👐 Maybe people don't actually want to book trips or buy things inside chatbots

OpenAI has stepped back from the idea of building travel bookings and shopping directly into ChatGPT. Instead, users will be redirected to third-party services and partner mini-apps.

Analysts think OpenAI doesn't want the headache: payments, real-time price tracking, cancellations, refunds, and customer complaints.

At scale, that's a lot of moving parts. And the commission margins on travel bookings are not significant enough.