Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin. (Expedia Group Photo)
More than 30% of Expedia Group’s self-serve customer support interactions are now handled by AI. Its fastest-growing marketing channel is getting its brands to show up in AI responses. And the company now has travel booking integrations across both ChatGPT and Claude.
Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin offered new details about the Seattle-based online travel giant’s AI push on the company’s first-quarter earnings call Thursday, describing a strategy that includes both internal cost-cutting and a bet on chatbots as a new source of customers.
The company reported revenue of $3.43 billion, up 15% year over year, and adjusted earnings of $542 million, up 83%. Its first-quarter profit margin was 15.8%, the highest in 15 years.
Expedia’s stock was down about 6.5% Friday, however, as investors reacted to the company holding its full-year guidance unchanged despite the strong first-quarter results.
In addition to its flagship Expedia portal, Expedia Group includes Hotels.com, Vrbo, and a B2B business that powers hotel bookings for partners including airlines and corporate travel companies. Last week, it became the exclusive hotel partner for Uber, which will integrate Expedia’s lodging inventory into its app.
AI impact: The AI push is both an opportunity and a defensive necessity for Expedia. The company lists “emerging AI-powered platforms” among its competitive threats, reflecting concerns that chatbots could cut online travel agencies out of the booking process altogether.
OpenAI recently scaled back plans to enable direct checkout inside ChatGPT, a decision that sent OTA stocks higher in March. Gorin said she wasn’t surprised by the pullback, arguing that travel booking and servicing are too complex for AI platforms to handle on their own.
If the market evolves further toward a paid model, she said, “that’s a space we know well.” Expedia was among the first travel brands to launch as an app inside OpenAI’s ChatGPT last October. The company went live with ads on ChatGPT in February.
In addition to travel booking integrations in ChatGPT and Claude, Gorin said Expedia is working to show up on Google’s Gemini as well.
She noted that traffic and bookings from AI-driven channels are small but the company is encouraged by the mix of new users, conversion rates, and average purchase size.
New efficiencies: Gorin said Expedia handles roughly 250 million customer service interactions per year, with more than half resolved through self-service and a growing share powered by AI.
The company has cut new customer service agent onboarding time by about 60%. When customers do need a human agent, AI generates summaries of previous conversations so agents don’t have to start from scratch. The system now works in more than 30 languages.
At the same time, Expedia has cut hundreds of engineering, product, and technology jobs over the past two years, including 162 roles at its Seattle headquarters earlier this year.
AI costs: Outgoing CFO Scott Schenkel said the company expects AI compute costs to rise in the second half of the year but is funding the investment through cuts elsewhere. The company didn’t disclose specific AI costs as a line item in its earnings report or conference call.
Gorin said the company is not holding back on AI adoption but is also being strategic about its usage, scrutinizing where the technology is deployed to make sure it delivers returns.
