Langtons to Launch Australia’s First Classification of International Wine
Australia’s fine wine authority is taking its trusted Classification global, ranking 160 international bottles from auction data to guide the country’s top collectors.
2 min
Australia’s fine wine authority is taking its trusted Classification global, ranking 160 international bottles from auction data to guide the country’s top collectors.
Langtons has revealed it will launch its inaugural Classification of International Wine in 2026, extending the methodology behind its long-running Classification of Australian Wine, a benchmark for the local fine wine market since 1990, to bottles from beyond Australia’s shores.
“Australian wine palates are diverse and ever-expanding, with international wines holding an established presence in the collections of the country’s top wine drinkers,” says Tamara Grischy, General Manager at Langtons.
“The Langtons Classification of International Wine will be a vital resource for these collectors by highlighting the finest global wines that drive the Australian auction market.”
Set to be unveiled in early August, the Classification will feature 160 wines drawn from top wine regions in France, Italy, New Zealand, the US, Spain, Portugal and Germany. As with its Australian counterpart, the list isn’t based on opinion, wine show medals or critic scores; it’s built entirely from data.
“We look at every bottle of wine internationally that’s sent into Langtons and all its data. This includes aspects such as a wine’s previous bidding history; its clearance rate; and changes to its current value versus when the wine was bought,” said Michael Anderson, Head of Auctions at Langtons.
The dataset spans five years of secondary market auction activity across every international bottle traded through Langtons.
Anderson says the inaugural list will mix hard-to-find cult classics with established titans of the fine wine trade, and hints that some expected names may be notably absent from this first edition.
Scarcity, he explains, plays a significant role in the methodology: wines produced in tiny volumes rarely come up for sale, which limits the auction data available to include them.
“Just because a wine might not be on this first edition of the Classification of International Wine doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future,” he says.
The Classification will also create a new benchmarking opportunity for Australian wine. Anderson points to bottles such as Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir and Henschke Hill of Grace — both First Classified wines in the Langtons Classification of Australian Wine — as capable of standing alongside the great names of Burgundy, Bordeaux and Tuscany.
“This Classification will be a trusted tool to compare wines to see how incredible the quality of our Australian wines are,” he says. “After all, Langtons was founded on the belief that the best Australian wines have a place at the world’s top tables.”
The Langtons Classifications draw their inspiration from the 1855 Bordeaux Classification, which ranked wines from first to fifth growth largely on selling history.
Unlike the Australian Classification, which includes both a Classified tier and a smaller First Classified tier, every wine in the new international list will sit under a single Classified category.
The most recent, 8th edition of the Langtons Classification of Australian Wine, released in late 2023, was widely described as a shake-up of the guide, with a large influx of cool-climate styles such as Tasmanian Pinot Noir and Yarra Valley Chardonnay reflecting growing Australian demand for lighter, more elegant wines.
The full Langtons Classification of International Wine will be unveiled in August via langtons.com.au.
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AI-powered travel agents are challenging online booking platforms, but Airbnb’s exclusive listings and direct customer relationships could give it an edge. Its next challenge: turning repeat guests into loyal customers through stronger rewards and innovation.
3 min
AI agents like Muse can already find you the cheapest hotel room in Paris. But they can’t locate a cheaper version of that Catskills cabin you’ve been eyeing, because it might only be available on Airbnb ABNB -1.43%decrease.
Investors should pay attention to that distinction. When Meta Platforms META 3.38%increase launched its Muse agent last month, travel stocks including Booking Holdings BKNG -1.19%decrease, Expedia and Airbnb all fell sharply.
Airbnb, though, has a real chance to emerge as a winner from the upheaval. The catch: Its stock already reflects above-industry growth. To justify its valuation, Airbnb will need to turn repeat customers into loyal ones.
Online travel companies make much of their money by simplifying search and collecting fees on bookings. AI agents threaten that model.
But not all travel marketplaces are equally exposed. Booking and Expedia largely sell hotel rooms that travelers can also book directly or through competing sites. If an agent can find the same room elsewhere, it has little reason to favor either Booking or Expedia.
Booking and Expedia also sell sponsored listings that steer travelers toward particular properties. Wells Fargo estimates those will account for about 8% of Expedia’s revenue and a much higher percentage of profit next year.
Airbnb has more ways to adapt. More than half its listings are available only on its platform, and more than 90% of its traffic comes directly to its app or website.
The customer relationship doesn’t end after booking, either. Bernstein analyst Richard Clarke notes that 90% of Airbnb guests go on to message their hosts about arrival times, keys or local taxes, giving Airbnb a connection to both sides of the transaction.
How the companies have responded to the possible agentic future is telling.
Expedia quickly signed on as a Muse partner. Airbnb hasn’t, and Chief Executive Brian Chesky says AI chatbots have so far been a boon, sending customers to Airbnb’s website.
Chatbots might work for buying paper towels, he quipped at a Skift conference last month, but people enjoy planning trips. He argued that browsing dozens of homes isn’t something a text-based chatbot is well suited for.
Still, the AI jitters arrived just as Airbnb was persuading investors it deserved its pricey multiple. For years after its 2020 initial public offering, the stock—which trades around 25 to 30 times forward earnings—went nowhere. Investors saw a mature operator trading at a growth premium.
This year, Airbnb growth seems to be accelerating. The stock jumped in August after the company raised its full-year revenue-growth guidance with its second-quarter results. Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski credits a run of product improvements under a revamped leadership team.
Among the changes: letting guests reserve now and pay later, adding hotels, and a redesigned home page and app. Investors were also betting on what comes next, including thousands more hotels, car rentals and, eventually, advertising.
The irony is that some of those growth drivers push Airbnb closer to the kind of business Booking and Expedia run—the kind of business AI agents could threaten. Even if AI agents capture a large share of travel planning and booking, Airbnb would capture the demand. But it and others would slowly lose control over how customers find and choose properties.
That would undermine the advertising opportunity investors are counting on. The bigger point for Airbnb and other marketplaces is that losing control of customer acquisition could mean surrendering some of their pricing power and margins.
To bulletproof itself, Airbnb might look to another e-commerce giant that has so far kept AI agents at arm’s length: Amazon.
Like Amazon, Airbnb has a loyal customer base and hard-to-match supply. But it has nothing like Prime membership to make customers think twice before taking their business elsewhere.
That is where loyalty comes in. Business travelers stick with Hilton or Marriott because enough nights earn them perks. Leisure travelers rarely accumulate stays with one chain. Airbnb has millions of listings and plenty of repeat customers, but no broad rewards program. It has begun experimenting with credits on hotel stays, but it should make loyalty a priority, not just a promotion.
Airbnb also plans to launch its own AI agent next year. But travelers using an agent might still want it to search Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking and hotel websites alike, rather than limit itself to one company’s inventory.
Eventually, Airbnb might have to strike deals with agent makers, using its unique homes as leverage to negotiate favorable terms, says Gawrelski. Such deals, along with rewards for loyal guests, could over the long term eat into the company’s roughly 13% take rate, he adds. But if they bring in enough additional bookings, the trade-off could be worthwhile.
History offers a reason not to panic. The shift from desktop to mobile unsettled investors in Alphabet and Amazon, but both emerged as major beneficiaries. Companies with valuable assets can come out of a platform shift stronger, if they adapt quickly enough.
Airbnb has homes the bots can’t easily replace. Now it needs to give guests a reason to insist on booking them there.
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