{"id":369712,"date":"2026-03-05T20:03:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T20:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/369712\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T20:03:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T20:03:12","slug":"online-travel-stocks-rise-after-report-that-openai-to-scale-back-direct-checkouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/369712\/","title":{"rendered":"Online travel stocks rise after report that OpenAI to scale back direct checkouts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">March 5 (Reuters) &#8211; Shares of online travel agencies surged on Thursday after a report that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/organizations\/openai\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:OpenAI;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">OpenAI<\/a> \u200cis scaling back plans to integrate direct \u200cbookings into ChatGPT, easing investor fears that the AI chatbots could \u200beventually cut out travel intermediaries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Shares of Expedia were up over 12%, while Booking Holdings and Tripadvisor rose 8% and 5%, respectively.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">The rally followed a report by The \u200cInformation that OpenAI \u2060found ChatGPT users were researching products in the chatbot but not completing purchases through \u2060it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">The AI company will instead focus on checkouts within specific third-party apps that plug into ChatGPT, the report \u200bsaid, citing \u200ban OpenAI spokesperson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">OpenAI did \u200bnot respond to a \u200cReuters request for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Investors and analysts have grown increasingly concerned that generative AI tools could become the dominant platform for planning and booking travel, potentially bypassing intermediaries such as online travel agencies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">We see the OpenAI \u200cnews as incrementally positive for \u200bonline travel agencies, Bernstein analyst \u200bRichard Clarke said \u200bin a note.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">&#8220;This means that Booking and \u200cExpedia can continue to get \u200bin front \u200bof consumers on AI-platforms, lowering the risk of disintermediation,&#8221; Clarke added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">Expedia and Booking Holdings were among the \u200bfirst companies \u200cto integrate with ChatGPTwhen OpenAI launched its plugins \u200bprogramme in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1fy9kyt\">(Reporting by Aishwarya Jain in \u200bBengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 5 (Reuters) &#8211; Shares of online travel agencies surged on Thursday after a report that OpenAI \u200cis&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,162842,18,129754,19,17,171118,82],"class_list":["post-369712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-booking-holdings","tag-eire","tag-expedia","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-online-travel-agencies","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116178361005529944","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}