Rising costs, not runaway marketing spend, are the real commercial pressure facing hotel partners in 2026, according to Steve Quan, Expedia Group’s senior vice president of hotel enterprise partnerships. In an interview with Travel Monitor, Quan also made the case that data-driven pricing has become non-negotiable for hotels, and pushed back firmly on suggestions that Expedia Group’s growing distribution reach could squeeze travel advisors out of the booking chain.
Energy and labour costs are squeezing margins, not marketing
Quan said conversations with hotel chains and operators consistently return to the same two cost pressures.
“The cost of energy to power the hotel is always high, and labour is the other one that’s always high,” he said.
Marketing spend, by contrast, has not necessarily become more expensive in real terms, in his view. Instead, he pointed to a sharp rise in the number of hotels over the past five to six years as the real driver, with properties now competing harder for the same pool of demand.
“There are more hotels that they have to compete against,” Quan said, framing the trend as basic supply and demand economics rather than marketing itself becoming pricier.
Why data-driven pricing is now non-negotiable
Expedia Group has been vocal about the predictive intelligence tools it has built into Partner Central, the platform hotel partners use to manage pricing, visibility and promotions. Asked how this is changing hotel behaviour in real time, Quan said the shift has been fundamental.
Hotels that were not data-driven in the past will need to become so, “otherwise they won’t succeed,” he said, pointing to the volume of data now available from Expedia Group and third-party providers alike.
“If you don’t have that data, I don’t know how you would price yourself accurately,” Quan said, noting that variables such as one-off events, seasonality and geopolitical developments can shift pricing constantly.
That data does more than set a baseline average daily rate, he added — it also signals when a property should lean on marketing tools to lift visibility during periods of low demand or occupancy.
“You cannot be a successful hotel in 2026 absent being exceedingly data-driven,” Quan said, adding that properties will increasingly need to adopt AI tools directly or partner with providers that have them.
AI will make good advisors “even more valuable”
Quan gave a direct answer to concerns that Expedia Group’s growing distribution reach could disintermediate travel advisors.
“If they were going to be disintermediated and wiped off the face of the earth, that would have already happened,” he said, pointing to advisors’ continued presence and success in the market as evidence against the theory. He went further, arguing AI stands to make strong advisors even more valuable rather than replacing them.
The reasoning centres on granular hotel content. As more detailed property data becomes available, Quan said advisors who can interpret it for clients will be best placed to benefit. He used pool seating as an example of the kind of specific detail now available, beyond broad claims like beachfront location.
“It’s not just are you by the beach, do you have cabana chairs, but are they busy? Do you have to stalk the cabana chair at 5am to lay a towel to get a chair?” he said.
In Quan’s view, a good advisor already does the work of translating a traveller’s real preferences — whether that is a lively resort or a quiet stay without competing for a deck chair — into the kind of detailed brief an AI system needs to make a strong recommendation.
“They basically are a really advanced AI prompt engine,” Quan said.
Advisors who combine that traveller insight with Expedia Group’s data, he said, are likely to generate more repeat and weekly business as a result, strengthening their position rather than weakening it.
More content and commission visibility ahead for trade partners
Looking at the next 12 months, Quan pointed to the continued growth of hotel content as the key force behind AI-led personalisation, enabling closer matching between a traveller’s specific trip and the right property.
He highlighted the scale of Expedia Group’s Travel Agent Affiliate Program (TAAP), describing it as a marketplace offering a wide assortment of hotels and promotions. Through the platform, Quan said, Expedia Group also gives advisors visibility into how to run their business more profitably, including surfacing hotel-funded commission incentives, where a property offers agents extra commission for selling rooms during a set period.
Quan’s comments point to a hotel and travel advisor landscape where data depth, not headline discounting, increasingly drives success, with Expedia Group positioning both its hotel and travel agent platforms as the infrastructure behind that shift.
