Metasearch is not dead. But the free traffic that built it is, and every travel brand should pay attention to what that means for them.
That is my reading of Skift’s report on the Kayak and Skyscanner bosses, published on 6 October 2026. Both CEOs went on stage to argue that comparison sites are being rebuilt for the AI age, not replaced by it. I agree, but the more important line was the quiet one.
The admission hiding in plain sight
Kayak’s chief executive, Peer Bueller, took the job in February after a decade as the company’s finance chief. He said the distribution that built metasearch has been disrupted. Google’s Gemini interfaces and carousels have pushed metasearch results down the page. Traffic that used to arrive for free now often has to be bought. And on top of that, Kayak has to show up inside large language models too.
Read that again. One of the biggest names in travel search now pays for visits it used to get for nothing.
If Kayak feels that squeeze, your hotel, tour company or destination does too, with a smaller budget.
Comparison is not a commodity, but trust is the real product
Bueller’s defence of metasearch is a good one. He said proper comparison is hard. It needs complex links with suppliers, direct access to their databases and commercial agreements on how the data can be used. It is not just scraping. He thinks a traveller-first, AI-first version of Kayak could grow to three to five times its current size.
Skyscanner’s CEO, Bryan Batista, set out a similar path. More hotels, cars and packages. Plans for trips that mix flights with trains or buses. Growth in the US, Latin America and Asia-Pacific. And a live ChatGPT plugin that serves Skyscanner price comparisons inside the chatbot.
The most telling number came from Skyscanner’s own research. Its upcoming 2027 trends report found that 51% of travellers surveyed have concerns about how reliable AI recommendations are. Skyscanner is testing agentic booking, but the partner still keeps the transaction.
That is the real battleground. Not who has the cleverest chatbot. Who the traveller believes when the chatbot gives them a price.
Southwest just proved the point
On the same day, Travel Weekly reported that Southwest has launched a ChatGPT plug-in with direct access to its flight inventory. Southwest says it is the first link of its kind between a US airline and ChatGPT. Users still cannot book inside the chat. They get handed to Southwest.com to buy.
The clever part is not the booking. It is the accuracy. ChatGPT now gets schedules and fares straight from Southwest’s systems, rather than piecing them together from public search results.
This follows the pattern we saw with Princess Cruises moving into ChatGPT and Claude. The brands that feed AI assistants clean, live data will be the ones those assistants trust. And as I argued in Hilton’s AI agent problem is a gift to the OTAs, if the machine cannot get your price, it will happily sell someone else’s.
Do not swallow every stat whole
A word of caution. Batista said 60% to 65% of travellers who enter Skyscanner’s search-with-AI funnel go on to run a flight, hotel or car search. That sounds impressive. But a search is not a booking. It tells us AI is a decent front door to the comparison engine. It does not yet tell us AI sells more trips.
Many travel brands will be pitched AI tools on numbers like this. Ask the boring question every time: how many of those people actually paid?
What this means for everyone else
Here is the uncomfortable bit. The metasearch giants have the data deals, engineers and cash to buy back lost traffic. Most travel brands do not. So the playbook has to be sharper.
- Stop treating organic traffic as free. If Google’s AI is pushing even Kayak down the page, plan for some of your organic demand turning into paid demand. Budget for it now, not after the dip hits the board report.
- Be the source, not just the listing. AI answers lean on data they can trust. Clean, structured, accurate information about your rates, rooms, routes and policies is the entry ticket. I made the same case in how a travel CMO should prioritise SEO budget.
- Track your presence in AI answers. Rankings alone no longer tell the full story. Check how ChatGPT, Gemini and others describe you, and whether they get your prices right.
- Own the trust moment. If half of travellers doubt AI recommendations, the brand that confirms the details clearly, quickly and honestly wins the booking. Your site, your reviews and your customer service are now part of your AI strategy.
We have been here before. When Google Hotels wobbled, it was Expedia, Tripadvisor and the other intermediaries that gained ground. Intermediaries adapt fast because their business depends on being found. Suppliers move slower, and pay for it later.
The debate worth having
So here is the question I would put to any travel marketing team this week. If the companies that invented travel comparison now have to pay to be seen, what makes you think your organic traffic is safe?
Metasearch will survive. It has the data and the deals. The real risk is for brands that assume the old free lunch is still on the table. It is not. The bill has arrived, and the only question is whether you pay it with smarter data or with a bigger ad budget.
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