Truist: Meta's Muse enters travel booking, online travel platforms face greater competitive pressure

Truist said Meta's newly launched AI agent Muse has travel booking capabilities and has begun to exert competitive pressure on online travel platforms such as Expedia and Booking. The firm believes that other large models have had limited impact on OTA booking share in the past, but Meta has stronger consumer reach, user scale, and data resources, and Muse's initial download performance has been relatively strong, making the potential disruption more noteworthy. Truist noted that it remains highly uncertain how much booking share, commission rates, and the bargaining relationship between OTAs and hotels and airlines will ultimately be affected by Muse and other AI agents, but before any actual financial impact emerges, market attention and user testing alone could affect the performance of related stocks. Compared with Booking, Truist is more cautious on Expedia, because Muse was launched first in North America, while about two-thirds of Expedia's consumer-facing business comes from the United States, making it more exposed to changes in the U.S. market.