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Booking.com is already inside ChatGPT. Your hotel probably isn't.
That is not a future problem. It is happening now. Travelers type a question into an AI. The AI returns three or four hotels. If your property is not in that list, it is not in the conversation. No click. No call. No booking.
Every major hotel brand CEO spent part of their 2026 earnings calls talking about AI. Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Hyatt, and Wyndham all used nearly the same language. PhocusWire ran a headline in June 2026 asking: "Are hotel CEOs overestimating their AI edge?" IDC analyst Dorothy Creamer noted that brands were making "near-identical claims about AI investment in the same earnings cycle." Hyatt's own CEO Mark Hoplamazian told his analysts that "no particular tool or platform should be seen as a durable competitive advantage." See PhocusWire, June 2026.
That is an honest observation, not a criticism. Every major brand is building real capabilities. The insight for owners is more specific: brand-level AI strategy and property-level AI demand intelligence are two different layers of the same challenge, and both matter.
This article explains what the brands are actually building, what is still the owner's responsibility at the property level, and what the commercial team needs to do differently.
What the brands are actually building
The AI investments are real. Here is what each major player has put on the table.
Marriott guided to $1 billion or more in technology spending in 2024, with similar levels planned for 2026 and up to 40 percent directed to digital and corporate systems. CEO Anthony Capuano told analysts on the Q4 2025 call that natural language AI search would roll out across Marriott.com and the Bonvoy app in the first half of 2026. Marriott is also in early-stage work with Google on its AI Mode interface and has an ad pilot running with OpenAI. Bonvoy now has 271 million members, a data asset that powers everything else. See White Sky Hospitality, May 2026.
Hilton launched its AI Planner in March 2026, a generative AI concierge in beta on hilton.com that helps guests pick destinations, compare properties, and explore amenities in conversation. Simultaneously, Hilton created a new Chief Technology Officer role to accelerate delivery. Its LightStay platform, running since 2008, has delivered more than $1 billion in cumulative operational savings through machine-learning energy management, one of the most verified AI ROI stories in the industry.
IHG has been investing across guest engagement, revenue management, and commercial platforms. Former IHG commercial leader Paarul Suri named the stakes plainly: "Marketing was always an afterthought for hotels because the brand was there. Now it will become front of mind. Because if you're not there on those AI recommendations, you're out. You're not in the consideration set. And if OTAs take that spot, you will continue to lose that 18 to 20 percent." See PhocusWire, June 2026.
Wyndham has been the most specific about outcomes. Its Connect Plus platform is live in more than 1,100 hotels, with 5,000 on the broader Connect platform. The company reported 300 basis points of incremental direct contribution and 25 percent faster call handling times. CEO Geoffrey Ballotti described it as "a durable competitive advantage that we expect to compound as adoption continues to ramp." See Wyndham Q1 2026 Investor Presentation.
All of this investment is genuine and it benefits owners. The brand that builds better AI infrastructure lifts consideration for every property in its system. That is the portfolio-level effect that makes brand affiliation worth something in an AI-driven market.
And yet the OTAs moved even faster. Booking.com and Expedia were the first travel companies inside ChatGPT's App Directory, in early 2026. See Jetstream, June 2026. When a traveler asks an AI for a hotel recommendation and clicks through, that booking can route through an OTA, not through direct. BCG said it directly in March 2026: hotel groups must integrate booking channels into AI search interfaces, or intermediaries will fill the gap first. See BCG, March 2026.
Phocuswright senior analyst Robert Cole named the risk for the whole industry: "Hoteliers must control their sources of truth to manage the disruption AI poses. If not, another party will step in to fill that gap with a technology layer or tollgate to monetize it."
The number that matters at the property level
About 37 percent of travelers now use large language models in some part of their trip planning, according to the AltexSoft expert panel (May 2026). IDC projects up to 30 percent of bookings could be completed autonomously by AI agents by 2030. See AltexSoft, May 2026.
Here is what those numbers mean at the property level, regardless of flag.
When a traveler uses an AI to pick a hotel, the AI does not check a hotel's STR comp set. It does not know the property outperformed its segment last quarter. It draws on whatever public information exists: descriptions, review sentiment, brand site content, Google business data, destination site mentions, third-party references. If those sources are incomplete, inconsistent, or missing key attributes, the AI produces an incomplete picture of the property.
A renovated room block described nowhere useful. A meeting room no source mentions. A proximity to a hospital, university, or corporate campus that exists on the ground but not in any text an AI reads.
Brand AI investment lifts the system. It does not automatically fix a specific hotel's specific gaps. That is the property team's responsibility, and most teams currently have no visibility into what the gaps actually are.
Two demand problems. Two different tools.
Most hotel commercial teams treat demand as one problem. In an AI-driven market, it is two separate problems that need different intelligence and different action.
Problem one: AI-driven demand is not finding the hotel
A traveler opens ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Mode. They describe what they need. The AI names three hotels. This one is not among them.
Maybe the meeting space is not recognized. Maybe a recent renovation is not reflected in the sources the AI reads. Maybe a competitor describes its proximity to the airport corridor or convention center more precisely, so they get the recommendation.
This is not a website problem. It is not a reputation problem. It is an AI consideration problem, and it requires its own measurement. Brands and operators who want their managed and franchised properties to perform well in AI discovery benefit from exactly this kind of property-level intelligence, because a system is only as strong as its least-visible hotel.
Dealality AI Demand Positioning measures this. It monitors which AI platforms surface a hotel, across which traveler-need scenarios, how often, and with which attributes recognized. It identifies which competitors appear in the hotel's place and what the evidence suggests about why. Then it produces specific recommended actions for each gap, with root cause and commercial significance. Not "improve your content," but what to correct, strengthen, or monitor, and in what order. For background, see Does Your Hotel Enter AI Consideration?
Problem two: the sales team is finding demand too slowly
Even a hotel that performs well in AI-driven transient discovery may be missing group, corporate, and institutional demand that is active right now. A conference needing overflow rooms. A government contractor team on a project. A university program rotating cities. A corporate board meeting that needs two days and a private dining room.
That demand exists. Most sales teams spend too much time finding it. They check event calendars, read association websites, try to determine whether a venue is already selected, and search for a contact more useful than a generic email address. Operators who want to show owners a credible commercial pipeline benefit from this kind of systematic demand intelligence as much as anyone.
Dealality Group Demand Intelligence does the research. Every week it identifies demand opportunities relevant to a specific hotel, evaluates whether each is realistic given timing, geography, hotel fit, and room demand, classifies each as actionable now or a future watch, finds the named decision-maker where one exists, and recommends the specific action. Not "contact them," but whether to pitch for the primary venue, position for overflow, or wait for the next cycle. It never equates a 500-person convention that already has a host hotel with a recurring 30-room block still unassigned.
The demand visibility matrix
Four positions every owner, GM, and operator should understand.
| Strong AI consideration | Weak AI consideration
Active demand pipeline | Best commercial position. Protect and monitor both layers. | Sales is holding the business, but passive demand is leaking. ADP is the priority.
Weak demand pipeline | AI visibility without conversion. GDI closes the pipeline gap. | Most exposed. Start with ADP to understand why demand is not arriving. Then GDI to go find it.
A hotel in the top-right position looks fine on paper. Known accounts are tracking. But AI is quietly routing the next generation of transient and group demand to better-positioned competitors. The problem shows up in occupancy twelve months from now, not this week.
Where brand, operator, and owner interests align
Marriott's Capuano is right that "unparalleled depth of inventory and global reach" create advantages at the portfolio level. Nearly 9,000 properties across 141 countries, Bonvoy's AI integrations, and natural language search across brand channels lift the brand in aggregate. That is real and it matters to every property in the system.
The point is not that brand investment falls short. The point is that property-level AI visibility work and brand-level AI platform investment are complementary, not alternatives. A brand that deploys excellent AI search tools at the system level still needs each property to present itself clearly across the specific sources those AI systems read. A franchisee that cleans up inconsistent descriptions, gets its meeting space correctly recognized, and aligns its public attribute information across key platforms makes the brand's AI investment more effective, not less.
The same logic applies to operators. An operator who can show an owner clear evidence of AI-driven consideration, competitive displacement, and demand pipeline is having a fundamentally different conversation than one relying on traditional RevPAR and occupancy reports alone. Floor Bleeker, former group CTO of Accor, put the competitive dynamics clearly: "If you can actually operate your hotel at 30% less cost because you need fewer people, or people become smarter with this system, you have a competitive advantage. And I haven't seen much happening there." See PhocusWire, June 2026.
Brand AI strategy and property-level AI demand intelligence work best together. Owners who understand both ask better questions of their brand partners and operators. Brands and operators who understand both have more credible conversations with their owners.
Eight questions for the commercial team this week
- Which AI platforms surface this hotel, for which demand segments, and how do we actually know?
- Which competitors appear when we do not, and for which specific traveler needs?
- Does AI consistently recognize the meeting space, parking, recent renovation, and proximity to major demand drivers?
- Are public descriptions consistent across Google, the brand site, review platforms, and destination sites?
- How many group and corporate opportunities in this market are actively sourcing right now, and which are we pursuing?
- For each opportunity in the pipeline, is the venue already selected? If yes, what is the actual recommended next step?
- How is the team identifying demand it did not already know about from existing relationships?
- Is there a gap between the STR comp set and the hotels AI actually recommends instead?
For more on how competitive brand and operator selection connects to these questions, see How to Run a Competitive Hotel Brand and Operator Selection Process.
If you want to understand where a hotel stands in AI-driven demand, or where the sales team should focus this week, start at dealality.com.
Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Hyatt, Wyndham, and Choice Hotels are independent companies and registered trademarks of their respective owners. References to earnings calls and public statements are for informational purposes only. This article does not rank brands or describe any specific transaction.
Joan Dejarden is the founder of Dealality and a hospitality strategist with experience across Marriott International, hotel ownership, development and advisory work in the Americas and Europe. His current work focuses on hotel decision intelligence, brand and operator strategy, and how artificial intelligence is changing hotel discovery, demand and deal-making.