Innovation

Booking.com is showing up in AI search, but their AI referral traffic is still tiny. On Booking Holdings’ Q2 earnings call, CFO Ewout Steenbergen …

So Google just confirmed something that I think a lot of people in hospitality aren't fully paying attention to yet. They're testing agentic hotel …

 Introduction: The Software Illusion. It is a common scenario in the hospitality industry: an independent hotel owner invests tens of thousands of dollars in a top-tier revenue management system like…

Generative artificial intelligence is changing more than the technology used by hospitality organizations. It is changing the work performed by employees, the decisions they make, the information they need and the speed at which they are expected to respond. For hospitality leaders, this creates a training challenge that cannot be solved simply by adding an “AI awareness” course to the learning catalogue. Employees must learn how to work with GenAI while continuing to demonstrate the judgment, empathy, cultural sensitivity and service awareness on which hospitality depends. At the same time, learning and development teams must use the technology responsibly to make training more relevant, accessible and responsive to operational needs. The central question is therefore not whether GenAI belongs in employee development. It is how hospitality organizations can use it without weakening the human capabilities that shape the guest experience. Hospitality Work Will Change at the Task Level Discussions about AI often focus on whether entire jobs will disappear. A more useful way to examine its impact is to look at the individual tasks within each role. The International Labour Organization estimates that one in four workers globally is employed in an occupation with some exposure to GenAI. However, it concludes that most affected jobs are more likely to be transformed than eliminated because human contribution will remain necessary. This distinction is particularly relevant to hospitality. A front-desk employee may use AI to summarize a guest’s previous interactions, translate a message or draft a response. A revenue manager may use it to interpret market information. A human resources professional may use it to organize employee feedback. A training manager may use it to create practice scenarios or adapt learning content. Yet the employee must still decide whether the output is correct, appropriate and consistent with the situation. GenAI can recommend language, but it cannot fully understand how a tired traveller feels after a cancelled flight. It can retrieve a policy, but it may not recognize when compassion and discretion should influence how that policy is applied. It can generate options, but accountability remains with the employee and the organization. Training must therefore prepare people not only to operate AI tools, but also to evaluate, challenge and improve what those tools produce. AI Literacy Is Necessary, but It Is Not Enough Many organizations begin their AI training with tool demonstrations, prompt-writing techniques and explanations of acceptable use. These are important foundations, but they do not create operational competence on their own. Effective AI capability in hospitality has at least four dimensions. First, employees need technical literacy . They should understand what approved tools can do, how to provide useful instructions and where the technology’s limitations lie. Second, they need verification skills . GenAI can produce inaccurate, incomplete or invented information with a confident tone. Employees must know how to check outputs against trusted systems, policies and human expertise. Third, they need ethical and data awareness . Guest information, employee records, commercial data and internal procedures should not be entered into unauthorized

🌐 On August 7, 2026, Google confirmed a limited test of AI agent hotel booking in the U.S., partnering with Amadeus. The Ask Maps feature provides actual prices and availability. Booking Holdings, a partner, sees less than 1% of bookings from conversational agents. Studies show a 10-25% drop in Google referral traffic from May-June 2025. Despite traffic declines, AI-assistant bookings remain stable. Hotel loyalty programs like Marriott’s Ask Bonvoy and IHG’s ChatGPT apps aim to maintain customer relations.

This article was written by New Dog PR. Click here to read the original article If you’re grotesquely unlucky and/or have ever been involved in building a brand, you will…

Bilt, the membership for where you live and the hospitality platform powering the residential ecosystem around it, today announced the expansion of Bilt OS for Hospitality to travel advisors, designed to solve the operational fragmentation that has long existed in the luxury travel advisory industry. Bilt OS for Hospitality was announced on stage at the annual Virtuoso Travel Week Tech Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. Bilt has long prioritized travel as a key part of its ecosystem. As the company scaled its orchestration platform across housing and neighborhood commerce, it identified a major opportunity to apply the same approach for travel advisors – professionals who spend significant time managing multiple disparate systems to serve their clients. The most hospitable way to manage travel – especially luxury travel – is with advisors, and we heard and saw more and more that travel advisors needed a singular, efficient operating system. We built the same end-to-end hospitality infrastructure in travel that's working in housing and dining, and Bilt OS for Hospitality makes travel advisors' lives simpler. It helps them capture more bookings, provide top experiences to their clients, and it's the same playbook within our connected, AI-enabled ecosystem for a reason: solve a real problem for a key group, and the rest follows Ankur Jain, Founder & CEO of Bilt How It Works Bilt OS for Hospitality, developed directly with and for travel advisors, consolidates some tools advisors currently use and some not currently available in market into a single operating system that combines an online booking platform personalized to an agency’s IATA and PCC, an interactive trip and itinerary builder, Sion commission tracking capabilities, and an agentic concierge that marries technology with the human touch of an advisor. When advisors adopt the platform, their clients also receive a self-booking platform available on demand 24/7 – allowing them to orchestrate their own trips with full advisor support and increasing the share of wallet advisors have from their clients today. Advisors have been managing fragmented systems for years and lacked many of the tools they need. We built something that actually simplifies and innovates on legacy travel technology. With Bilt OS for Hospitality, advisors benefit, their clients benefit, and Bilt benefits. That's the whole model: we built a flywheel where everyone wins Richard Kerr, GM of Travel at Bilt Built With Advisors, For Advisors Bilt OS for Hospitality’s core philosophy is unification of fragmented systems, advisor enhancement and efficiency rather than replacement, and a simple guarantee that advisors continue to own their client relationships. They choose which tools to use, which clients to serve, and how to run their business, while Bilt becomes the AI-enabled operating system that makes those choices easier and faster. Bilt worked closely with an advisory board of well-respected travel industry leaders during the development of Bilt OS for Hospitality – some of whom shared their early experiences with the platform. We chose to work with Bilt on developing this offering because from day one, they were ready to listen

Unlike entrepreneurs, who develop ideas, products, and services to establish independent businesses, intrapreneurs create and develop innovative ideas while remaining employed within an existing organization. Well-known examples of intrapreneurial success can be found at companies such as Google and 3M. In 1985, Gifford Pinchot defined intrapreneuring as the practice of acting like an entrepreneur within an organization by discovering, evaluating, and pursuing new business opportunities with the company's support. Hospitality leaders who embrace intrapreneurship can uncover innovative ways to enhance operations and create value across the organization. By encouraging employees to share ideas and propose new approaches to workplace challenges, leaders can boost employee motivation, engagement, and job satisfaction, ultimately reducing staff turnover. While the concept may seem simple, successful intrapreneurship requires a strong understanding of the organization's vision, mission, and culture. Before adopting an intrapreneurial approach to problem-solving and innovation, leaders must first create an environment that supports creativity and encourages employees to explore new ways of thinking. This requires a top-down commitment to fostering a culture in which employees feel empowered to challenge traditional methods and contribute fresh ideas. Often referred to as “thinking outside the box” or, more commonly today, “creative thinking,” this mindset is essential for organizational growth and innovation. As Albert Einstein famously observed, “ We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we used when we created them. ” Brainstorming is a structured process through which employees generate ideas and develop solutions to specific organizational challenges. American advertising executive Alex Faickney Osborn introduced the concept in his 1942 book How to Think Up . He described brainstorming as a method of generating ideas and solving problems through group discussion and free thinking. One of its key benefits is that it gives employees a voice and an opportunity to be heard and valued while identifying new opportunities for the organization. As a result, both employees and the company benefit. Effective brainstorming requires careful planning. Simply adding brainstorming to a routine meeting agenda is unlikely to produce meaningful results, as employees cannot be expected to generate creative ideas on demand. Instead, brainstorming should be incorporated as a regular business practice because innovation is a key driver of organizational growth, which includes the hospitality industry. Well-designed brainstorming sessions allow employees to suggest improvements to work processes, internal workflows, customer experiences, employee engagement, and revenue generation, to name just a few. In some cases, brainstorming sessions can lead to innovative products, services, or business opportunities that create new revenue streams for the organization. A classic example is the development of Post-it® Notes at 3M, which demonstrates how employee-generated ideas can evolve into highly successful commercial innovations. Steps for developing brainstorming sessions For brainstorming to be effective, hospitality leaders must create an environment that encourages employees to generate and share ideas freely. This should be an ongoing process that becomes embedded in the organization's culture, enabling employees to regularly contribute suggestions and innovative solutions. Depending on the nature of the issue being addressed, brainstorming sessions may

The question is how you turn that visibility into more direct, commission-free bookings for your hotel. This is the challenge: OTAs are already embedded in many AI booking journeys, while many independent hotels still don’t have a direct, bookable presence in those same conversations. Research shows that travelers are embracing AI to plan trips – some 56% in the US in the 12 months leading up to March 2026, according to Phocuswright – while many also prefer to book directly when it’s easy and trustworthy. Traveler demand is a given. The missing piece is operational readiness. By putting the right infrastructure in place, your independent hotel can make it easier for AI platforms to surface accurate rates, availability and direct booking options alongside their recommendations. Let’s see how. Key takeaways Hotel AI bookings may default to OTAs unless your property appears in AI search with direct rates, availability and booking links. The biggest revenue risk in hotel AI bookings is the gap between discovery and checkout, where OTA integrations can capture demand that should convert directly. For independent hotels, channel management can support hotel AI bookings by keeping live rates and availability accurate across emerging AI discovery platforms. A direct AI presence can help hotel AI bookings reflect your own brand story, instead of relying on OTA descriptions that may weaken differentiation. As hotel AI bookings evolve, generative engine optimization and AI visibility tracking can help you monitor how platforms present your property and where direct opportunities exist. The audience is there – but OTAs are capturing it first Travelers are already using artificial intelligence to plan their trips. It’s becoming a new norm of the hospitality industry. Independent hotels therefore need a direct presence before online travel agencies (OTAs) shape the booking journey for them. The opportunity is clear: people are increasingly discovering accommodation through AI, and many would rather book directly with a hotel when they can. Yet today’s default AI booking paths often lead through intermediaries instead. Without the right foundations in place your property may be recommended by an AI assistant but still lose the booking to an OTA, along with the commission that comes with it. If you’re not sure those foundations are in place for your hotel, you can read more about it in this blog on AI search for hotels . How AI travel search actually works today Whether it’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, GeminiMore or another AI chatbot, travelers are asking AI assistants and emerging AI agents to recommend places to stay. Rather than searching a list of links themselves, they ask a question and receive tailored suggestions based on factors such as structured property information, reviews, live availability, pricing and the booking sources those assistants can access. That means AI doesn’t always recommend the ‘best’ hotel in the traditional sense; it may favor properties that provide accurate, trusted and bookable information through the channels it can use. For your independent hotel, being ready for AI search has become about making your data as

Search engines, OTAs, maps, and social platforms still play a major role in travel planning. They are not disappearing. But AI assistants are adding a new discovery layer that changes how travelers find and compare hotels. Instead of browsing dozens of search results, travelers can describe what they need to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Copilot and get a shortlist of relevant options. AI is becoming part of the customer journey and can influence which hotels travelers consider before they visit an OTA or hotel website. The shift is already visible. According to Deloitte , the share of surveyed travelers planning to use generative AI for holiday travel research grew from 16% in 2024 to 24% in 2025. If this growth continues, AI could become part of the planning journey for around one-third of travelers by 2027. For hotels, this creates another area of competition. A property may fully match a traveler’s request but still be missing from an AI-generated answer if its information is incomplete, outdated, hard to access, or unclear to search and AI systems. That is why the hotel website is the first place to optimize for AI search. It gives search and AI systems detailed information about the property and connects discovery with the hotel’s own booking channel. Why Does the Hotel Website Still Matter in AI Search? As AI becomes more common in travel planning, the hotel website has two key roles. The website as a source for search and AI . Website content helps search and AI systems understand what the hotel offers, who it is suitable for, and which traveler queries it can answer. This affects the hotel’s visibility in both traditional and AI-powered search. The website as a channel for converting demand into direct booking . The website remains the hotel’s key owned channel. It gives the hotel control over its brand, offers, booking journey, and guest relationship. AI may change how travelers discover hotels, but this demand still needs to turn into direct bookings. To support both roles, a hotel website needs to be findable, understandable, relevant, and bookable . AI systems must be able to access its content, understand the property, match it with traveler intent, and guide qualified demand toward booking. What Makes a Hotel Website Findable by AI? Before an AI system can understand a hotel website, it needs to find the right pages. If important pages are not accessible, the structure is unclear, or key information is placed on images, the website becomes harder to use in search and AI answers. What hotels should do Make sure key pages can be crawled, indexed, and included in search results. Give rooms, services, special offers, and location information their own accessible pages instead of hiding them in banners or booking widgets. Remove or update duplicate, outdated, or broken pages that may confuse search systems. Regularly check whether the website and its most important pages are visible in Google and Bing. What Makes a Hotel Website Understandable to AI? Being discoverable