Priceline

San Francisco sued two hotel-booking businesses Wednesday, alleging they used paid search ads and hotel-branded webpages to make travelers think they were booking directly—then charged them as much as 85 percent more. The lawsuit targets GuestReservations.com, BookOnline.com, and Booking Holdings, the $186 billion travel giant behind Booking.com and Priceline. The city alleges Priceline Partner Solutions supplied the sites with rooms, hotel information, booking technology, and payment processing while earning revenue from completed reservations. San Francisco is seeking customer refunds, an injunction, and civil penalties of up to $2,500 per violation. An 85 percent markup In one test, the city searched an iPhone for “palace hotel sf.” Two sponsored results appeared above Marriott’s official Palace Hotel page, including a Guest Reservations address containing the hotel’s name and palacehotel.bookonline.com. Guest Reservations offered a king room with flexible cancellation for $775, according to the complaint. Marriott listed a comparable room for $419—making the Guest Reservations price 85 percent higher. BookOnline quoted $526 for a nonrefundable room, 38 percent above Marriott’s cheapest public rate. Both sites identified themselves as independent booking services, but the city alleges the disclosures were easy to miss. Guest Reservations placed its notice in fine print, while BookOnline’s allegedly "blurred away” within a fraction of a second. The pages focused on a single hotel, and BookOnline displayed a local phone number that routed callers to its own reservation system. Google said it prohibits third-party travel agencies from putting a hotel’s name before their own domain in an advertisement’s displayed web address—the format shown in the city’s examples. “We require third-party booking sites to clearly identify themselves, and we prohibit ads that falsely claim an affiliation with a specific hotel,” a Google spokesperson told Inc. “When we find ads that violate our policies, we take action.” Google did not say whether it had removed the ads cited in the lawsuit. The company said it blocked or removed more than 421.5 million ads under its misrepresentation policies last year. Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of competition and market fairness at the Consumer Federation of America,

Nov 3 (Reuters) - Booking Holdings (BKNG.O), opens new tab said on Tuesday it recorded ‌a $900 million reduction in revenue and accrued a loss of $100 million related to an FTC action involving Priceline's connection to deceptive hotel ads.

Booking Holdings disclosed in August that the FTC was considering suing Priceline and an affiliate over disclosures, fees, customer support and billing practices, without naming the affiliate or describing the practices. The company said it was in talks with the FTC to resolve the matter.

Oct 7 (Reuters) - The US Federal Trade Commission is gearing up to take action against Priceline.com, opens new tab owner Booking Holdings (BKNG.O), opens new tab over ​online ads that appear to direct consumers to a hotel's site but send them to a third-party site where they are often charged extra, two ‌sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The redesign of Penny began with a simple observation. Customers enjoyed interacting with the conversational assistant because it was often faster than navigating traditional travel pages. The experience broke down whenever users needed to leave the conversation to complete another task.

One of Amin's first priorities after joining Priceline nearly two years ago was changing how engineering teams were organized.

Ultimately, Amin sees AI less as a way to replace travelers than as a way to eliminate the tedious work that surrounds planning a trip.

The company’s AI strategy also reflects a broader shift in how Priceline thinks about customer data. Traditional travel platforms rely heavily on behavioral signals, such as previous searches or bookings. Amin believes the more valuable information lies in understanding customer intent.

Generative AI is also transforming how Priceline builds software internally. Engineering teams increasingly use tools such as Cursor and Claude Code to accelerate development, helping Priceline deliver new capabilities more quickly. Amin said the productivity gains became especially noticeable beginning earlier this year, contributing to the rapid rollout of Penny's new capabilities.

For more than 25 years, Priceline has helped travelers find better prices on flights, hotels and rental cars. Now, the company is applying artificial intelligence to a much broader challenge: understanding what travelers actually want before they can fully articulate it.