The news: Vrbo’s AI Q&A chatbot fielded 1.3 million traveler questions in its first few weeks live, mining listing details, amenities, reviews, and property data to resolve customer queries in-page with no involvement from hosts required, per AdAge.

It’s one of several travel platforms using AI to fast-track the customer journey. 

• Airbnb’s AI support bot handles 40% of customer queries globally, and it’s expanding to support 11 languages and include interactive cards that let users modify bookings directly in chat. 
• Booking.com reported in October that its AI messaging tools yielded a 73% increase in partner satisfaction, while Smart Messenger and Auto-Reply interfaces handle partner-to-guest communication across major markets. 
• Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin called AI the company’s “third chapter” during an interview with PhocusWire. The platform embedded tools like Virtual Agent for travel disruptions and Property Expert for property questions across the marketplace.
• KAYAK launched Ask AI in May. The tool is built around the way travelers search, compare, and book trips.

Consumers are using genAI for trip discovery, but their trust only goes so far—nearly 70% of travelers in the US, the UK, and India still turn to travel companies over AI chatbots for booking, per Expedia.

Why it’s worth watching: The booking moment is where trust, liability, and money change hands, so platforms are using AI to do everything around that moment by resolving doubts, surfacing options, and answering questions as consumer adoption of AI for travel grows.

• 44% of US AI users always or often compare prices and search discount codes using AI tools, per PwC, and 42% always or often research options during trip planning. 
• Only 29% always or often use AI agents to book travel, while 30% never do.

Implications for brands: AI is helping compress travel and booking’s discovery-to-decision gap without replacing the transaction layer. Full-cycle automation may be the eventual destination, but for now, brands need to focus on removing friction points to help earn customer trust.

• Build AI solutions around specific moments when customers who have nearly decided to check out instead stall on a detail.
• Evaluate your own product pages, reviews, and support tickets as training data sets for internal AI chatbots and answer engines to drive customer decisions.