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What does it take to ship an AI travel agent? Expedia is figuring that out: Having admitted an all-in-one AI concierge "isn't practical for now," it's focused on armies of specialized agents and just acquired AI trip planner Layla. While it assembles the parts, corporate travel is showing AI momentum. Amex GBT, Kayak for Business, and SAP Concur's new AI tools cover booking on multiple surfaces, and the approvals and processes to support it.

Skift's Power-Struggle Map calls out important context: No consumer AI holds complete, portable traveler memory yet. But business travel was built on employee data, preferences, and policies. Turns out, guardrails and rules aren't bogging down innovation — they're what's fueling it.

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Skift Data + AI Summit Europe

Europe now runs travel AI under rules the U.S. doesn't have, and the UK is betting the other way one border over.

On October 6 in London, 250 senior travel executives spend one built day on how AI actually gets deployed in the market where the EU AI Act's high-risk obligations take effect this August and the regulatory split is sharpest.

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Hotels Shift Budgets for AI Discovery

CURACITY + SKIFT

With 94% of hotels invisible in AI search, revenue leaders must decide who owns visibility, and shift budget upstream.

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EDITOR’S PICKS

SAP Concur Adds New AI Tools for Approvals, Cards, and Travel Leakage

August 3, 2026

Most of what SAP Concur announced adds AI to existing tools. The leakage-reporting tool built with Amex GBT is the exception — combining data the two platforms couldn't share before.

What Travel AI Can Learn From Hipmunk, 16 Years Later

August 3, 2026

Hipmunk built a results page around how travelers make decisions, and today’s AI tools have yet to match it.

The Travel Industry Power-Struggle Map

August 2, 2026

Travel is not one market. It is a series of fights over who answers the traveler, who gets found, who owns the booking, who controls the inventory, who holds the wallet, and eventually, who remembers the trip.

Corporate Travel’s Rulebook Is Its AI Booking Advantage

August 2, 2026

Amex GBT and Kayak for Business moved AI booking into managed travel before consumer tools cracked it. The logic: policies, approvals, and audit trails are the preconditions an agent needs to transact. Consumer AI has to guess at all three.

Expedia Acquired AI Trip-Planner Layla: Exclusive

July 31, 2026

Is Layla substantially more advanced that the ever-increasing number of other AI trip-planners out in the wild? Hiring additional tech talent will be a benefit of this deal regardless of whether the Layla platform exists as an independent entity a couple of years from now.

SKIFT PODCAST NETWORK

Amazon is making its biggest travel booking push yet by integrating travel directly into Alexa+.

Sarah Kopit and Seth Borko discuss whether travelers are ready to book vacations through conversational AI and what it could mean for online travel companies.

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SKIFT RESEARCH

How are public travel tech companies performing around the world? The Skift Travel 200 pulls the data you need to know to understand the market. Paid subscribers get full access here.

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