The question of how artificial intelligence will impact the travel industry isn’t new. But OpenAI's launch of its Operator autonomous agent in January, a tool that can search for and book travel, has prompted fresh questions on what changes will come and what industry sectors will be most affected.
For now the agent tool is only available to OpenAI Pro subscribers, but as OpenAI has done with its other updates, it's likely just a matter of time before it makes Operator more widely available. When and if that happens, it could add fuel to the debate of whether travel metasearch has a future.
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Will it remain relevant with Operator's ability to complete agent-to-website and agent-to-agent interactions? Will travelers use a metasearch engine to compare prices from multiple sites or just use OpenAI or another large language model?
Mike Coletta, senior manager of research and innovation at Phocuswright, said metasearch companies have a very similar function to what can be handled by autonomous agents such as Operator. That similarity could play out in a couple ways.
“So, on the one hand, maybe that will make them [metasearch platforms] very good at building an agent of their own that is superior to others but on the other hand, if other agents, like Operator, work better than theirs, their value will diminish,” Coletta said.
Industry leaders aren’t concerned
Industry leaders don’t think that the need for metasearch will be leveled by the new technology. In fact, Steve Hafner, co-founder and CEO of Kayak said he is "bullish" about the new technology.
“I'm not concerned about it at all, if anything it’ll help metasearch,” he said. Hafner said agentic AI could actually give metasearch a boost over online travel agencies.
I'm very bullish on it ... I'm not concerned about it at all, if anything it’ll help metasearch.
Steve Hafner, Kayak
“It's easier to book on OTAs, and they have standardized customer service, neither of which Kayak does a particularly good job with,” he said. “So you know, when we look at agentic AI, we don't see a threat. We see an opportunity: Finally, we can level the playing field on booking ease of use, and also we can intercept a lot of customer service issues within the Kayak experience, not having to route them to a supplier, to an OTA.”
Paul English, who co-founded Kayak with Hafner and is currently working as the co-founder of Boston Venture Studio and Deets, which provides AI-powered travel recommendations, also expressed optimism about the future of metasearch.
“I think there will still be [a] need for metasearch, and metasearch providers are already working on chat interfaces,” English said.
Johannes Thomas, CEO of Trivago, said he thinks the idea that metasearch is "legacy" is an interesting narrative.
"Does it have a reason to exist?" Thomas said. "After security and safety, price is the biggest struggle for people, or rising expenses and travel. At the same time travel is the highest discretionary spend of consumers, so it is very important for people, and there's high price consciousness.”
Thomas said the metasearch model is “very defensible.”
“If you then deliver a member proposition that gives you a reason why you should use Trivago and not Google and not any other gen AIs, I think then you have a good reason why people come to you,” he said.
“And I think that's the avenue next to using AI for our search product, building a wall behind value propositions… Better prices, exclusive deals, price alerts. These are features that a gen AI would struggle to get their head around.”
English, meanwhile, shared a wider perspective. He believes the more important question is whether the future of the industry exists with one company at the top of the funnel (like OpenAI, for example) as the interface for the entire internet, or if travel is a large enough market to warrant a need for travel-focused brands to use AI and other new tools to deliver the best experiences possible.
“I'm in the latter camp,” English said.
How metasearch could adapt
Like with any new technology, companies have the opportunity to adapt.
Hafner said Kayak's future depends on how good a job his company does keeping up with innovation and providing the best experience for consumers.
The long-standing CEO compared the situation to Kayak’s ongoing search battle with Google.
“We've been competing against Google for the better part of 20 years, and I still think we have a better product than them,” Hafner said. “Yes, a lot of people use Google. A lot of people start at Google and find their way to their travel products. But Kayak is still a very, very healthy business.”
Coletta said metasearch platforms could evolve to fit into a shared environment with agentic AI.
“They could adapt to become a middleware layer that specializes in providing comprehensive pricing and availability to agents like Operator so it doesn't have to do as much internet browsing,” Coletta said. “The outcome could partly be determined by how economics shift.”
Coletta said the main factor influencing whether an agent like Operator would be agnostic while making personalized recommendations is likely to be compensation.
He posed a series of questions: Will Operator be influenced by advertisements or commissions? Would travelers be willing to pay for a subscription to the agent to avoid advertisements and limit bias? And would Operator be willing to pay metasearch engines or other intermediaries for aggregated data?
“No one knows the answers to these questions yet—they'll be determined by how travelers adopt and use them in the coming years and how the industry adapts as a result,” Coletta said.