What Expedia Says About the Coming Agentic Travel Fight
Photo Caption: Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin at Skift Global Forum in New York September 18, 2025
Skift Take
Expedia's annual filing now treats AI agents as a major threat, not just a competitive pressure. The company is betting that direct engagement can keep it from becoming an invisible backend.
Expedia’s annual report last year didn’t mention agentic AI at all, not even in vaguely worded references to assistants capable of autonomous actions. But this year's specifically called it out as a threat.
“The rapid emergence and adoption of generative and agentic AI is likely to further intensify competition,” said Expedia’s 10-K. It calls out the risk of “new market entrants who may deploy AI-driven travel search, planning, and booking capabilities more effectively or rapidly than we can.”
The report and comments from executives paint the agentic shift as a three-front problem:
1: Keeping Expedia Visible
On Expedia’s earnings call last week, executives said it is still "experimenting aggressively" with AI, and that runway seems to be supported by other parts of the business.
Over the past year, Expedia has been tuning its content so chatbots cite it, plugging into third-party agentic
