Expedia Says Its Muse Integration Is Set to Go Live in the US
Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin said on the company's third-quarter earnings call that its Meta Muse integration is expected to go live in the US, giving Muse access to Expedia prices and content so it can complete hotel bookings or hand travelers to Expedia.
By Icarus3 min read
Expedia Group chief executive Ariane Gorin said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call that its integration with Meta’s Muse is expected to go live in the US, PYMNTS reported on November 4.
Once live, Muse will have access to Expedia prices and content. It will be able to complete a booking itself or send the traveler to Expedia to finish it, according to the report.
The integration was first announced in September, when Expedia said US travelers would soon be able to describe a destination, dates, and hotel preferences to Muse and have the agent surface Expedia inventory. No launch date was given at the time, and trade-press reporting said Expedia would remain the merchant of record on bookings made through the integration, with payment completed inside Muse. The earnings call is the first timing signal since that announcement.
Agents Are Strong in Discovery, Weaker at the Booking
Gorin was measured about what agents are doing for Expedia today. “Agentic AI’s real strength is in discovery,” she said on the call, adding that travelers still prefer to book with a trusted brand, “where they know that they’ll be taken care of if something goes wrong.”
Agent traffic reaching Expedia is high intent but low volume, Gorin said, and it does not appear to cut into direct traffic. She described it as either incremental or taken from other paid channels, and said the volume is still too small to draw conclusions. The economics of the agent partnerships are still being worked out, the company said.
Muse has handled travel differently so far. Trade-press reporting has described the agent booking flights through a direct connection, but for hotels it has mostly browsed booking sites the way a person would, opening pages and comparing options. A native Expedia connection changes that: Muse would work from Expedia’s own prices and availability instead of reading the site through a browser.
Travel Connections Beyond Expedia
The Expedia deal is one of a wider set of travel connections Meta has been building into Muse. Expedia was named among the travel partners announced at Meta Connect in September, alongside Fever, Turo, and Viator, and Singapore’s launch in late October added local travel connectors including Agoda, Klook, and Trip.com.
Expedia has other agent partnerships in progress. The company has also partnered with Google in AI Mode, and Qantas is the first partner using Expedia’s new agentic template, which packages its booking technology and supply for other companies to build on. Expedia said a voice agent on Vrbo resolved more than 15 percent of inbound contacts in its first two months.
Expedia grew gross bookings 11 percent and revenue 12 percent in the quarter. The Muse integration is a small piece of that business, but it is the first of Muse’s travel partnerships to move from announcement toward a live US rollout.
