NEW YORK, March 5, 2026, 11:10 EST
- Booking Holdings shares popped in early trading after a report indicated OpenAI is pulling back on its plans for checkout within ChatGPT.
- Mizuho now favors Booking over Airbnb as its top choice, pointing to a possible reduction in concerns about “AI disruption.”
- Flight disruptions and pricier fuel linked to the Middle East conflict are hitting travel firms, adding to their headaches.
Shares of Booking Holdings Inc. surged up to 11% Thursday morning in New York after news surfaced that OpenAI is dialing back its plans for shopping checkout within ChatGPT. Expedia Group rallied too—investors saw OpenAI’s move as a win for marketplaces, suggesting they might retain a bigger slice of transaction activity beyond the chatbot’s reach.
This shift could be significant for investors, who are weighing the odds that chatbots might turn into a new breed of online travel agency—an “OTA,” as travel insiders call it—handling trip planning and bookings all in one spot. Adding direct checkout means users could pay right inside the chatbot, skipping the need to click through to Booking.com or other competitors. That threatens to siphon off both traffic and the commissions those sites rely on.
The announcement comes just as travel firms are hit by another jolt—a spreading Middle East conflict that’s closed or limited key Gulf airports, leaving travelers stuck. “It’s pretty well the biggest shutdown we’ve seen certainly since the COVID pandemic,” said Paul Charles, CEO at PC Agency, which advises on luxury travel. Reuters
Mizuho has bumped Booking up to its top pick over Airbnb, saying that online travel agencies stand to benefit the most if concerns around in-chat checkout subside, according to a report from Investing.com quoting analyst Lloyd Walmsley. The report also noted OpenAI’s shift: instead of focusing on a native checkout, OpenAI is moving toward app-based transactions via partners like Booking.com, Expedia, and Instacart.
Put simply, app-based checkout means the actual purchase happens inside a merchant’s app or through a partner—ChatGPT doesn’t handle the whole transaction end-to-end. For Booking, that’s a key point. The company pours money into attracting users, hoping to convert those first-timers into loyal, direct customers.
Booking CFO Ewout Steenbergen told a Morgan Stanley conference that while plenty of consumers rely on large language models (LLMs) to research trips, they’re still booking through brands they “know and trust.” Booking, he said, is developing “agentic” tools—software designed to do more than just answer questions, actually taking actions on users’ behalf. Steenbergen also described Google as a “lead generator,” and pointed out that Google has said publicly it doesn’t plan to become an OTA or act as a “merchant of record”—the entity processing payments and dealing with refunds or chargebacks. Investing.com
U.S. securities filings also revealed Steenbergen had 121 Booking shares withheld for taxes on vested restricted stock units, and picked up a fresh grant of 924 restricted stock units, dated March 4.
Booking shares climbed roughly 7% to $4,553.58, Markets Insider data showed, after starting out at $4,508.55. Still, the stock hasn’t retouched its 52-week peak of $5,835.00.
The rally isn’t without hazards. Oil surged over 3% as the conflict escalated, with UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo highlighting tanker attacks and tighter fuel supplies as contributing factors — both could dampen discretionary travel demand and push sector costs higher. The AI overhang persists, too: OpenAI and peers might yet direct users toward paid “lead” channels, shifting both the gatekeepers and the bill for travel search. Reuters
Right now, traders are eyeing any updates on OpenAI’s commercial plans, and looking for signals on how travel sites are holding onto direct demand—the sort that comes in without bidding for ads—in a market now contending with geopolitical flare-ups and rapid tech shifts.
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