After experiencing Muse, I cleared out my Airbnb inventory.
In Silicon Valley and Wall Street, discussions about how AI will transform the business world have never ceased. But as theory becomes reality, the first to feel the chill may well be the internet platform giants we are most familiar with.
Recently, on the popular financial podcast "The Synopsis," host Drew had an in-depth conversation with Mostly Borrowed Ideas (MBI), a senior independent stock analyst with over 150,000 followers.
MBI recounts that about 10 days after Meta released Muse, he downloaded the app and began testing it. This testing ultimately led him to make an investment decision— to sell all his Airbnb shares and further increase his Meta holdings.
In this conversation, Drew and MBI also delved into how Meta's AI agent product, Muse, will disrupt the business models of internet aggregation platforms such as Airbnb, Booking, Uber, DoorDash, and Amazon. A new era of commerce—" Proactive Commerce"—may be dawning .
Left: Drew, right: Mostly Borrowed Ideas
After experiencing Muse, I cleared out my Airbnb inventory.
As a heavy user of Airbnb (spending over $7,000 this year) and a major investor, MBI initially, like many others, dismissed the idea that AI would disrupt online travel platforms (OTAs). After all, people need to see pictures, read reviews, and even chat with hosts when booking accommodations, and traditional text-based AI (such as the early ChatGPT) simply cannot meet these needs.
But Muse changed his mind.
MBI shared his experience: "I asked Muse to recommend five accommodations within a two-hour drive of my home, based on my past experiences on Airbnb. What was amazing was that Muse not only automatically browsed my history, but also analyzed the travel reels I saved on Instagram, thus accurately understanding my preferences. It browsed and filtered in the background like a real person, and finally recommended options to me with rich pictures and reasons."
When MBI took a liking to a farmhouse and asked if he could book it directly, Muse told him within a minute: Yes, and by bypassing Airbnb, the price would be 60% cheaper. Muse had even linked his credit card, so MBI only needed to click confirm once to complete the payment.
“At that moment, I realized that Airbnb might be standing on the opposite side of future trends,” MBI admitted.
Host Drew raised a defensive question based on a traditional business perspective: "Airbnb's biggest moat is 'trust' and 'exclusive supply.' As a consumer, I'm hesitant to transact directly with strangers on the internet; I need Airbnb as an intermediary to guarantee refunds and after-sales service. At the same time, many hosts don't have their own independent websites."
MBI refuted this claim, stating that AI agents can establish "trust" assessments simply by collecting genuine reviews from across the internet. More importantly, in the AI era, landlords only need to tell the AI, "Synchronize this listing on Booking and VRBO and manage the calendar," and the so-called "exclusive supply" barrier will instantly crumble. This is because landlords have long suffered from the "dominance" of a single platform; previously, the friction costs of managing multiple platforms were too high, but AI eliminates this friction.
Airbnb vs Booking: Who is more resilient to risks?
After sharing their experience of selling Airbnb, MBI and his partner turned their attention to another online travel platform giant: Booking.
- The Curse of Direct Traffic: Airbnb currently derives up to 90% of its traffic from organic/direct sources, which explains its high profit margins. However, in the era of AI-powered intelligent agents, consumers may no longer directly open the Airbnb app but instead use AI to plan their trips. MBI predicts that Airbnb's direct traffic will decline significantly within the next 5-10 years.
- The shift in customer acquisition costs: Booking currently spends a third of its traffic on Google (with an annual marketing budget exceeding $5 billion). For Booking, shifting its traffic source from Google to AI (such as Muse and ChatGPT) may simply be a change of venue for paying "tolls," and its customer acquisition costs (CAC) may even decrease.
- Valuation Protection: Currently, Booking's valuation is only 10-11 times its EBITDA, essentially being valued by the market as a "traditional pipeline"; while Airbnb's valuation is as high as 30 times. If both become underlying infrastructure for AI in the future, Airbnb will face a much more severe valuation crash.
Host Drew added another defensive advantage for Booking— its loyalty program : “More than half of Booking’s room nights come from its loyalty members. The loyalty program offers points and free upgrades, which encourages consumers to still choose Booking to complete their transactions when comparing prices with AI.”
However, the two reached a consensus: AI will never make these OTA platforms "better." At best, they will barely maintain the status quo; and most likely, their long-term compound annual growth rate will be compressed by AI.
Disrupting Amazon: When AI Takes Over Your Shopping Cart
If the tourism industry, characterized by low frequency and high average order value, is the first to be affected, what about e-commerce and local services, which are characterized by high frequency?
Take Amazon as an example. MBI points out that Amazon's biggest crisis is its $76 billion advertising business . "Previously, when we opened Amazon, we would often blindly buy the top three products in the search results. This is the logic behind making money through bidding ads. But AI agents won't click on ads. If you give AI the instruction of 'quality first, price first for equal quality, and logistics speed last,' AI will rationally find the best solution across the entire network for you."
MBI gave an example: he saw a T-shirt in a Meta ad and asked Muse to evaluate whether he should buy it. Instead of defending his own brand and recommending their product, Muse told him that the brand wasn't good value for money and recommended better alternatives.
Host Drew agreed and offered Amazon's solution: "Amazon's current app experience is actually quite poor; only the 'search-buy' function is smooth. They must immediately deeply integrate native AI capabilities into their app and protect the 'user interface' (UI). As long as users are still accustomed to opening Amazon first when they have shopping needs, and Amazon's AI is good enough, coupled with its powerful logistics fulfillment network, it can maintain its core customer base."
Why are local services (Uber and DoorDash) safe for now?
Compared to OTAs and e-commerce, Drew and MBI both believe that DoorDash (food delivery) and Uber (ride-hailing) will be impacted later.
MBI analyzed, "Both of these are high-frequency, low-average-order-value impulse purchases. When ordering takeout, users often don't know what they want to eat and need to 'browse'. More importantly, takeout is a three-sided network (platform, merchant, and rider). AI can place orders with restaurants on behalf of the platform, but it cannot replace the rider in delivering the food to the door. Currently, DoorDash's profit per order is only 50 cents, indicating that they are not making exorbitant profits, which has instead become their competitive advantage."
Host Drew believes that ride-hailing (Uber) is riskier than food delivery: "If food delivery goes wrong, users need customer service to refund them, and the platform has great value in after-sales service. But ride-hailing is different. In the future, with the entry of autonomous driving (AV) companies such as Waymo and Tesla, coupled with AI agents that can compare prices across all platforms (Uber, Lyft, Waymo) in a second, users' loyalty to Uber will be almost zero, and the price war in the ride-hailing market will be extremely brutal."
Embrace the era of "Proactive Commerce"?
At the end of the program, the two experts jointly introduced a new concept that will define business in the future – “Proactive Commerce” .
Traditional commerce can be divided into two categories: one is "intention-driven" (such as searching for books on Amazon), and the other is "discovery-driven" (such as seeing ads on Instagram and developing a desire to buy).
AI agents will bring a third model. MBI described a chilling scenario: "Airbnb now offers a 'book now, pay later' feature (book in advance, pay 7 days before check-in). In the future, AI agents like Muse will read your email and find that you've booked a hotel but haven't paid. It will proactively pop up and tell you: 'Hey, I just found out that the hotel you booked can be 20% cheaper if you book directly on its website now. Do you want me to cancel your Airbnb booking and rebook?' "
Without requiring user input, AI tirelessly searches for better solutions and proactively suggests replacements in the background 24/7.
In this new era, the business logic of platforms that rely solely on information asymmetry and traffic monopoly to charge exorbitant "tolls" is being uprooted. For investors, it's time to re-examine their "platform" stocks: in a future where AI possesses autonomous capabilities, will they be indispensable infrastructure or expensive intermediaries that will soon be bypassed?
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