OpenAI is shifting its Instant Checkout offering in ChatGPT, tempering the theory that artificial intelligence (AI) could render intermediaries nonessential in travel.
The AI giant reportedly said that it is moving Instant Checkout to ChatGPT apps for more seamless purchasing. A number of travel players, including Expedia, Booking.com, Skyscanner, Accor, Lighthouse and others, have launched ChatGPT apps.
“We’re evolving how we approach commerce in ChatGPT to better meet merchants and users where they are,” OpenAI said, according to the report from The Information. The company said it is also working on bettering product search and discovery within ChatGPT.
Instant Checkout was built on OpenAI and Stripe’s co-developed Agentic Commerce Protocol. The pair initially announced instant checkout last September with brands like Shopify and Etsy, as other major players such as Google and Visa also leaned into agentic payment exploration. Though no travel brands were included at the launch, the move seemingly shifted the concept of AI travel distribution past the theoretical stage.
“Agentic commerce is very new, and we’ll likely see several iterations over time as it matures of how it is offered to shoppers and merchants, varying by platform, industry and geography," James Lemon, global lead for hospitality, travel and high growth industries for Stripe, told PhocusWire when asked about OpenAI's decision.
But Lemon said a modern, intelligent payment infrastructure will be essential to every travel and hospitality company that is looking at agentic commerce. That will remain true whether travelers are accessing checkout on a company's site directly, through another trusted site, through native experiences or large language models.
PhocusWire has reached out to OpenAI for comment.
Regardless of the need for an evolved payment structure in the future, OpenAI's move is indicative of a larger lesson for the travel industry.
Coney Dongre, research manager for Phocuswright, wrote on LinkedIn that this episode emphasizes what she called a difficult truth: “even shifting a narrow piece of the transaction flow is difficult” in travel.
Travel intermediaries not easily bypassed
The most prominent AI narrative in travel has been simple, according to Dongre: If ChatGPT can fuel discovery, offer comparisons and recommendations, then it may be able to collapse travel’s value chain.
But the company walking back its Instant Checkout feature tells a different story, and rethinking Instant Checkout isn’t just a step move away pushing commerce in ChatGPT.
“It is that if even a tightly bound commerce layer requires careful handling, then the broader idea of AI sweeping away OTAs, travel sellers or other intermediaries starts to look far less inevitable,” Dongre wrote. “In travel, the transaction is never just the transaction. It sits on top of pricing volatility, fare rules, ancillaries, confirmations, cancellations, changes, payment risk and post-booking servicing.”
Following the news of OpenAI’s strategy change, stocks rose for travel companies, including Expedia Group and Booking Holdings, according to GuruFocus.
Lloyd Walmsley, senior internet analyst at Mizuho Americas, called the situation a “Waterloo moment” when it comes to AI disruption of e-commerce—and took a bullish position on OTAs based on the news.
“We believe ChatGPT's pivot away from on-platform shopping checkout, if true, could spell the beginning of the end of major disruption fears for internet marketplace businesses, including OTAs,” Walmsley wrote in a note obtained by PhocusWire.
According to Johannes Thomas, CEO of Trivago, the market’s reaction to OpenAI’s shift is telling as well.
“It reflects something many in the travel industry already understand,” Thomas wrote on LinkedIn. “The challenge in travel is not only helping users discover options. The real complexity begins when travelers move closer to making a decision.”
And according to Dongre, the industry experienced similar growing pains with the International Air Transport Association's New Distribution Capability launch in 2012.
Initial predictions that the distribution standard would marginalize global distribution systems and push legacy distribution out of the way did not pan out—even 13 years later.
“Travel intermediaries are not passive infrastructure waiting to be switched off,” Dongre wrote. “They are technology businesses themselves. They respond to shifts in consumer behavior, supplier economics and distribution logic.”
Travel booking is layered
There's still a level of uncertainty regarding exactly how AI will affect OTAs' role in distribution.
A recent report from BCG looking at AI and hotels found that OTAs may need to fully reinvent their model thanks to AI-powered natural language search, and even that may not even be enough to prevent disintermediation. The commission model will likely change as well, with BCG pointing to ChatGPT's plug-ins as a “new but limited brand engagement channel.”
However, even with AI beginning to reshape distribution models, the booking process is more complicated than a simple jump from inspiration to actual booking.
“AI is transforming how travelers discover destinations and explore options,” Thomas said. “But when it comes to choosing a hotel and deciding where to book, the challenge becomes fundamentally different.”
Travelers can’t simply return a hotel stay, which means making decisions when booking travel requires an inherently higher level of trust, confidence and transparency, he said.
According to Dongre, the most useful lesson from OpenAI’s decision to nix Instant Checkout is about the limits of simple disruption narratives.
AI is going to reshape discovery and influence planning, and it could compress the funnel and change which players are capturing demand. But that doesn’t eliminate the need for intermediaries.
“Travel is not a frictionless digital good,” Dongre said. “It is a layered commercial system full of edge cases, liabilities and service obligations.”
It is an error to take AI’s front end appearance of effortlessness as proof that it can collapse the back end of travel, she said.
“Travel has never worked that way,” she said. “And if the OpenAI episode proves anything, it is that the closer AI gets to the messy core of commerce, the more valuable experienced intermediaries may actually become.”