eTourism Trends and News

"Booking.com’s sudden termination of thousands of affiliate partnerships - primarily affecting travel bloggers and small content creators - has shaken the travel affiliate landscape. Framed as a move to cut costs and combat fraud, the decision has caused confusion and backlash, as affected affiliates face lost income and the logistical nightmare of updating or removing Booking.com links. While the company points to streamlining and risk management, critics warn of the damage done to long-standing trust and brand equity.

Key takeaways

Mass terminations: Booking.com ended many of its affiliate relationships with just 30 days’ notice, targeting smaller partners while retaining major players like airlines and OTAs.
Affiliate backlash: Affected creators expressed frustration over the abruptness and lack of explanation. Long-standing partners with years of content must now update hundreds of posts.
Cost-cutting & fraud prevention: The move aligns with Booking Holdings' broader effort to slash $400M–$450M in expenses. Smaller affiliates were seen as less efficient and more susceptible to fraud.
Shift to third parties: Booking.com is now routing smaller affiliates to platforms like CJ, Awin, and Affnetmedia, reducing its internal workload and affiliate-related liabilities.
Industry response: Competing platforms like BookDirect.com and Stay22 are seeing increased interest from disillusioned affiliates seeking alternatives.
Wider concerns: Experts caution that large-scale affiliate changes should not ignore the value that small content creators bring to brand trust and inspiration in the travel ecosystem."

Behind the polished facade of Booking.com’s global success lies a story of internal power struggles, cultural clashes, and controversial practices. In The Machine, three Dutch journalists peel back the curtain on the Amsterdam headquarters and reveal the human dramas that shaped the company - from executive firings and clandestine affairs to burnout-fueled booze-fests and covert data breaches. Drawing on extensive reporting and Booker Holdings’ own fact-checking, the book chronicles Booking.com’s rise from a scrappy Netherlands startup to the world’s leading hotel-booking platform, while exposing the tensions and tactics that drove its meteoric growth.

At the Preferred Hotels Global Conference in Singapore, a lively panel discussion unpacked how Gen Z, social media creators, and platforms like TikTok are transforming the traditional travel funnel into a seamless journey from inspiration to purchase. Today, travel isn’t searched - it’s scrolled. With virtual influencers, AI-generated content, and shoppable videos, social platforms are collapsing the gap between dreaming and booking, making travel planning a real-time, video-first experience.

Key takeaways

Social media is the new travel funnel

Gen Z and creators are transforming travel inspiration into instant commerce.
TikTok, with hashtags like #TravelTok (30B+ views), blurs the lines between discovery and decision-making.
Users spend 90 minutes per day on TikTok, increasingly using it as a full-funnel platform.
Influencers: From storytellers to sellers

Creators like Saudi influencer Ali Almeshaal now run their own travel agencies to meet follower demand.
Virtual influencers like Singapore’s Rae are gaining traction with 20–30% higher engagement and easier management.

Google's smart glasses will be a direct competitor to the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, both attempts at building hardware especially for the latest AI.

Google is giving travelers another option for a wearable live translator and personal travel guide. The company revealed more information about its upcoming smart glasses at the I/O developer conference on Tuesday, among a slew of other announcements. 

Gentle Monster and Warby Parker will be the first eyewear brands to deploy the tech, which the latter said would be released “after 2025.” 

They’ll be a direct competitor to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which recently got a feature for live voice translation along with the ability to act as a tour guide. The company tried smart glasses once before with Google Glass but stopped making them in 2015.

This was Google's biggest group of AI announcements yet. With all the of the travel-related demos, the industry is clearly top-of-mind during development.

Google announced several AI enhancements during its annual I/O developer conference Tuesday, with travel-related demos for many of them.

It’s the biggest travel-related AI update since last year’s conference, where Google announced a trip planner for the Gemini chatbot, which the company later told Skift it was no longer pursuing.   

The latest Search upgrades were among a slew of product announcements on Tuesday that included:

Smart glasses, with plans for live voice translation and a connection to Maps for real-time navigation. AI-generated replies in Gmail to create and share an itinerary, which take into account information from emails and other apps. Near real-time voice translation in Google Meet, which the company said could be useful when making travel bookings in other countries. A new Gemini chatbot extension for Chrome that allows users to reference a webpage during prompts, such as asking the AI to compare multiple hotel reviews.

In an era where artificial intelligence is reshaping consumer behaviors, Expedia Group is proactively transforming its approach to travel planning. Jochen Koedijk, Expedia's Chief Marketing Officer, outlines the company's strategy to integrate AI technologies, aiming to streamline the journey from travel inspiration to booking. By leveraging partnerships with leading AI platforms and enhancing internal capabilities, Expedia seeks to remain at the forefront of the evolving digital travel landscape.

Key takeaways

Embracing AI-driven search: Recognizing the shift from traditional search engines to conversational AI tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot, Expedia is adapting its services to align with these new user behaviors.
Innovative social media integration: Expedia is testing features that allow users to send social media content, such as Instagram Reels, to the platform. The AI then identifies the location and provides travel planning options, bridging the gap between inspiration and action.
Strategic partnerships: Collaborations with OpenAI and Microsoft have positioned Expedia as a launch partner for emerging AI tools, ensuring early access and integration into evolving technologies.
In-house expertise development: To swiftly adapt to the rapidly changing AI landscape, Expedia is investing in building robust internal marketing and AI capabilities.
Navigating AI-enhanced search engines: With Google's introduction of AI Overviews via its Gemini model, Expedia is analyzing traffic patterns to optimize performance, noting that while traffic may decrease, conversion rates could improve due to more qualified leads.
Collapsing the marketing funnel: Koedijk envisions a future where AI streamlines the consumer journey, reducing the steps from discovering travel inspiration to making a booking, thereby enhancing user experience and efficiency.

Booking.com could soon face damages claims worth millions of euros as 26 national hotel associations across Europe prepare to support litigation against the company. This follows a significant ruling by the European Court of Justice, which found that Booking.com's price parity clauses - contractual restrictions that prevent hotels from offering cheaper rates elsewhere - may reduce competition, though they are not automatically illegal under EU law. The ruling has reinvigorated long-standing grievances among hoteliers about the platform’s pricing power.

At the Preferred Global Conference 2025 in Singapore, a standout panel on social media and travel marketing revealed a powerful shift in how influence and commerce now intersect. Far from being just a top-of-funnel inspiration channel, social media today drives full-funnel engagement — from discovery to booking — through experimentation, community, and creator-led storytelling. Panelists, including TikTok's Eason Zhang, influencers, OTAs, and platform founders, emphasized that the new travel customer journey is nonlinear, dynamic, and deeply personal.

Key takeaways

The travel funnel is dead. long live the pinball: The traditional linear funnel has been replaced by a chaotic, bouncing customer journey. Travelers pinball between TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, Google, and even ChatGPT before booking. Social media isn’t just a top-of-funnel tool anymore — it’s embedded throughout the decision-making process.
TikTok drives discovery, but threads builds community: While TikTok still drives brand visibility, creators like Amira Rahmat find Threads delivers more authentic and viral engagement. In a sea of commoditized content (like sunsets), unique narratives and representation — such as a solo hijabi traveler - offer deeper resonance.

Switzerland’s price watchdog has taken decisive action against Booking.com, ruling that the platform's hotel commission fees are excessive under national pricing laws. The regulator has ordered the company to reduce these rates by nearly 25%, a decision Booking.com plans to appeal. This move is part of a broader European shift toward increasing fairness and transparency in online travel agency (OTA) practices, especially regarding pricing structures and hotel contract terms.

Key takeaways

Commission cut mandated: Switzerland’s price watchdog has ordered Booking.com to reduce hotel commission rates by nearly 25% due to excessive pricing.
Temporary measure: The ruling will apply for three years once enacted, but Booking.com has three months to comply.
Pending appeal: Booking.com disagrees with the decision and will appeal to the Federal Administrative Court. Commission rates will remain unchanged during the appeal process.
Past regulatory pushback: Swiss law already prohibits OTAs from enforcing price parity clauses, allowing hotels to offer lower rates on their own websites.
European context: The move follows a growing European trend of regulating OTA practices, as supported by a European Court of Justice ruling favoring price flexibility for hotels.

AI is transforming how we shop and pay. Visa is bringing the power of its network and decades-long expertise to bring trust and security to AI-driven commerce. Introduced today at the Visa Global Product Drop, Visa Intelligent Commerce enables AI to find and buy. It is a groundbreaking new initiative that opens Visa’s payment network to the developers and engineers building the foundational AI agents transforming commerce.

“Soon people will have AI agents browse, select, purchase and manage on their behalf,” said Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell. “These agents will need to be trusted with payments, not only by users, but by banks and sellers as well.”