为什么人工智能不太可能扼杀在线旅行社

By MBI Deep Dives • 6 Mar 2026View in browser Online Travel Agency (OTA) stocks such as Booking and Expedia bothreacted very positively yesterday after The Information reported OpenAI’sretreat from direct checkouts. From The Information: OpenAI is scalingback its plan to introduce shopping directlyinside ChatGPT, marking a change in its high-profile effort to putcheckouts inside the chatbot. Instead of allowing users to makepurchases directly from product listings that show up in ChatGPTsearch results, the company is now focused on having checkoutstake place inside of specific apps that plug into ChatGPT, anOpenAI spokesperson said.微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K 微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404KThe stock reaction following this reporting makes it apparent thatdisintermediation has been a top-of-mind concern among investors. Infact, I too received multiple emails over the last month or so asking meabout my thoughts on OTA’s disintermediation risk. In response, I havelargely reiterated that disintermediation risk is highly likely to beoverstated for OTAs, especially for Booking even before OpenAI’sretreat. I will elaborate my thoughts on why Booking’s disintermediationrisk is likely overstated behind the paywall. In addition to “Daily Dose” (yes,DAILY) like this, MBI Deep Divespublishes one Deep Dive on a publicly listed company every month. Youcan find all the 66 Deep Dives here. One of the reasons I am quite skeptical of model developers’ willingnessto disintermediate OTA such as Booking and Expedia is they alreadyhave a clear path to make the most money in this value chain withouttaking on the operational hassle of providing all the elements of servicesthat OTAs provide. Let me explain what I mean by this. 微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404KBooking generated ~$27 Billion revenue in 2025, of which it spent ~$8Billion on advertising. Despite Booking diversifying its ad budget beyondsearch advertising, Booking CFO in the recent Morgan Stanley (MS)Conference mentioned their ad spending on social was still only couplehundred millions per quarter. So, they likely spent ~$7 Billion on searchadvertising in 2021, almost all of which went to Google. This ~$7 Billionbasically directly flows to Google’s operating income. It’s not quite as“free money” as Google’s TAC payment to Apple, but it’s pretty darnclose. How much did Booking make last year? They spent another ~$10Billion expense ex advertising and ultimately generated only $8.8 Billionoperating profit in 2025. Remember, Booking is by far the most profitableOTA. The fact that Google was able to pocket ~80% of Booking’soperating profit without basically lifting a finger is a testament to howincredibly attractive their position is in the value chain.微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K 微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404KIt becomes even more apparent when you look at Expedia’s financials.Expedia spent $3.9 Billion on advertising in 2025 while they couldgenerate only $1.9 Billion EBIT last year. Again, it’s highly likely thatGoogle likely made ~$3.1 Billion (assuming ~80% of ad budget wasspent on Search advertising) which is ~60% higher than what Expediawas able to generate in profit itself. If this is the fate of the scaled OTAs,you can imagine the economics is likely even worse for more sub-scaledOTAs. As a result, you can legitimately argue thatAlphabet likely madehigher profit than all the OTAs combinedfrom the status quo. Now, imagine Alphabet wants to disintermediate OTAs from the valuechain and would like to become the merchant of record in processingpayments. If that’s the case, they will lose the high-margin ad revenuestream from OTAs but will have to take on the operational hassle of allthe value adds OTAs were providing to the customers. Booking CFOgave an example during the MS conference to drive the point home thatdisintermediation risk is overstated:微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K yesterday, I asked one of those platforms, let me not mention whichone, that I said, I have a flight planned to Dubai. And obviously, Ican’t fly there anymore, but hey, your platform, you recommendedthis flight to me. How are you going to help me to get a cancellationand a refund? And it gave me actually an answer that was quiteunsatisfactory. 微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404KSo I asked, I said, “Hey, but aren’t you the agent to help me? And Igot the following answer. It said, yes, that’s a very fair question.Short answer, no. I’m not an airline agent.I can’t directly cancel orrefund flights to you.I don’t have the ability to, and then it gave 微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404K微信公众号 404Kme a few elements. And then it said at the end,think of me asyour travel strategy adviser, not the one pushing the button.SoI thought this is so interesting. “I am the travel strategy adviser, notthe one pushing the button.” So when the moment is there that itreally matters, the moment is there where a traveler needs support,they still need