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The hotel is the company actually providing the room. If the price and conditions are the same, the AI agent should book directly with the hotel instead of through a middleman like Booking.com. Direct booking can give guests: better prices loyalty points and perks easier changes and cancellations more accurate information better customer support.

Google has already announced: they will not be the merchant of record and they're not even charging a transaction fee. Needless to say, this is a great precedent but it doesn't mean other AI platforms will follow this example.At the same time, there's nothing that prevents us from pushing AI platforms in the direction of a direct booking path integration.

I am firmly of the view that Google will eventually present all offers openly. Complementing that will be the savvier user who explicitly directs their preferred booking channel. If I am a Bonvoy member, I want to book at marriott.com to protect my loyalty assets.Right now, it's a question of structured supply.

The most significant impact might not be operational, but psychological. Why? Because it's the hotel industry's fault. Let me explain:For years, hotels have trained guests to treat bookings as placeholders: reserve today, decide later.

In my view, the Full Prepayment Model is not the future of hospitality. While full prepayment has been practiced for decades for charter vacations, extended beach vacations and unique experiences like safari tours, it’s definitely not user friendly as far as plain hotel bookings are concerned. Merchant bookings - fully prepaid bookings - at both Expedia and Booking now represent over 70% of the total gross bookings. Improved cash flow, controlling the price the customer pays, opportunities to bundle hotel stays with air, transportation and experiences are some of the reasons for the OTA preferences of the merchant model.

The biggest impact of full prepayment is that booking a hotel becomes a much bigger commitment for guests.Hotels benefit from fewer cancellations, better cash flow, and more predictable occupancy.But guests may book less often or take longer to decide because they must pay upfront.Trusted brands like Marriott International and Booking.com may benefit most, while smaller hotels could struggle more with guest trust.BNPL services may become very important because they make upfront payment feel more flexible and less risky.

Helping independent hotels and small groups use tech to build a healthier P&L, my bias, wishful thinking and true belief is that AI travel search is a treasure trove of untapped profitability for unique properties doing incredible things.

We're at a crossroads and this can go in either direction.And the answer depends on whether we, as an industry, do something to push it in the right direction. That's one of the main reasons why AI Hospitality Alliance exists.

As to who will benefit from AI search, it depends entirely on what hotels are willing to do. And by AI search, I mean mostly agentic search, not chatbot search. For the first time in forever, AI search via OpenAI or Anthropic will give hotels the opportunity to exploit a structural advantage (leveraging customer knowledge) that OTAs won't be able to match.

As Wellness Director and Sleep Certified Coach at a mid-size chain, I see sleep disruption as an operational and revenue lever—not just comfort. Your data aligns with ours; the gap is systematic technology integration, not awareness.Three Tactical Recommendations:1.

From my perspective, sleep is no longer a standalone service it has evolved into a core wellness pillar that requires a fully integrated, multi-dimensional approach. At Carillon, we are intentionally developing a comprehensive sleep wellness ecosystem that supports the guest journey across spa services, in-room experiences, and targeted retreat programming.Our sleep-focused retreats combine education, diagnostics, and personalized therapies designed to address the root causes of sleep disruption, including stress, nervous system imbalance, inflammation, and lifestyle habits—moving beyond passive relaxation to deliver measurable results.Within the spa, we incorporate both hands-on treatments and advanced touchless technologies that promote parasympathetic activation, recovery, and nervous system regulation.

Sleep is not a product, amenity or service hotels can sell to their guests. Hotels may facilitate, improve, or damage sleep quality. Or just ignore the issue altogether. Sleep has tangible and intangible attributes many beyond the control or influence of the hotel.

The AI platforms need to monetize their traffic, since AI computing is exceptionally expensive! The quickest way to do so is to partner with well-established travel brands and to start earning affiliate commissions from them. To achieve that, AI connectors play a crucial role, but what kind of connectors?The keyword here is “invisible B2B connectors” that service well established hotel and travel brands, but remain invisible in the background.Ex.

The question lands precisely where the industry tends to look away. Travellers do not wake up wanting orchestration. They want outcomes: the right option, at the right price, with minimal friction and maximum trust. The moment a connector introduces one extra decision — which system to link, whether it is safe, whether it will work — adoption collapses outside a narrow power-user segment.Where connectors genuinely solve a problem is on the supply and enterprise side.

At least in their current form, I think AI connectors risk solving more of an industry problem than a real user need.The idea of a unified journey makes sense, but it breaks when it assumes that travelers will actively connect tools, authorize systems, and manage infrastructure they’re not familiar with.

In many ways I look at this as an extension of Expedia. I suppose another clip on the ticket on the way through, which I can only imagine will make an Uber hotel booking more expensive.Is more distribution opportunities a good thing?

The big winner here is Expedia, adding another marquee player to its affiliate network. Uber will join other significant affiliates of Expedia, together with Chase Travel, Walmart Plus Travel and numerous airlines, tour operators, cruise lines, etc.

For hotels already locked into aggressive distribution deals with Expedia, this is a warning signal, as it reinforces intermediary power at precisely the moment the industry has spent years trying to rebuild the direct guest relationship.