Expedia and Accor CEOs: AI to Reinvent the Future of Travel

Artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of the travel industry — and the CEOs of two major companies said the transformation is only beginning.

Speaking at the Viva Technology 2025 conference in Paris, Expedia CEO Ariane Gorin and Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin described how generative and agentic AI are reshaping internal operations, customer experiences and partnerships.

Despite the industry’s slow adoption curve, they expressed optimism — and urgency — about the opportunities ahead.

“Before you come into the hotel, after you leave the hotel, you will be 90% AI-driven,” Bazin said. “Booking, choosing what you want, what you need — all of that will be clearly AI.”

For Bazin, who leads one of the world’s largest hospitality groups with 6,000 properties and 350,000 employees, AI can streamline non-customer-facing tasks.

“Probably half of the people within a hotel do tasks which have nothing to do with guest enhancement,” he said. “They’re managing plumbing, electricity, logistics, legal, tax. All of that will be 90% removed by AI. It’s going to be automated, it’s going to be faster, it’s going to be more reliable.”

The shift is not about job destruction but about workforce elevation, he said.

“You’re going to have very few jobs actually replaced by AI, as long as you can offer a new mobility, a new experience, a new skill to that person,” he said.

Gorin, who took the helm of Expedia Group last year, offered a similar view.

“It reminds me a lot of 15 years ago when we were moving from data centers on-prem to the cloud,” she said. The people running the data centers were worried that the cloud was going to take their jobs away. “It’s the same thing with AI.”

Internally, Expedia is using AI to enhance productivity across functions.

The travel operator tried to figure out “where are there opportunities to make your developers able to code faster, to help your marketers use GenAI to be more effective?” Gorin said. “It’s how do you use those technologies internally to allow your teams to spend time where they can add the most value.”

Externally, the stakes are just as high.

Travelers “may go to Google, and now these days, go to ChatGPT,” she said. “It’s a very different search experience when you’re looking for keywords versus prompts. For us, we think about how do we make sure that our brands are showing up in these new ways travelers are searching?”

Read also: Expedia Adds APIs to B2B Platform to Help Build Travel Packages

Gorin cited an example of Expedia adjusting to consumer use. The company piloted a feature called “Instagram Trip Matching,” where users can turn social videos into bookable itineraries.

As generative AI reshapes search and booking behavior, Expedia’s strategic vision is twofold. The company plans to build AI-powered experiences across its own platforms and embed those capabilities in other companies.

“We have about 30% of our business in B2B,” Gorin said. “We’re the private-label business behind some of the biggest names in travel.”

Asked whether AI agents, which are capable of planning and executing complex workflows autonomously, would kill travel intermediaries like Expedia, Gorin pushed back.

“Of course, we can be your agent,” she said. “The truth is, in such a big industry, people are going to have a lot of different ways that they travel.”

Bazin agreed, highlighting how partnerships — even with former competitors — are key to navigating this new landscape.

“You’re not actually competition,” he told Gorin. “She’s providing me something which I can’t get otherwise.”

Bazin was referring to travelers finding out about Accor through Expedia or another travel site.

But Bazin was cautious about handing too much power to third-party AI platforms.

“You should not be leaving that data to OpenAI and all those [AI chatbots] when we can actually figure it out ourselves,” he said.

On the environmental front, both companies stressed AI’s potential to drive impact.

“We’re going to have probably 50% less food waste, 25% better energy consumption, 25% less carbon emission,” Bazin said.

Gorin added that 90% of travelers seek sustainable options, and Expedia is working to surface eco-certifications and carbon footprint filters in search results.

Both CEOs also shared their outlooks on where AI will take travel next.

The future is “agentic AI with human in the loop,” Gorin said. “Even if an agent knows you well, you may want to be the one making the final decision.”

Bazin offered a broader call to action. While AI will automate some jobs, hospitality remains a human-centric industry.

“This industry is one of the very few in the world where if you don’t have any privileges, you can find a job,” he said. “Come with me. I’ll take you on board.”

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