📝 The AI Guest List

Travel is eager for AI customers. It is far less deliberate about which AI crawlers get access: Skift's audit of 50 major travel sites found only 10 explicitly addressed them; roughly 40 others relied on general rules or default settings. Some sites that blocked scripted requests opened up when the same testing tool used a browser.

AI agents aren't waiting for travel's rules to catch up. Meta's crawler has been hitting travel sites the hardest among AI providers, according to Cloudflare data through August — and that was before its AI agent arrived. Now Muse’s Expedia integration is live, and in Skift tests, it’s apparent that booking some hotels still require using a browser to transact online. Now OpenAI just bought AI travel-agent startup Odessia. Agentic travel activity looks poised to heat up, and the stakes could intensify, especially for brands that haven’t yet decided what they want AI to access or how.

Skift Aviation Forum

The data in travel is only as good as the room that acts on it. On Thursday, airline commercial chiefs, airport CEOs, and manufacturers put their calls on the table at the TWA Hotel, JFK.

Nat Pieper of American Airlines, Luis Gallego of IAG, and leaders from Boeing, Airbus, and Delta debate fuel margin, premium demand, and loyalty in the agentic age, where AI shopping tools now compare every program in seconds.

New Report: How In-Flight Wi-Fi Affects Revenue

Headlines

Spirit’s $10 Million Data Sale to Google Clears Hurdle as Unions Win Privacy Protections

by Meghna Maharishi
November 10, 2026

If the sale clears, Google gets about 1.9 billion Spirit emails and 30 million lines of code to train its AI models, for $10 million. The unions’ win means employee data will be scrubbed first.

OpenAI Acquires Odessia, the AI Travel Agent From Sonder’s Co-Founder

by Dennis Schaal
November 10, 2026

OpenAI didn't acquire Odessia for its revenue. It bought a team that built a working AI travel agent in months, plus a founder who ran a lodging company, which included hotels and short-term rentals, for a decade. It's a sign ChatGPT wants to do more in travel than send users to Booking.com and Expedia.

Dear Robot: How Travel Is (and Isn’t) Talking to AI

by Adriana Lee
November 9, 2026

Travel brands invest deeply in AI visibility, but according to Skift's audit of 50 major travel websites' crawler policies, few tell bots where to go — and the directives don't always match who actually gets in. That looks like a shaky starting point, as the rules of AI engagement change.

Expedia Goes Live on Muse, but Its AI Wins Are Inside Its Own Apps

by Adriana Lee
November 9, 2026

Expedia's Muse connection is live: CEO Ariane Gorin noted it may even have happened during the OTA's earnings call this week. So Skift took it for a spin to see what it can and cannot do.

Airbnb Sells IP to AI Lab Owned by Its CEO and CTO

by Rafat Ali
November 7, 2026

Airbnb’s CEO and CTO both own part of the lab buying its IP, but the filing gives shareholders little detail on what changed hands.

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Watch or Listen

AI travel recommendations have a surprising problem: they keep emphasizing the same things.

New Skift Research found that affordability dominated AI-generated destination pitches, while experiences like romance, nature, culinary travel, and relaxation appeared far less frequently.

Sarah Kopit and Seth Borko explore why AI continues to prioritize price and convenience and whether the problem lies with the technology or the travel industry's own approach to destination marketing.

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Skift Travel 200

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