The top OTA feature updates hotels may have missed (April–October 2025)
Between April and October, Airbnb, Expedia and Booking.com all changed how travellers search and book. What changed at each, why it matters and what to do about it.
If you have spent the last six months running a hotel, you have probably not had time to follow what the big online travel agencies were building. Between April and October 2025, Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group all released changes that quietly shift how travellers plan and book a stay.
The common threads are AI-assisted search, platforms that try to handle the whole trip, and clearer rules on price. Here is what changed at each one, and how a hotel should respond.
Airbnb: from home-sharing to the whole trip
Airbnb's 2025 Summer Release was its most ambitious in years. The company is no longer only a marketplace for private homes. It is building an app for the entire trip.
Guests can now book services such as private chefs, massages, trainers and photographers alongside experiences, and a redesigned app puts homes, services and experiences into a single itinerary. That builds on the group-trip tools from summer 2024, with shared wishlists, co-traveller invitations and group messaging with hosts, and on the Co-Host Network launched that winter, which connects owners with professional co-hosts. Brian Chesky has also confirmed plans to give hotels a bigger place on Airbnb, starting with boutique and independent properties. And since April 2025, Airbnb shows the total price, including all mandatory fees, by default in every market.
Why it matters: Airbnb now competes on the whole experience, not only on space. When a guest can book a yoga class or a private dinner in the same app as the room, the line between a rental and a hotel gets harder to see.
What to do: make your own services bookable on your website, from spa treatments and dinners to local tours. Lean on what a hotel does better, including trained staff, safety standards and reliability. If you list on Airbnb, check that your prices follow the total-price rule.
Expedia Group: AI tools and sharper partner data
Expedia's direction is automation, personalisation and scale across Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo. In October 2025 it introduced Smart Trip AI, a conversational trip planner for its B2B partners that suggests destinations, properties and itineraries based on what the traveller is looking for. It also uses AI to summarise guest reviews and answer travellers' questions about a property instantly.
For hotels, the more direct changes are in Partner Central. Targeted Member Deals, introduced in June 2025, let you offer discounts to specific One Key loyalty tiers. A pilot of the Lodging Sponsored Listings API lets properties promote themselves beyond Expedia's own sites, on partner platforms such as airlines and travel portals. And Vrbo rentals are now distributed through Expedia's global B2B network.
Why it matters: these tools reward structured, high-quality data. A listing with incomplete amenities, unverified features or weak photos gives the algorithm very little to recommend.
What to do: keep your listing accurate, visual and well structured, because AI needs context before it can recommend you. Be ready to test sponsored listings when they reach your market, and build offers for loyalty members, who tend to spend more and come back.
Booking.com: building the connected trip
Booking.com spent the year turning its platform into a single place to manage every part of a trip. In October 2025 it launched its first agentic AI tools for partners. Smart Messenger drafts replies to guests using the reservation and property details, and Auto-Reply answers common and property-specific questions instantly, on topics you define. Auto-Reply is available worldwide; Smart Messenger started with English-language partners.
Earlier in the year, review scores changed so that recent reviews carry far more weight. Reviews from the last twelve months now make up 85 per cent of the score, so improvements show up faster, and so do slips.
Booking.com for Business gained a natural-language search for travel managers, along with better dashboards, traveller maps and budgeting tools. And in September 2025, Booking.com added thousands of tours and activities through FareHarbor, filling in more of the trip around the stay.
Why it matters: every activity booked in the Booking.com app is one more reason for the traveller not to look anywhere else.
What to do: ask for reviews consistently, because recent feedback now moves your score quickly. Offer and promote your own local experiences directly, so the engagement and the revenue stay with you.
The bottom line
In six months, the three largest OTAs moved decisively towards whole-trip platforms run on AI and data. They are making booking simpler, recommendations more personal and travellers more loyal to the platform.
Hotels still hold the one advantage no algorithm can copy: people looking after people. Use these changes as a prompt to make your services bookable, refresh how you appear online and give guests a reason at every touchpoint to book with you directly. A listing gets you seen. The stay is what brings them back.