A survey by Deloitte about travelers’ actions after receiving travel tips on generative AI platforms like ChatGPT found that 43% of travelers actually booked the recommended by AI accommodation options.

This is great news for hoteliers who are investing adequately in AI technology and talent to become the ultimate beneficiaries of this exciting AI era!

I hope smart hoteliers will see the potential of AI and invest in this new technology. I have no doubt, the global hotel chains and avant-garde hotel brands are already investing in gen AI and Agentic AI and AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization).

What about the independents? I am skeptical about the ability and willingness of independent hotels to invest in AI. As a good start, independents should be working with their cloud PMS, CRS or Channel Manager tech vendors to make sure they are plugged into the AI platforms, similar to how the OTA have being API-ed with these same platforms. Another good place for any independent to start is AIO (artificial intelligence optimization), the AI version of SEO. The era of stuffing your website content with SEO keyword terms and backlinking is gone.

Hoteliers should invest in content marketing with the goal to be cited in all the relevant places. SEO company VertoDigital’s audits show that only 25% of AI answers are pulled from website content, in this case hotel website content. The rest comes from citations about the hotel in social media, YouTube, travel-related sites and blogs, customer reviews, etc.

What about the OTAs?

As past experiences have shown, the OTAs are much more willing to invest in new technologies and, once again, are much faster than travel suppliers, including hotels.

So experts believe that AI platforms prefer partnering with the OTAs since with one API, the AI platforms get access to real-time availability, pricing and booking capabilities with 750,000 hotels, 5 million STRs, 500 airlines and 200 car rental companies. In other words, with one API they can achieve what it took the OTAs 30 years and many billions of dollars to build.

In addition, the AI platforms get affiliate commissions from every booking they refer to the OTAs, enabling them to monetize their traffic. Ex. Expedia has been actively using ChatGPT in their customer-facing app and their customer service operations for several years now. ChatGPT Operator pulls real-time travel inventory availability and pricing from and refers bookings to … Expedia. In return it gets affiliate commissions from Expedia.

I hope hoteliers have learned their lesson from the disastrously slow adoption of the Internet, mobile-first technologies and digital marketing best practices during the last 30 years. This time, when hospitality is transitioning from Mobile-first to AI-first, I hope hoteliers will take full advantage of this greatest transformation of our industry since the advent of the Internet.

Max Starkov
Hospitality & Online Travel Tech Consultant & Strategist

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