Meta's AI agent Muse has become a new pressure point for the online travel sector. Since Muse launched on Sept. 8, shares of Expedia, Booking Holdings and Airbnb have all moved lower as investors weigh what happens if travel search, price comparison and checkout shift away from the platforms' own apps and websites and into an AI interface.
From Sept. 4 to Sept. 23, Booking fell 19.1%, Airbnb dropped 17.8%, and Expedia lost 13.1%. Meta rose 20.6% over the same period.
Two selloffs followed Muse's debut
Meta launched Muse, described as a personal AI agent, on Sept. 8. On the day of the launch, Expedia closed down 7.88%, Booking Holdings fell 6.72%, and Airbnb lost 4.07%.
Another wave of selling hit on Sept. 23. Expedia dropped 7.72%, Airbnb fell 7.56%, and Booking lost 5.07%.
Using Sept. 4, the last trading day before Muse went live, as the starting point, Booking posted the steepest decline through Sept. 23 at 19.1%. Airbnb was down 17.8%, and Expedia fell 13.1%. The source added that all three stocks rebounded slightly on Sept. 25, though they still closed 15% below their Sept. 4 levels.
The market is focused on who owns the booking interface
Muse is designed to act on a user's behalf. A user can issue a prompt such as asking it to book a flight and hotel for a trip to Tokyo next month, and the agent can search the web, compare options, fill in forms and complete payment.
That matters because Expedia, Booking and Airbnb all make money from the same sequence: a user opens an app or website, searches, compares options and completes a booking, with the platform taking a commission along the way. The market's concern is that if that flow moves into Muse, users may stop starting their trip planning directly on travel platforms. That would weaken the platforms' control over what users see first and could put pressure on commissions.
Barron's, citing estimates from Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and William Tong, said that if AI agents capture 5% to 10% of business across travel, ride-hailing and food delivery, the combined revenue hit to related companies could exceed $5 billion. The source made clear that this is a scenario analysis rather than a figure appearing in any company's financial statements, but the stock market has already reacted.
Flights can already bypass travel platforms; hotels largely cannot
The source draws a clear distinction between flights and hotels.
Travel industry outlet Skift reported on Sept. 9, based on its own testing, that Muse handled flight bookings through a direct connection with travel technology company Duffel. Duffel said that same day that U.S. users could search, book and manage flights inside Muse, with live inventory from more than 500 airlines. Payments are processed through Stripe virtual cards. In that setup, the transaction does not pass through Expedia or Booking.
That does not mean the entire online travel model has already been cut out. Airline ticket commissions are relatively thin, and the larger profit pool for these companies still comes from accommodations. In Skift's test, Muse handled hotel booking differently. It opened a browser and browsed consumer travel sites such as Expedia and Hotels.com, which is part of the Expedia Group, in the same way a human user would.
For now, hotel transactions still mostly land on the existing platforms. Even so, Muse is increasingly the party deciding where comparison happens and which site gets the final booking.
Skift also flagged a cost issue. If agents crawl travel sites at scale, operating costs for those platforms could rise without a matching increase in completed bookings. The platforms bear the traffic load, while Muse can still choose where to place the order.
Expedia has chosen to join Muse
Expedia's response has been the most direct. On Sept. 22, the company said it would join Muse. Under the arrangement described in the source, users will be able to enter their destination, dates and preferences into Muse, select hotel options supplied by Expedia and pay inside the Muse interface, while Expedia remains the merchant of record.
No launch date for that feature was disclosed.
The stock reaction was mixed at first. On the day the announcement was made, Expedia closed down just 0.11%, compared with declines of 2.55% for Booking and 3.01% for Airbnb. A day later, Expedia fell 7.72%, the biggest one-day drop among the three.
That suggests investors may be willing to accept Expedia as a short-term supplier inside Muse, while remaining wary of the longer-term shift in its role. Instead of users actively opening Expedia first, Muse may decide whether Expedia is used at all.
Business structure and stock performance have not lined up neatly
Based on business mix alone, the source argues that Expedia looks closest to a pure comparison platform, with chain hotels and airline tickets easier to substitute. On that logic, it appears most exposed to AI-driven comparison. Booking has the largest scale and the strongest leverage in negotiations with hotels, giving it a better chance of turning Muse into another distribution channel. Airbnb's listings mostly come from individual hosts, and the source argues that an agent cannot easily replace that inventory by simply opening a browser and comparing standardized hotel listings.
Yet the market has not priced the stocks in that order. Expedia posted the largest daily declines only on Sept. 8 and Sept. 23. Over the full Sept. 4 to Sept. 23 period, Booking and Airbnb fell more.
For now, investors appear to be pricing the broader question of where a booking starts rather than making a firm judgment on which company is best positioned to withstand the change.
They are not disappearing, but commissions and traffic sources are being repriced
The source does not argue that Muse will make Expedia, Booking or Airbnb disappear. It does argue that commission rates, traffic sources and customer acquisition costs may all be reopened for negotiation. The interface that decides where users compare options and where they place an order may also decide where commissions go.
Duffel Chief Executive Officer Steve Domin told PhocusWire that accommodations will be connected later, while Expedia's hotel booking function inside Muse has not gone live yet. Whether hotel booking ultimately moves through direct connections, through Expedia, or through browser-based navigation controlled by Muse could determine how much commission Expedia, Booking and Airbnb give up.