Your wholesaler isn't worried about AI
Wholesalers like RateHawk's parent Emerging Travel Group appear unfazed by AI-driven booking agents that are reshaping how travelers plan and book hotels.
By Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher, hospitality.today
Opinion Articles
The room's the same. You wouldn't recognize who's buying it now
Wholesale contracts now route hotel rooms through bank rewards portals and airline loyalty sites, stripping hotels of guest data, direct relationships, and future bookings while the rate discount remains.
By Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher, hospitality.today
AI Is Now Writing Your Hotel's Reputation. Here Is How to Make Sure It Gets It Right.
AI assistants now synthesize reviews and web content into hotel summaries that travelers see before visiting any owned channel, reshaping how first impressions are formed.
By Are Morch, Digital Transformation Coach for Hotels, Are Morch, AI Champion
Rethinking Distribution in The Age of Data and Direct Relationships
A Club Quarters executive argues hotels should treat distribution as a strategic ecosystem, prioritizing data connectivity, direct booking conversion, and guest lifetime value over raw channel volume.
By John Paul Nichols, President and CEO of Club Quarters Hotels, Club Quarters
Hotel connectivity stopped being plumbing
Expedia Group and RateHawk published research the same week recasting hotel connectivity from neutral infrastructure into the entry condition for AI-driven, platform-controlled distribution.
By Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher, hospitality.today
The Presence Premium™
Cvent CEO Reggie Agarwal argues that AI-driven content saturation makes in-person presence the highest-trust signal in modern marketing, with implications for event strategy.
By Diana Tamboly, Manager, Field Marketing, Hospitality Cloud, Cvent Europe Ltd
AI Is Already Describing Your Hotel. Make Sure It's Right.
As AI tools increasingly shape traveler decisions before they visit a hotel website, brand consistency across reviews, listings, and third-party sources has become a critical marketing priority.
Why your hotel’s direct booking rate is still stuck below 15%
Namastay founder Frédéric Robles argues that friction at checkout, not pricing or loyalty, is the primary reason hotel direct booking rates remain stuck at 5–15%, while digital wallets have doubled mobile bookings on some properties.
Why is Selling Leisure so Hard?
The global leisure economy is projected to grow from $5.5T to $9.57T, but operators face structural sales challenges rooted in consumer psychology, optional spending, and infinite competition.
By Jeremy McCarthy, CEO & Founder, Leisure Alchemy
Booking is scaling the machine that wholesales your rooms
Booking Holdings is unifying Booking.com, Agoda, and Priceline under a single B2B wholesale operation, giving it the ability to resell hotel net-rate inventory across bank apps, airline checkouts, and loyalty portals at scale.
By Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher, hospitality.today
For Whom the Algorithm Ranks: What Ernest Hemingway Can Teach Us About GEO
A Hemingway-inspired perspective on Generative Engine Optimization and what hospitality brands can learn about visibility in AI-driven search.
Gen Z and the Future of Luxury Consumption
Gen Z is reshaping luxury by prioritizing experiences, authenticity, and resale over logos, with major implications for hospitality operators and goods brands competing for younger consumers.
By Emma Näpänkangas, M.Sc. Student in Hospitality Management, EHL
The half of corporate travel that's growing skips the RFP
Independent hotels can capture growing unmanaged corporate travel by loading rates into the GDS, bypassing RFPs entirely and appearing in corporate booking tools where off-channel spend is being corralled.
By Markus Busch, Editor/Publisher, hospitality.today
Winning Over OTA Guests with Trust and Convenience in the Website and CRM
Hotels can reduce OTA commissions by making their websites more convenient than third parties and using CRM data to send personalized, trust-building emails rather than generic promotional offers.
By Adam Mogelonsky and Larry Mogelonsky
The Power of a Negative Review
Research shows 31% of customers distrust businesses with no negative reviews, making how hotels respond to criticism a stronger marketing signal than five-star ratings alone.
By Shep Hyken, Customer Service and Experience Expert, Keynote Speaker and Bestselling Author, Shepard Presentations, LLC.
Beyond Tokenomics: The Threat of the Invisible Hotel
The author argues that AI citation share, not just AI query costs, is the next major distribution battleground, with data showing visibility concentrating among a small group of hotel brands across AI platforms.
By Patrick Burkhardt, Senior Director, Sales, Curacity
One Hotel in Your Market Already Owns the AI Answer
AI platforms now resolve hotel recommendations to a single dominant name per market, creating a winner-take-most dynamic that bypasses traditional attribution tools entirely.
By Andrew Paul, Managing Director, Americas Great Resorts
There Is No Single AI Ranking for Your Hotel
ChatGPT's top hotel recommendation changes 45% of the time when the same question is asked twice, with only 60% of named hotels reappearing, challenging how hotels approach AI visibility strategy.
By Lynn Patchett, Founder & Head of Marketing, Kollective
The Mapmaker's Paradox
A narrative essay argues that AI-driven recommendations are becoming the internet's new organizing principle, shifting value from clicks and search to trusted, curated guidance.
By Arlo Laitin, Chief Business Officer, Curacity
How Hotels Can Use Reviews to Book More Direct Group Business
Opinion piece argues hotels neglect review-gathering for group/MICE business, and outlines a practical SOP for capturing testimonials at peak emotional moments to win direct bookings.
By Cory Falter, Partner, Lure Agency