Qantas Loyalty announced a partnership with Expedia Group on 30 September 2026, under which Expedia Group B2B will run the booking platforms behind Qantas Hotels & Holidays and Jetstar Holidays. Expedia B2B will power the end-to-end booking experience, built on its Composable Agentic Template.

Customers will book hotels and holiday packages, earn and redeem Qantas Points and manage the whole trip in one place. The airline’s loyalty arm keeps the customer relationship and the points currency. Expedia supplies the technology underneath.

What Expedia adds to Qantas Hotels & Holidays

Four features are planned: deeper integration with the Qantas App, better digital self-service, machine-learning recommendations for properties and holidays, and bundles that pair a holiday with premium cabin seats and codeshare partner flights.

The upgraded platform is due in the first half of 2027. KarryOn reported that build and integration work is already under way, which puts the launch roughly six to nine months out.

What each side said

“Partnering with Expedia Group gives us access to world-class travel technology that will transform how our customers search, book, and manage their trips,” said Jayne Davey, Qantas Loyalty Executive Manager, Business to Consumer, as Travel Weekly reported.

Carolina Cabero, SVP Sales at Expedia Group B2B, put the pitch in terms of plumbing. “By connecting supply, pricing, payments, loyalty and smarter digital experiences through one integrated platform, we’re giving Qantas the flexibility to innovate faster,” she said.

Alfonso Paredes, Expedia’s President of B2B, gave Travel Distribution News the shorter version: “AI is the interface. Expedia B2B is the infrastructure.”

Second Australian white-label travel booking in a fortnight

The Qantas deal follows a similar move by two weeks. On 17 September 2026, Expedia Group B2B launched NAB Travel inside National Australia Bank’s app, its first arrangement of this kind with an Australian bank.

Expedia’s 2025 Traveller Value Index found that 72% of Australians would book travel through a non-travel loyalty programme if they could earn points. A bank and a flag carrier are now both acting on that number, and both are using the same supplier to do it.

The week’s other deals

• Marriott and IOI Properties Group: signed four new-build hotels in Malaysia with 888 rooms in total: W Langkawi, The Ritz-Carlton Putrajaya, Aloft Sepang and Aloft Johor Bahru Plentong, according to TTG Asia.
• Harilela Group and IHG: The Hari Hong Kong, with 210 rooms, joined IHG’s Vignette Collection. The agreement also covers The Hari London and a forthcoming The Hari Singapore, TTG Asia reported.

What it means for hotels, airlines and OTAs

For airlines, the Qantas structure is a clear answer to the build-or-rent question on non-air content. The carrier does not run its own hotel and holiday engine. It rents one, and holds on to the two things that carry value in a loyalty business: who the customer is and what the points are worth.

For banks and other points issuers, NAB Travel and Qantas Hotels & Holidays show the same supplier serving different front doors. A white-label stack lets a brand with a large member base add travel without building supply, pricing and payments from scratch.

For hotels, more demand will arrive through branded loyalty storefronts rather than through the OTA’s own app. Rate parity, content quality and points-redemption terms will matter in more places, and the supply sits behind one supplier’s connection.

For OTAs, the competitive set now includes the OTA’s own B2B arm selling to their customers’ loyalty programmes. Expedia is positioning itself as infrastructure as well as a consumer brand.

Who to watch

Travel Tech Asia and ITB Asia run from 21 to 23 October in Singapore. Airline and loyalty heads in the region are likely to ask the same questions Qantas has just answered. Cabero and Paredes are the Expedia B2B executives to follow on how the Qantas and NAB builds progress, and what a white-label arrangement looks like for APAC carriers and banks.

Key takeaway

Qantas has shown that a top carrier can rent the booking technology and still own the customer and the points. We read that as the model other loyalty owners in APAC will be asked to copy. Any airline, bank or hotel group with a points programme should, this quarter, list which parts of its non-air booking stack it must own and which it could rent, and price both options.

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Australia’s national carrier Qantas has launched a new technology platform, Qantas Distribution Platform (QDP), to enable its trade partners to interact with its customers on a more personal level through enhancing the airline’s retailing, booking and servicing capabilities.

The QDP improves functionality of indirect agent channels by aligning them more closely with the capabilities currently available via qantas.com, making it easier for trade partners to sell the airline’s products and provide more seamless customer service.

The platform was developed in partnership with Farelogix Inc. and utilises IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC), the new industry standard. It has been certified to NDC Level 3, IATA’s highest certification.

Image source: PhocusWire

According to Qantas, its trade partners will now have access to richer content including images of cabins and meals and ability to book extras such as extra legroom seating. It will also provide Qantas Frequent Flyer information and tier status at the point of sale.

Vanessa Hudson, Qantas chief customer officer, said the platform was a key part of a broader digital evolution of the airline’s booking channels. “There have never been more ways for a customer to research and book their travel. We want to make the booking experience as seamless and enjoyable as possible, no matter their booking channel preference.”

Qantas’ trade partners can access the QDP either via approved partner connections, or directly by developing a connection to the airline’s NDC XML Application Program Interface (API).

Travelport, Serko and CTM are the early adopters of the platform. The airline is working closely with its other GDS and agency partners to adopt the new technology.

In a separate statement by Travelport, the company said the agreement with Qantas also includes distribution of the airline’ content via the Rich Content and Branding merchandising solution. Over 65,000 of Travelport-connected travel agencies globally now have access to Qantas’ booking and ancillary services.

Travelport is the first operator of a global distribution system to be granted the highest certification by IATA for its NDC airline distribution technology. The company said it is well-positioned to support the QDP and improve the flexibility of content distribution as the airline becomes one of the first to deploy NDC content later this year.

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