Your Next Guest Is A Robot: How AI Is Rewriting The Path To Booking

Hotels have spent years thinking about how travelers find them on Google, compare them on an OTA, browse their website, and eventually make a reservation.

There is a new participant in that process. It is not human.

Deloitte’s 2026 Summer Travel Survey found that 43% of U.S. travelers with household incomes of $100,000 or more now use generative AI in trip planning. That same income group is expected to represent 55% of the traveling public this summer.

Travelers still use traditional channels: Google, Expedia, Booking.com, hotel websites, and the rest of the familiar options. 

Increasingly, though, AI is intervening between the traveler and those channels. In some cases, those channels are putting AI between the traveler and the booking process themselves.

Travelers are asking ChatGPT where to stay. They are using AI to build itineraries. Agents can now browse websites and perform tasks on a user’s behalf. The logical next step is for those agents to complete more of the transaction.

I see this evolution happening on three fronts.

1. AI Is Becoming A Hotel Discovery Channel

This is where we are now.

A traveler planning a weekend in New York does not need to search Google for “best boutique hotels in SoHo,” open several results, and build a shortlist.

They can ask an AI:

“I’m taking my wife to New York for our anniversary. We want a boutique hotel in or near SoHo, somewhere quiet enough to sleep but within walking distance of restaurants and shopping. We’d like to stay under $600 a night. What would you recommend?”

I did a version of this for my wife and I’s 20th anniversary trip to France. We leaned heavily on ChatGPT to plan the details of a ten-day trip to Paris, including three hotels, nearly a dozen dinner reservations, and tourist attraction planning.

We supplied preferences, constraints, and context that would have previously required several searches and filters. The AI interpreted those requirements and returned a shortlist.

More importantly for hospitality groups, those recommendations now produce real website traffic.

Adobe Analytics reported that traffic from AI sources to U.S. travel sites increased 194% year over year in May 2026. Adobe’s analysis covered more than 8 million visits to U.S. travel sites.

AI referrals remain much smaller than traditional search but if they hold onto year over year tripling, you may not want to ignore them too much. 

Hotels should start asking a question they have not traditionally had to ask: If a traveler asks an AI for a hotel like mine, does the AI understand enough about my property to recommend it?

2. The AI May Do The Browsing, Too

Discovery is only the first change.

The second is the move from AI answering questions to AI performing work.

Expedia Group’s 2026 research found that 40% of surveyed travelers use AI to help build itineraries. Another 53% said they were comfortable letting AI suggest travel options.

Instead of only asking an AI to recommend a hotel or outline a trip plan, many travelers are giving AI the job of doing the actual legwork: browsing sites, gathering information, comparing options, and following through.

They have given AI a job.

To do that job well, an agent may research flights, inspect hotel options, compare rates, read policies, evaluate locations, and assemble an itinerary. Some of that work can involve visiting the same websites a human would have visited.

For years, hotel websites have been built almost entirely around human behavior. Is the photography appealing? Is the booking button obvious? Does the mobile experience work? Can the visitor find the rooms and amenities?

Hotels may increasingly have another visitor to accommodate: software acting on behalf of a traveler. Cloudflare has noted that there are now more bots active online than humans. Lovely.

Can that bot determine the difference between an ocean-view room and an oceanfront room? Can it find the parking fee? Does it understand that breakfast is included in one rate and excluded in another? Can it find the pet policy? Can it interpret cancellation terms? Can it reliably get from the property website into the booking engine?

A hotel can have a beautiful website and still create problems for an AI agent trying to answer basic questions. In some cases, the beauty of the website is the tripping hazard.

We have spent decades reducing friction for human visitors. The next challenge is reducing unnecessary friction for their digital representatives.

3. Eventually, The Agent Will Make The Reservation

This is where predictions can run ahead of reality, though probably not by much.

Consumers appear increasingly willing to use AI for research and planning. Giving AI the authority to make decisions and spend money is a bigger step.

Booking.com’s 2025 Global AI Sentiment Report surveyed more than 37,000 consumers across 33 markets. Only 12% said they were comfortable with AI making decisions independently. At the same time, 65% expected autonomous trip planning to become mainstream in the near future.

People can believe autonomous agents are coming while still being uncomfortable handing them a credit card.

We should not assume millions of travelers will wake up tomorrow and tell an AI, “Plan my vacation, spend $4,000, and let me know where I’m going.”

Autonomous booking does not need to arrive all at once.

A traveler might let an agent find five hotels and choose one personally. Next, they may let it select the room after setting a price limit. Then they may authorize it to book refundable reservations that meet predefined criteria. Trust can grow one task at a time.

Travel companies are already building toward that world. Expedia Group, for example, is developing AI experiences that connect trip planning with bookable inventory and has described a future in which AI assists travelers across deciding, booking, and managing a trip.

For hotels, the important question is not whether fully autonomous booking becomes mainstream in 2027, 2028, or later.

The important question is whether your property is ready as more travelers begin delegating pieces of the booking process.

Hotels Now Have Two Audiences

Hotels still need to optimize for humans.

People will care about beautiful photography, good reviews, compelling experiences, useful websites, and trustworthy brands. Trust may become more valuable as AI introduces another layer between the traveler and the transaction.

The path to a reservation is changing.

Travelers used to search for hotels themselves.

Now they can ask AI which hotels they should consider.

Increasingly, they can ask AI to perform parts of the research and planning.

Eventually, more of them will authorize AI to complete the reservation.

Hotels increasingly have two audiences to communicate with: the traveler and the machine acting on the traveler’s behalf.

The traveler wants to know whether your hotel will make for a great trip.

The machine needs to understand exactly what your hotel offers well enough to recommend, compare, and eventually book it.

Hotel marketers should be preparing for both.