By Nate Wolf
The U.S. and Israel's war with Iran has, as expected, crushed most travel stocks. Expedia Group and Booking Holdings are two notable exceptions.
The travel booking stocks rose 11% and 8.4%, respectively, on Thursday as fears of disruption by artificial-intelligence tools dissipated. Factor in their low exposure to the Middle East, and online travel agencies, or OTAs, are among this week's winners.
The potential rise of AI checkout that can effectively replace e-commerce functions has rattled the OTA category. But the fears may be overblown: OpenAI is pivoting away from AI checkout options on ChatGPT to a model that integrates third-party apps, The Information reported Thursday.
OpenAI didn't immediately respond to Barron's request for comment.
If true, the move "could spell the beginning of the end of major disruption fears for internet marketplace businesses," Mizuho analyst Lloyd Walmsley wrote in a research note Thursday. "We believe OTAs took the biggest slide and have the most to gain from potential wind-back of on-platform checkout risks."
Mizuho had already been skeptical of the threat AI posed to e-commerce businesses. Conversion rates for customers are higher on dedicated e-commerce sites. And AI search engines, the firm argued, will likely end up with an auction advertising model similar to how e-commerce works on Google.
Mizuho has an Outperform rating on Booking and named the stock its new top pick in the internet space, overtaking Airbnb. It reiterated a Neutral rating for Expedia, which was a Barron's stock pick in late 2024.
The war in the Middle East doesn't seem to be weighing on the stocks. At the end of 2023, Booking sized its exposure to Israel at 1% of global room nights and to the Middle East, including Turkey and Egypt, at 4% of global room nights. Expedia likely has an even smaller footprint in the region, Mizuho said.
Airlines, hotels, and cruise lines aren't faring so well. The U.S. Global Jets exchange-traded fund, for instance, was down 5.8% on Thursday and has fallen 14% over the past month, with the price of jet fuel a worry for investors.
For its part, Booking is "looking after" its travelers in the region, Ewout Lucien Steenbergen, the company's chief financial officer, said at a Morgan Stanley conference Wednesday. He then took a shot at the AI chatbots, telling investors that he asked one of the platforms to cancel a hypothetical flight to Dubai and get a refund.
"It gave me actually an answer that was quite unsatisfactory," Steenbergen said. "It said at the end, 'think of me as your travel strategy advisor, not the one pushing the button.'"
Booking, Steenbergen argued, is the platform customers would rather turn to when they need support. That trust will keep them coming back, he said.
Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 05, 2026 13:16 ET (18:16 GMT)
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