Expedia builds B2A team to turn AI agents into travel ambassadors

Expedia Group has established a dedicated business-to-agent (B2A) team focused on influencing AI agents to recommend its services rather than block them from travelers, according to Daniel Shin Un Kang, the company's head of organic and agentic search.

Speaking at Phocuswright's Travel Marketing AI Summit London in September 2026, Kang outlined Expedia's approach to navigating uncertainty around how AI agents will reshape travel booking and search.

Planning for multiple AI futures

Rather than attempting to predict a single outcome for the agentic future, Kang advocates preparing for a range of scenarios. He compared the approach to rolling dice—you can predict a range of possible totals even if you can't know the exact result.

"Understanding what the predictable futures are going to be and [what] the range of outcomes are helps us really think about doing no-regrets work and then investing in a portfolio of bets," Kang said, according to PhocusWire.

This strategy involves identifying work that will prove valuable across multiple scenarios while making targeted investments in different potential outcomes.

The dual-audience framework

Expedia applies what Kang calls a "dual-audience framework" to address both human travelers and AI agents simultaneously. He likened this to marketing chocolate by appealing to taste for children while emphasizing price or nutrition for parents—the same product positioned differently for distinct audiences.

The critical difference with AI agents is their fundamental dissimilarity to humans. "They're nothing like human beings" and can be even more biased, Kang noted. Additionally, different AI models behave inconsistently from one another, making them a non-homogeneous audience.

"Today, [agents] are very fickle. I almost feel as I'm appealing to a toddler. One day they like one thing, another day they like something completely different," he said.

From structured data to ground truth

While structured data currently provides an advantage in agent visibility, Kang characterized this as merely "table stakes" for the future. As AI agents mature, competition will shift beyond basic legibility and discoverability.

"It's going to be about ground truth. Are you providing compelling value proposition? There won't be hiding behind complexities anymore. It'll be about providing true value to the users," he explained.

A venture capital approach to marketing

Kang urged travel marketing teams to become more technical and comfortable with failure, adopting an investment mindset similar to venture capital. Even though VCs are often wrong, they succeed by budgeting for high failure rates while positioning bets for large potential outcomes.

This approach requires travel marketers to rethink traditional success metrics and embrace experimentation across multiple strategic directions simultaneously.

Why it matters

Expedia's creation of a dedicated B2A team signals that major travel platforms view AI agents as a distinct distribution channel requiring specialized strategy and resources. As AI-powered search and booking tools proliferate, travel companies face pressure to influence how these agents present options to users—or risk being filtered out of recommendations entirely. The dual-audience framework represents an early template for how travel marketers might need to restructure their approach as agentic AI becomes mainstream.

These details were first reported by PhocusWire.