The travel agent is dead. Long live the travel agent.

Happy anniversary, Francis Davidson.

One year after his old company started kicking guests out of their rooms, Davidson announced Tuesday that OpenAI bought his AI travel agent, Odessia, and that he’s joining OpenAI to work on “the future of travel.” OpenAI only confirmed the hire, and terms weren’t disclosed, which usually means acquihire.

Odessia was about a year old. It raised a $6M pre-seed round led by Sequoia and launched roughly five months ago with a team of eight. It planned and booked trips by digging through years of confirmations in your Gmail (read: it read your email). Davidson says early adopters planned millions of dollars’ worth of travel on it, and that he built the thing by vibecoding directing teams of AI agents.

Oh, and it’s already dead. Odessia’s website now just says “the Odessia service is no longer available,” plus a support email for anyone with an existing booking. Woof.

Friendly reminder, Davidson founded Sonder as a college student in 2014. Think: the love child of an Airbnb and a trendy hotel with graffiti art in the lobby. It hit unicorn status and went public via SPAC, but the deal didn’t raise nearly enough cash after the pandemic put it on the struggle bus. Davidson stepped down as CEO in June 2025, about a year after Sonder hooked up with Marriott. By November, Marriott pulled out. Sonder filed for Chapter 7 (read: liquidation), and some guests got as little as 15 minutes to grab their stuff, which some found packed in plastic bags. Which, worst walk of shame ever.

To be fair, Davidson clearly didn’t hear no bell. One liquidation and one shutdown later, he’s working on “the future of travel” at a $1.25T company.

OpenAI hasn’t announced any travel products. Its spokesperson would only say that “1.2 billion people turn to ChatGPT each week” for stuff like “planning a trip.” Friendlier reminder: back in March, OpenAI scaled back plans to let you book travel inside ChatGPT. Now it just bought a startup that booked the whole trip for you. PIVOT!

As for the travel sites, OpenAI counts Booking.com, Expedia and KAYAK as customers or partners (an open relationship, apparently). If ChatGPT books your trip, nobody needs to visit Expedia. So Expedia got dunked on bigly Tuesday, falling as much as 5%, while Booking Holdings slid as much as 3% and Airbnb as much as 3.5%. It’s the second AI agent to come for their lunch this fall, after Meta’s Muse knocked Expedia down 7% in September (sup, Zuck).

All in all, it turns out OpenAI’s been seeing a travel agent on the side. And with 1.2 billion people a week already asking ChatGPT where to go, the guys who make money sending you to a checkout page (read: Expedia & Co.) just became the next guests on the eviction list. Francis knows the drill. Grab a plastic bag. 

Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Meta as mentioned in the article.