Wave

Travel distribution has already known two major waves of concentration.

The first, in the 2000s, was the era of OTAs: Expedia and Booking absorbed dozens of brands to build the duopoly that now dominates online hotel distribution.

The second, more recent, was the one among TMCs: the Amex GBT-CWT merger, completed in autumn 2025 for $540 million, crowning the planet’s largest player in business travel, while Direct Travel absorbed ATPI on the Spotnana infrastructure and FCM and BCD continued their expansion.

The third wave, that of 2026, is of a different nature. The most spectacular trigger is the acquisition of Amex GBT by Long Lake: a fund intending to buy the world’s leading business travel company for $6.3 billion in cash, at $9.50 per share, returning the company to private hands once the deal closes in the second half of 2026.

The price represents a premium of 60.2% over the last closing price before the announcement.

The key point is not the amount. It is the identity of the buyer.

With the AI capabilities brought by Long Lake, the CEO Paul Abbott believes Amex GBT is well positioned to drive the transformation of business travel. In other words, the world’s largest corporate distributor is rearming not to grow, but to industrialize around artificial intelligence, funded by tech investors — General Catalyst and Alpha Wave are among the backers of the deal.

The driver of consolidation has changed: it is no longer the logic of scale among carriers or agencies, it is the logic of tech capital that buys distribution to transform it into a platform.

Also read: Business travel: three forces are reshaping the industry and imposing a new model

The signal is even clearer on the entrants’ side.

Navan’s IPO in October 2025, valued at $6.2 billion with revenue growth of 33% and gross margins rising from 62% to 72%, validates the technology-first model.

For reference, at Navan’s IPO, Amex GBT — though larger in volume — carried a market capitalization of about $4.1 billion. The market now values the ability to automate, not the size of the order book.

This automation is very tangible. Navan’s AI assistant, Ava, handles about half of user interactions without human intervention, directly fueling margin expansion, and the company claims over 90% policy compliance for travel, versus 30-50% for historic TMCs.

It is this cost and compliance differential that explains why capital rushes to distribution: there is an efficiency rent to capture, and it is captured through technological consolidation.

The consequence is a market that splits rather than evenly concentrates. The TMC market is no longer a single tier: it has split into two distinct segments, with different technology architectures, different client profiles, and different distribution behaviors.

On one side, the enterprise tier GDS-first, driven by service; on the other, IA-native platforms.

Thus, consolidation does not produce a single giant, but two competing models that each attract smaller players.

On the leisure side, concentration is far from finished: it is hardening.

The OTA landscape continues to consolidate around two dominant players, Booking Holdings and Expedia Group, together controlling an estimated 85 to 90% of global OTA hotel bookings.

And this concentration comes at a very direct price for hoteliers: with less competition, the two groups have progressively raised their commissions, Booking.com averaging around 17.5% in 2026 versus 15.8% in 2022, and Expedia at about 19.2% versus 17.5% over the same period.

This is exactly the mechanism we described in our first article on the function of distribution: unmanaged distribution becomes distribution that controls you.

When two players lock 85-90% of a channel, the distributor no longer negotiates; it becomes a captive.

This is where the real 2026 surprise plays out. The prevailing narrative promised that AI agents would short-circuit intermediaries — the traveler asks, the agent books directly, the OTA disappears.

The observed reality is the opposite. Google’s agent booking partners include Booking.com and Expedia, which suggests that agentic AI adds a new layer of distribution on top of OTAs rather than bypassing them, shifting the question of who holds the traveler relationship.

A strategy of disintermediation does not begin with the parties it intends to disintermediate as founding partners.

Volumes confirm the road remains steep. At the start of 2026, AI travel agents handle an estimated 3 to 5% of hotel bookings on major markets, versus nearly zero in 2024, with a projection of 10 to 15% by 2028.

And the barrier is not technology; it is trust: a Skift study suggests that about 2% of travelers would only authorize an AI agent to complete a purchase on their behalf, while an Expedia Group survey places this figure at 8% — a small minority in both cases.

For the distribution function, the message is clear: AI does not remove an intermediary, it creates a new one, located even closer to the traveler.

The strategic question is not “how to avoid disintermediation” but “how to exist within this new layer of orchestration.”

A new type of native AI aggregator is also starting to emerge alongside the OTAs, designed to give hotels access to AI-driven discovery platforms.

The consolidation of distribution is not another cycle: it is a shift in leadership.

Tech capital and AI buy, finance, and restructure distributors, while an agency layer sits atop the chain without removing a single link.

For players in travel, the threat is less about being acquired and more about ceasing to exist in the new layers where the traveler relationship is now captured.

Distribution does not concentrate: it reconfigures. Everyone must decide whether they will be a platform, a partner, or a component in someone else’s pipeline.

1. Amex GBT / Long Lake : buyout at $6.3B, take-private, backing by General Catalyst and Alpha Wave. (TravelPulse, PhocusWire)

2. Financial details of the Long Lake deal: 60.2% premium, $9.50 per share. (StockTitan / 8-K GBTG)

3. Navan: IPO at $6.2B, margins, Ava assistant, compliance. (White Sky Hospitality, BTN Europe)

4. Split of the TMC market into two camps and consolidation in 2025 (Amex GBT–CWT, Direct Travel–ATPI). (Hospitality.today)

5. OTA duopoly and rising commissions in 2026: 85-90% share, Booking and Expedia commissions. (Booking Whizz)

6. Agentic = an additional layer, not disintermediation: Google-listed partners. (Hospitality Net)

7. Adoption and trust in AI purchasing: 3-5% of hotel bookings, 2-8% willing to pay via AI, AI-native aggregators. (AltexSoft)

Alexandre Veau has more than 20 years of professional experience in the travel and tourism industry.

He notably led geographic expansion and partnerships at Egencia.

He has thus gained strong expertise in managing pre- and post-acquisition projects, as well as extensive knowledge of business travel.

Alexandre also possesses strong expertise in change management of commercial functions by leading projects to launch new activities and optimize business processes and by implementing transformation plans.

Building on this experience, Alexandre now brings this know-how to travel and leisure companies through analytical capability and an approach tailored to organizational challenges, as a partner at Impact Consultants.