conversation was not only about products.
Donna Miller (Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations) focused on how AI can help commercial teams spend less time gathering information and more time acting on it. Examples included how AI agents can be used to present marketing insights, build slide presentations and search emails to show daily work priorities
That made the Explore 2026 AI vision broader than a series of launches and announcements — by reinforcing practical AI takeaways for partners to apply in their own workplaces.
The path forward
AI is not a single initiative. It is reshaping the traveler journey, partner tools, marketing, and discovery simultaneously.
Rather than chasing every AI development at once, the opportunity lies in focusing on areas where AI can create measurable value — through stronger content, earlier discovery, smarter tools, or more efficient workflows — while keeping trust at the center.
“We’ve already done the hard work of building the technical connections into these platforms — so you don’t have to build, manage, or maintain them individually.”
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