David Dugan, previously a Meta exec in charge of its largest client and agency relationships, is now tasked with taking ChatGPT from an AI tool with ad experiments to an ad-supported media channel.
After Covid exposed how brittle travel's customer service infrastructure was, the industry pitched AI as the fix. Now, with the Middle East chaos, much of the tech that was supposed to help vanished from the narrative.
The travel industry’s most important ecosystem story may be Montreal, where aviation DNA, patient capital, and a single Expedia office accidentally created a $15 billion infrastructure layer that much of the industry now runs on.
OpenAI built the checkout tech but couldn't get users to actually buy. That's a reprieve for OTAs, and a reality check for anyone assuming AI commerce is inevitable.
In the face of the LLM threat, Booking Holdings thinks it can repeatedly grow its top line 8% annually over the "medium term" and earnings per share 15% over the same timespan.