Recently, a World Panel of Digital Marketing Experts raised a very pertinent question: 'Is hotel metasearch is dead? Are we witnessing disappearance, or transformation?'.

Here is my take:

Metasearch is not dead, but has become a niche channel, a hybrid advertising/distribution channel.

Hotel metasearch has existed for over 22 years now (SideStep, acquired by Kayak). Today, Google Hotel Ads (GHA) has bigger market share than all metasearch platforms combined.

So, how big is hotel metasearch as an advertising/distribution channel? Less than 5% of hotel roomnights are booked on or referred by metasearch platforms. The same percentage was 10 years ago, 5 years ago and today.

In my view, with the ascendancy of AI search and agentic AI, this percentage will shrink further. Recently, Booking Holdings reported a $457 million accounting writedown for its Kayak brand due to increased customer acquisition costs, caused by the rise of AI search, requiring more spending on paid Google ads.

So, what should hoteliers do?

Hotel price is one of the four criteria travelers use to find the property for their hotel stay; location, customer reviews and hotel information being the other three.

By participating in Google’s GHA and its free and paid booking links, the property provides an answer to all four criteria in real time, since Google serves pricing information in its SERPs, Google Maps, Hotel Business Listing, etc.

Max Starkov
Hospitality & Online Travel Tech Consultant & Strategist

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