Explore 2026 recap: two days in Las Vegas

Over two days in Las Vegas, Expedia Group welcomed more than 1000 partners to Explore 2026, celebrating 30 years of the company while outlining what comes next for travel. 

Across keynotes, live demos, breakout sessions, and conversations, the event spotlighted an acquisition, new partnerships, fresh research, and AI-powered tools designed to improve how travelers plan and book trips. 

Explore 2026 opened with a video looking at how travel booking has changed over the past three decades, tracing Expedia Group’s role from the dial-up era to mobile and now to AI.  

Then CEO Ariane Gorin took the stage, giving a keynote that emphasized how AI is fundamentally shifting how people discover, plan, and experience travel, making it clear that the company is fully committed to this transformation. 

Today’s travelers expect personalization, easier planning, and recommendations that feel relevant at every stage of the trip. Expedia Group’s innovation in AI is starting to deliver on that promise while also helping partners respond faster, reach demand more effectively, and scale with greater precision.  

For partners across lodging, transportation, destinations, activities, advertising, and B2B distribution, Explore 2026 focused on where growth is headed and how to reach it faster. 

Throughout the event, speakers including Expedia Group Chairman Barry Diller and founder Rich Barton returned to a consistent theme: travel remains one of the world’s most resilient industries, and the companies best positioned to lead will be those that combine technology with relevance and trust.

Line-of-business presentations and think tank sessions translated the event’s biggest themes into practical takeaways for demand, supply, connectivity and advertising partners alike.  

For B2B partners, a new in-development AI toolkit was announced that will simplify how partners integrate Expedia Group capabilities into AI experiences across APIs, interfaces, and agent workflows. The goal is to reduce the time and investment required for partners to launch travel experiences on their own sites.   

To help partners capture more of the end-to-end journey, Expedia Group B2B announced plans to acquire CarTrawler. Following the recent acquisition of Tiqets, the move signals an effort to expand Rapid API beyond lodging and further into a multimodal platform.  

For partners, the upside is clear: more opportunities to attach high-value trip elements, generate incremental revenue, and deliver a smoother end-to-end booking experience without added technical complexity.

Expedia Group also used Explore to show how AI is becoming more practical for travelers. New tools like AI Property Expert and AI Property Compare are designed to help people get answers faster and evaluate hotel options with more confidence, while Package Price Insights helps surface standout Flight + Hotel deals.  

Expedia Group is also extending those capabilities into the places travelers already spend time. Its latest collaboration with Meta introduces an in-feed planning experience that lets travelers start planning or ask questions with a single tap, reinforcing Expedia’s vision of a more intuitive travel companion. 

Beyond the major announcements, Explore also created room for new audiences, fresh research, and more direct engagement with Expedia Group’s products.

New this year, the Priority Access track gave creators, journalists, and destination partners the chance to experience Expedia Group products up close, adding a fresh layer of discovery and conversation to the week.  

The launch of Unpack ‘26 Summer research trends added timely traveler insights and practical areas of opportunity for partners, extending the value of the event beyond the stage.

Expedia Group has a travel ecosystem that is increasingly more useful, more flexible, and better connected for both travelers and partners. From platform expansion to traveler-facing AI tools, the event showed how those investments are beginning to take shape in real products, relationships, and business opportunities for all types of partners. 

The future of travel is being built now, and we are excited to continue building it together.