This is the final Hospitality.today newsletter of 2025. Thank you for reading, sharing, and supporting the publication throughout the year.
This edition looks at the 50 most-read Hospitality.today articles of 2025 and what they reveal about the year and the choices facing hoteliers in 2026.
Across the top 50 articles, several clear themes emerged:
AI moved from experimentation to everyday use.
The most-read articles focused on practical applications in search, pricing, customer service, content, and internal workflows. For hoteliers, the discussion shifted from whether to use AI to where and how quickly to deploy it.
Distribution continued to evolve.
APIs, GDS developments, direct connectivity, and AI-driven discovery featured prominently. The overall picture is a more fragmented distribution landscape that requires clearer choices rather than additional channels.
Discovery changed.
Interest grew in how AI-powered search and recommendation systems affect hotel visibility. Being findable increasingly depends on structured data, relevance, and context.
Brand gained renewed importance.
As acquisition costs rise and channels blur, brand clarity supports pricing, loyalty, and long-term demand, particularly for independent hotels.
The guest journey became less linear.
Guests move between platforms and devices, entering and exiting the journey at different points. This pushes hotels to think beyond linear funnels and focus on system-wide consistency.
Simplicity emerged as an advantage.
Many readers gravitated toward articles about reducing complexity through fewer tools, better integration, and clearer ownership.
Taken together, the top 50 articles suggest that 2025 was a year of understanding change. 2026 will be about execution, especially in AI use, distribution strategy, brand positioning, and organisational focus.
Below is the full list of the 50 most-read Hospitality.today articles of 2025.
Thank you for being part of Hospitality.today. We look forward to continuing the conversation in 2026.
Warm regards,
Markus
- Airbnb’s new play: Hotels in the spotlight
- Last-minute corporate travel recharging hotel demand
- Luxury goods are out, but luxury travel is in
- How Marriott is using AI to rethink room assignments
- How OTAs are shaping hotel distribution in 2025
- From search to source: How AI reshapes hotel visibility
- When AI starts booking the room
- Amex GBT explores potential sale
- How responsible travel is evolving
- Gen Z reshapes expectations for business travel
- The US tourism slump that never happened
- Beyond bookings: How OTAs became strategic partners for hotels
- Expedia’s B2B unlocks new hotel demand
- Hilton and Marriott respond to the hotel talent crisis
- The changing landscape of hotel distribution
- Google shakes up hotel ads
- The return of structured hotel distribution
- Corporate travel is being rewritten — and hotels need to catch up
- Google’s agentic AI takes aim at hospitality
- Why Google is pulling ahead of OpenAI in agentic travel
- How AI is rewriting the hotel booking journey
- Hotel giants take on Booking.com in landmark lawsuit
- Inside Booking.com’s decision to drop small affiliates
- Expedia sharpens its hotel pitch as OTAs diverge on strategy
- U.S. hotel growth forecast downgraded again
- Europe leads in online travel bookings
- Fake Booking.com messages cost hotels more than money
- How Expedia and Booking.com now work inside ChatGPT
- Hotel innovation enters a new era
- Booking.com under fire across Europe
- Google’s AI revolution is reshaping travel search fast
- Updating perceptions about today’s luxury traveler
- OTAs hit record levels of marketing spend in 2024
- Europe’s tourism boom tests the limits
- Junk fees are over: What it means for OTAs
- Workforce shifts, AI, and rising costs shaping business travel in 2025
- Booking.com has major security gaps
- Why AI is absorbing hotel metasearch
- Sabre revives $1 billion sale of Sabre Hospitality in bid to cut debt
- How corporate hotel programs are adapting to a new era
- GDS hotel bookings poised for strong growth through 2030
- ChatGPT opens to third-party apps — and travel brands are first in line
- Google I/O 2025 signals a new era for travel
- Google tightens meta rules for hotel listings
- The hidden battle over hotel pricing with OTAs
- The shift to RevPAG
- Airbnb hotel strategy makes a comeback
- Sharp decline in European visitors to the U.S.
- TikTok’s growing role in travel
- Corporate travel rebounds as a growth engine for 2026
