Innovation

🛒 OpenAI's Instant Checkout, launched in October 2025, enables over 1 million Shopify merchant purchases (e.g., Glossier, Skims, Spanx, Vuori) directly within ChatGPT, revolutionizing e-commerce. This frictionless process eliminates redirects and abandoned carts, offering AI-powered discovery and conversational commerce. Users can describe needs, and ChatGPT suggests and completes purchases. This could redefine e-commerce, challenging platforms like Amazon by merging AI assistance with shopping in a seamless experience.

💻 Hotels must adapt to AI-driven guest behavior changes quickly. Guests now demand immediacy, conversational interfaces, and multilingual support. Voice messaging is becoming standard, and personalization, proactivity, and trust are crucial. AI agents can deliver 24/7 service across platforms like WhatsApp, but require accurate information from hoteliers. Websites need to evolve into intelligent assistants. Legacy systems may struggle unless they integrate AI. The shift is rapid; hotels need to act now to remain competitive.

💻 Last month, Skift Global Forum hosted a discussion between Booking Holdings and Dennis Schaal about the transformative impact of generative AI on travel planning and booking. Early AI implementations have enhanced customer experiences, pushing the “Connected Trip” concept from vision to reality. Booking Holdings aims to optimize supplier relationships, like hotels and car rentals, by leveraging AI for personalized marketing and seamless travel adjustments, aiming to surpass competitors with superior service offerings.

💰 English Lakes Hotels Resorts and Venues now accepts Bitcoin payments for booking rooms and services at locations like Low Wood Bay Resort and Spa. The shift aims to attract the global Bitcoin user market, leveraging CoinCorner's digital currency exchange system. This strategic move aims to grow international bookings and build a Bitcoin treasury. Director Ben Berry notes benefits like avoiding bank fees and mitigating price volatility for international customers, enhancing payment speed and convenience.

🚀 OpenAI's launch of Apps inside ChatGPT revolutionizes travel interaction, integrating platforms like Expedia and Booking.com. Travelers can directly book hotels, such as finding options in Vienna with EV charging, through conversational AI. This shift towards frictionless, context-aware personalization could diminish hotels' direct relationships unless they integrate. The entities controlling guest data will dominate loyalty and upselling. Onsai empowers hotels with AI-driven experiences, ensuring they maintain brand control amidst this transformative shift in hospitality.

✈️ Travel Ads, powered by Smart+, are TikTok's catalog-based solutions for travel advertisers, promoting hotels, flights, and destinations. TikTok supports three travel catalog types: Flights, Hotels, and Destination (beta). Creative formats include Single Video, Catalog Video, and Catalog Carousel. These ads utilize TikTok's travel intent model to target high-intent audiences, enhancing engagement and performance.

📈 In September 2025, Apaleo launched the MCP server, becoming the first property management platform to connect AI agents with hotel systems, unveiled at The Annual Hospitality Conference in Manchester. MCP simplifies hotel operations by allowing AI agents to handle tasks in hours instead of weeks. This advancement moves hotels from automation to autonomy. Apaleo's new Agent Factory lets hotels co-design AI agents. MCP empowers independent hotels, enabling rapid innovation and competitive equality.

📈 AI agents are revolutionizing hotel tech by bridging gaps with MCP (Model Context Protocol), eliminating the need for costly integrations. Sam Weston from Hotel Speak explains how MCP enables AI to directly understand hotel data, leading to smarter collaboration. This innovation supports the Agent Factory initiative that helps design AI solutions. The focus is shifting from new apps to seamless human-AI collaboration in hospitality tech.

📈 In revenue management, AI excels in operational tasks, raising the debate of in-house vs. outsourced strategic management. In-house teams align AI with hotel vision but are costly, while outsourcing offers expertise but risks cultural disconnect. For marketing, in-house teams ensure authenticity, while outsourcing provides specialist skills. Hotel Business Intelligence systems are essential for data management, with a unified commercial team structure recommended to maximize AI's potential, emphasizing collaboration and data ownership.