Hilton Wants to Be Valued Like a Tech Company

0:10Hilton wants to be valued like a tech company, Agoda just plugged into Meta's AI agent,

0:16Tasmin Lockwood: and Waymo is coming for your expense report. I'm Tasmin Lockwood, it's Thursday, October 29th, and this is the Skift Daily Briefing. First up, Hilton is pitching itself as a tech company and it's making moves to back that up. In the past month, Hilton hired a new chief technology officer, Jeff Morse, who ran a 2 ,500 person engineering organization at Uber. It's moving its stock listing to the Nasdaq. And on this week's earnings call, CEO Chris Nassetta said Hilton is working with each and every one of the AI agents emerging in travel. But being everywhere isn't the real point. Connecting directly is.

0:59Tasmin Lockwood: Nasata says Hilton's rebuilt tech stack lets it plug into AI agents faster than its rivals can. It's already done that with corporate booking platform Navan, skipping the traditional distribution middlemen. And with roughly 25 % of quality US hotel supply, Hilton has real leverage. The promise is cheaper distribution that eventually flows back to hotel owners. And Hilton just had its biggest quarter of organic openings ever, 27 ,000 rooms across more than 180 hotels. So Hilton wants a tech valuation, but owners will judge it by one thing, whether lower distribution costs actually show up on their bills.

1:40Tasmin Lockwood: Next, speaking of AI agents, Agoda is now bookable through Muse, Meta's personal AI agent in Singapore and Japan. A new connector links Agoda's own AI assistant to Muse. Users can discover destinations, bookstays and manage itineraries without leaving the agent. It went live yesterday alongside Muse's Singapore launch with Kluk, Trip.com and Singapore Airlines also on board. Kluk already announced a Muse partnership for Japan last week. Expedia joined Muse in the US a month ago. But nobody's answering one question. Who pays? Neither Agoda nor Meta disclosed the terms, and Mark Zuckerberg told analysts last week that Meta could take a cut of the value Muse helps create.

2:28Tasmin Lockwood: Hotels are already paying OTA commissions. A Meta fee could mean a new toll on top of that. The takeaway? AI agents are becoming a real booking channel, and the fight over who gets paid is just getting started. Finally, Waymo wants to become routine business travel. Waymo has picked Ramp, the corporate card and spend platform, as the first integration for Waymo for business. If you pay for a ride with a Ramp card, the receipt flows straight into Ramp, already matched to the charge. No more hunting for receipts. More than 7 ,000 businesses use Ramp and Waymo spending on Ramp cards grew 173 % year over year on the third quarter.

3:13Tasmin Lockwood: Airports are central to the pitch. Waymo now serves six, including San Francisco, Phoenix and Las Vegas. Still, Waymo is playing catch up. Uber for Business already connects with more than a dozen expense platforms, including Concur, Navant and Brex. The bottom line? Corporate travel adoption follows the back office. Make a ride easy to expense and it stops being a novelty and starts being a habit. That's your skip daily briefing. For more travel industry news, head to skiff.com and subscribe at skiff.com forward slash daily.