While AI threatens travel aggregators, Booking's defense lies in its specialized, hard-to-replicate relationships with hotels. AI tools may become the user interface but could still rely on Booking's backend connections, preserving its role as an essential intermediary.

Demis Hassabis envisions a future internet where users' AI assistants negotiate directly with service providers' agents to book flights, make payments, and handle other tasks. This shift to an 'agent-to-agent' economic model will automate mundane work and fundamentally disrupt the current web's structure.

Google is moving beyond theoretical competition by extending its AI agent capabilities directly into lodging and travel planning. This development represents a materializing risk for Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), as Google can leverage its search dominance to disintermediate them and capture more of the value chain.

The threat to companies like DoorDash isn't a new AI delivery service. It's an AI agent that optimizes consumer choice between DoorDash, Uber Eats, and direct ordering. The brand that "owns the agent" wins by commoditizing the underlying service providers, even if their operations remain superior.

The threat of AI disintermediating platforms like Booking.com is mitigated by immense operational complexity. AI firms are unlikely to want to manage global payment systems, customer service for bad travel experiences, and fragmented supplier relationships, just as Google previously avoided these challenges.

Companies like Uber and DoorDash build moats on customer lock-in. AI agents will eliminate this by automatically price-shopping for users, commoditizing demand. This shifts the competitive battleground to supply-side aggregation, lowering barriers to entry for new players.

AI agents can perform complex tasks like ordering food by interacting directly with restaurants and drivers, bypassing aggregator platforms like DoorDash. This disintermediation removes the "middleman tax," returning margin and power to the original creators, fulfilling the internet's early promise of direct, open access without powerful gatekeepers.

Fears of AI disintermediating platforms like Booking.com may be overblown. AI agents would need to replicate decades of user ratings, global payment infrastructure, and deep supplier relationships from scratch—a monumental task that makes it more likely incumbents will simply integrate AI themselves.

Khosrowshahi draws a parallel to travel metasearch, where value ultimately accrued to consolidated suppliers (Expedia), not aggregators. He believes because the mobility and delivery markets are dominated by a few large players, Uber will retain power even if AI front-ends become popular.