AI In Travel Technology

Let’s stop pretending. AI is not “coming” to travel. It’s already rewriting the rules. Most of the industry is still debating: • Direct vs OTA • TMC vs Supplier • GDS vs NDC • Commission vs margin • Loyalty vs distribution But AI just walked in and flipped the table. No ads. No bidding wars. No SEO games. No “preferred partners”. Just one simple question: 👉 “What’s the best hotel for me?” And one terrifying reality for hotels: You don’t control the answer anymore. Sam Altman wasn’t talking about a feature. He was talking about the death of the traditional booking journey. We’re moving from: Search → Compare → Click → Book to Intent → Conversation → Decision And AI doesn’t show 48 results. It shows one. So ask yourself: • Will your hotel even be mentioned? • Can AI describe it accurately? • Is your story clean… or messy? • And when AI recommends you… can it actually BOOK you? The real irony? We spent 20 years fighting OTAs… only to ignore the one thing that could make them irrelevant. This isn’t a “tech trend.” This is a power transfer: From platforms → conversations From budgets → truth From who paid → who deserves And here’s the uncomfortable part: Most hotels are still optimizing for: • Google • OTAs • Brand.com • Rate parity • Channel mix While the next generation of travelers will simply say: “Book it.” No UI. No website. No scrolling. Just trust. So the question isn’t: “Is AI going to impact travel?” It’s: 👉 By the time it’s obvious to everyone… will your hotel still exist in the conversation? Because in an AI-driven world… You are not fighting for ranking. You are fighting for relevance. And relevance is earned. Not bought. Travel doesn’t need more channels. It needs more truth. Who’s ready for that conversation? 👇 #FutureOfTravel #ArtificialIntelligence #Hospitality #TravelTech #OpenAI #ChatGPT #HotelDistribution #Innovation #Leadership

Sunday morning itch I had to scratch. As regulars know, I've been reading AI job listings across travel companies for couple of years now, coz the JD is the one strategy document a company can't BS in. So using my Claude brain, I pulled ~ 170 AI-related job postings from 13 major travel cos, Jan-April 2026, and coded them by seniority, technical specificity, org placement, and comp. The results are in the chart below, the first thing I've seen that maps what travel companies actually do with AI versus what they say about it. The single most revealing variable turned out to be technical specificity. When Marriott requires knowledge of Cypher graph query languages and model distillation in a job listing, that tells you more about their actual AI commitment than anything their CEO says on an earnings call. Across the board, the companies that say the least about AI on stage tend to be the ones whose job descriptions say the most. 11 of 13 companies are genuinely building to some degree. But the gap between the top and the bottom is enormous, that Expedia is posting Distinguished Scientist roles at $517K while some companies' career sites were barely functional during the research period, that Booking Holdings runs 480 ML models generating 400 billion predictions a day while others have yet to post a single role with real technical depth in the description. Full analysis coming to Skift later.

#WiT2025 Singapore (10/10) on Predictions for the Future of Travel and Hospitality: What changes, what doesn’t. Two lenses were brought on stage: Filip Filipov (COO, OAG) on the tactical now of AI in travel, and Chris Hemmeter (Thayer Investment Partners) on the structural next. Together they sketch a future that is both practical and bold. 1) The AI inflection, tactical and immediate by Filip Filipov Look back 20 years: online overtook offline, mobile became the remote control, payments moved on-platform, new supply exploded, and “connected trip” emerged mostly to sell more efficiently. Today, AI finishes that arc. It’s already in the workflow from inspiration to claims, and adoption is vertical (ChatGPT reached 100M users in ~2 months!). The contrarian point: incumbents may win the AI race because they control scale, data, and distribution and can plug new capabilities in faster than greenfield startups. Filipov’s “won’t change” list resonates: 1- Travel is stressful → AI agents will anticipate & de-stress. 2- We hunt value → deals get deeply personal. 3- We want control → agents recommend, humans decide. 4- We’re lazy → less planning work for the traveler. 5- We crave magic → serendipity engineered into journeys. 6- Supply stays fragmented → orchestration, not elimination. 7- Infra lags apps → intelligence squeezes capacity from what exists. 8- Overtourism → discovery widens beyond 4% of places. 9- Trust compounds → AI agents must prove reliability over time. 10- Believers build → scale + aggregation = incumbent advantage. 2) Structural shifts, ambitious and a bit edgy by Chris Hemmeter - Living as a Service: the walls between hotels, rentals and long-stay soften; users buy flexible living, owners monetize dynamically. - Africa rising: demographics + digital leapfrogging make it a 2045 powerhouse. - Virtual embodiment: execs “attend” via photoreal avatars/robots, trained on their style. - Analog luxury: as automation saturates life, disconnection becomes the new luxury. - Medical tourism, mainstreamed: longevity protocols stitched into resort products. - Extreme ancillaries: airlines unbundle into micro-rights sold dynamically. And yes, the “moonshot” ideas such as suborbital hops, code-governed sea communities, even lunar resorts are provocation by design, but the throughline is clear: physics changes slower than software (still we can expect major changes with robotics); capital and imagination will test the edges. My takeaway of these two inspiring talks: Short term, the winners get boringly excellent at AI-enabled orchestration (service, revenue, risk). Long term, they position for the real estate, wellness and identity shifts already in motion. The topic which was repeated across these talks and many others: trust, which needs to be earned both through humans and AI. #WiT2025 #TravelTech #AI #Future #Hospitality #ConnectedTrip #Orchestration #Innovation #TheWayForward

Booking.com stock is falling rapidly. Is the AI revolution already knocking on its door? We might be witnessing the beginning of a structural shift in travel. For 20 years the model was simple: Guest → Google → OTA → Hotel But what happens when the journey becomes: Guest → AI Agent → Direct booking API → Hotel AI agents will soon: • Compare rates instantly across platforms • Bundle flights + stays + mobility • Personalize recommendations in seconds • Book automatically based on user preferences If search friction disappears, the traditional OTA moat weakens. The real risk for Booking.com isn’t that people stop traveling. The risk is losing control of the interface. That said, let’s not underestimate them. Booking still controls: • Massive global inventory • Payment infrastructure • Fraud systems • Reviews at scale • Hotel integrations worldwide AI agents will still need structured inventory and reliable APIs. And Booking is perfectly positioned to become the infrastructure layer powering those agents. The question is not whether AI changes travel. It will. The question is: Who owns demand in an AI-driven world? For operators (hotels, serviced apartments, hybrid living concepts), this is the moment to: • Strengthen direct booking • Own guest data • Invest in revenue tech • Integrate APIs properly • Use AI before it uses you AI won’t destroy travel platforms overnight. But it will compress margins, increase transparency and reward agility. Big changes are coming. Are we ready? #AI #TravelTech #Hospitality #RevenueManagement #OTA #Innovation #FutureOfTravel #PropTech

AI travel agents just got real. This week: Sabre launched flight booking inside a chat, with PayPal checkout. Thomas Cook launched an AI assistant covering trip planning, booking, and post-booking support. And a private equity firm paid $6.3B for the world’s largest corporate travel agency, betting AI will reshape the whole model. AI is no longer just doing trip inspiration. It is entering the transaction layer. And I think most people are focused on the wrong thing. Booking is only the first 5% of the problem. The hard part starts after the booking. The flight changes. The hotel rate drops. The cancellation window is closing. The room type does not match what was sold. The client wants to amend dates. A cheaper equivalent just became available. AI can compare faster. AI can search faster. AI can surface options faster. But someone still has to own the outcome. That is why I do not think AI will simply replace travel agencies. I think it will expose the difference between agencies that make bookings and agencies that manage them. Before: “We can find and book this for you.” Now: “We can monitor, protect, improve, and fix this for you.” That is a much bigger job. And a much more valuable one. When booking gets easier, accountability is the thing left worth paying for.

Marriott is spending over $1B on infrastructure. That sounds ridiculous until you understand what is happening in travel. AI doesn't browse like Google. It consumes inventory: rates, availability, policies, loyalty benefits, etc. And it can only recommend what it can read and access instantly. Travel executives think AI will create the next winners. I think AI will expose the winners that already exist. When I worked at Booking.com, hotels constantly asked for better rankings and were voluntarily raising their own commissions from 15% to 18–30% just to appear higher. Visibility was everything.  Back then, it didn't matter if their systems supported real-time data. But now it matters. Hotels used to compete for clicks. Soon they'll compete for inclusion in Claude, ChatGPT, and others. That's why Marriott is investing over $1B to make its inventory readable by AI. And Hilton is consolidating guest data into unified profiles. Whoever becomes AI's preferred inventory source captures the booking and the margin. This shift is invisible to travelers but it's happening inside CRS platforms and PMS systems. Hotels stuck on old systems lose by default. They will become increasingly dependent on OTAs that already have AI-ready feeds. The battle in travel right now is over who becomes AI's default source of truth. When AI searches for a hotel in your city tonight, does it find your property or just Booking.com's listing of it? #TravelTech #Hotels #OTA #AI

The world just shifted, and most of the hospitality industry hasn’t even blinked. OpenAI just launched a browser that can book travel. Not search. Not compare. Book. With Agent Mode, it can complete entire reservations on your behalf. Flights. Hotels. Transportation. Everything. This isn’t a future scenario. It’s live right now. That means how people book travel is changing, and it’s changing fast. Let’s be real. If someone can just tell an AI to book them a beachfront hotel with great Wi-Fi and strong reviews, they won’t be scrolling through your website or getting impressed by your Instagram feed. They won’t be reading your brand story or weighing five different options. The AI will make the decision for them. And if your property isn’t integrated into the digital ecosystem that these AI agents are pulling from, you won’t even make it onto the list. That’s not losing market share. That’s becoming invisible. This is where hospitality needs to wake up. You need to stop treating AI like a buzzword and start treating it like the next distribution channel. You need to make sure your property is discoverable and bookable through AI. That starts with structured data, clean pricing integrations, accurate availability, updated descriptions, and machine-readable content. If your hotel still runs on outdated systems and clunky legacy tech, you’re handing your future to your competitors on a silver platter. Think about what happens next. AI agents will prioritize brands with the best digital infrastructure, clear guest value, verified reviews, and seamless booking capabilities. If your property isn’t optimized for that, the AI won’t “consider” you. It will skip you. Full stop. Here’s what you should be doing now: 💡 Audit your digital presence. Make sure everything from your website to your OTA listings is structured for machine readability. 💡 Tighten your data. Your pricing, inventory, and room categories need to be clean, accurate, and consistent. 💡 Invest in infrastructure. If your systems can’t integrate with AI-driven booking platforms, you’re already behind. 💡 Train your marketing team to understand AI search behavior. This isn’t traditional SEO. It’s a different game. The hospitality brands that win in the next two years will be the ones that position themselves at the front of this AI booking wave. The ones that sit back and wait will find out too late that their guests have already booked somewhere else, without ever seeing their name. This is not the time to be passive. It’s time to build for what’s already here. --- If you like the way I look at the world of hospitality, let’s chat: scott@mrscotteddy.com.

Google announced agentic AI travel booking. The question isn't if it works. It's who owns the data. They're building AI that books flights and hotels directly within search. Partners include Booking.com, Expedia Group, Marriott International, IHG Hotels & Resorts. Three days later: "We have no intention of becoming an OTA." They don't need to. They're becoming the data layer. What you lose when bookings happen inside Google: 1. Search patterns before booking 2. Price sensitivity indicators 3. Alternative options considered 4. Rebooking behavior When customers book through your platform, this data is yours. When they book through Google, it's theirs. Hotels with their own platforms have first-party data on preferences, behavior, and pricing sensitivity. They can build better AI, optimize dynamically, and reduce acquisition costs. Hotels relying on aggregators have traffic numbers. Airlines learned this with Google Flights. United, Delta, and American invest heavily in direct channels because they learned: whoever owns the customer data owns the pricing power. Your booking engine should feed: 1. Customer data platforms 2. Personalization engines 3. Revenue management systems If it's just processing transactions, you're leaving strategic value on the table. Google's move accelerates the timeline. Companies that built data infrastructure three years ago are optimizing. Companies starting now have 12-18 months. Companies that haven't started will pay premium acquisition costs forever. Platform dependency isn't about convenience. It's about who controls your margins. #TravelTech #DataStrategy #Hospitality #DigitalTransformation

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗮 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗼𝗿 𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆. 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝘁 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. Over the past two years we’ve seen an explosion of: • AI for travel conferences • AI strategy webinars • AI transformation panels • AI consultants publishing thought leadership But here’s the uncomfortable reality: Most of the real AI disruption in travel won’t come from presentations about AI. It will come from platforms that 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 of travelers already use every day. And one of the biggest just made its move. For the first time in more than a decade, Google has rolled out a major redesign of Maps and introduced “Ask Maps,” a Gemini powered conversational interface. At first glance, it looks like a helpful chatbot. But step back and the bigger shift becomes clear. Google Maps is evolving from a navigation tool into an agentic travel planning platform. Travelers can now ask things like: • “Plan a 10-day trip through Italy focused on food and small towns.” • “Design a luxury resort itinerary in the Caribbean.” • “Build a pre- and post-cruise experience around Barcelona.” And the AI assembles recommendations using Google’s enormous dataset of: • places • reviews • photos • geographic context • behavioral signals from billions of travelers But the real breakthrough may be this: The system learns continuously. Every interaction helps Ask Maps understand a traveler’s preferences, over time, the AI builds a living preference profile that improves recommendations trip after trip. And here’s the line the industry should pay attention to: The AI that helps plan the trip may ultimately control what gets discovered. Because Google Maps is already used by well over a billion people every month during travel and local discovery. 𝗡𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆. That has big implications for hotels, cruise lines, resorts, and destinations. Travel discovery has shifted from: Search → websites → booking platforms to Conversation → AI recommendation → itinerary creation It’s about who helps the traveler plan the trip in the first place. And if Google Maps becomes that planning layer, it may quietly become one of the most powerful distribution and discovery platforms in travel. So while the travel industry has spent the last two years talking about AI… Google 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘀. Sometimes the biggest disruption doesn’t come from a panel discussion. It comes from a product update. Curious how others in travel, hospitality, cruise, and destination marketing are thinking about this. We are entering the era of AI-native travel planning.

Everyone is talking about AI as a growth lever. But if you actually read the 10-K filings from the largest travel companies, AI is framed first as a competitive threat. Expedia Group states that the rapid emergence of generative and agentic AI is likely to intensify competition. Booking.com warns that AI-powered platforms and new entrants could change how travelers search and book, increasing competitive pressure and potentially shifting demand. On the hotel side: Marriott Hotels flags that AI introduced by intermediaries can disrupt marketing and distribution, erode loyalty, and increase distribution costs. Choice Hotels International explicitly calls out AI-powered booking flows inside third-party apps that could divert bookings away from direct channels. Hilton notes that large language models entering travel booking could redirect demand and heighten cybersecurity exposure. IHG Hotels & Resorts acknowledges uncertainty around how guests will discover and interact with hotels in an AI-driven environment. Read that again. Every major player in travel is signaling the same structural shift: AI is becoming the new booking interface. It is about control of intent at the moment of decision. If the AI layer lives inside Booking or Expedia, demand concentrates there. If the AI layer lives inside Google, demand concentrates there. If the AI layer lives inside your own infrastructure, you intensify competition instead of absorbing margin pressure. That is the foundation of Agentic Hospitality Cloud. AI-native infrastructure that: • Connects directly to CRS, PMS, loyalty, and revenue systems • Makes hotel inventory machine-readable and surface agnostic • Executes booking, modifications, and cancellations in real time • Preserves brand authority at the moment of intent Booking and Expedia are investing heavily in agentic AI to intensify competition. Hotels can either fund that future through higher distribution costs, or build the capability themselves. AI will intensify competition. The only strategic question is whether you are participating in it or paying for it.