Is AI Search Making Hotel Websites Obsolete?

By Filip Linek is the Founder and CEO of FLAE Robotics (https://flaerobotics.ai/)

Artificial intelligence tools are reshaping travel searches by offering instant, customized trip plans that skip conventional booking sites. Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT provide personalized itineraries, rates, and recommendations without requiring users to visit aggregator platforms like Expedia or Booking.com. More than two-thirds of U.S. travelers turn to AI for researching destinations, over half use it to plan activities, and a significant portion book trips directly from those suggestions.

The Aggregator Model is Under Threat
The rise of the internet economy reshaped industries two decades ago through a new wave of intermediaries. These aggregators built power by monetizing search traffic through ads and transaction fees. They became web gateways, turning discovery into a business model that reshaped online search and decision-making. Whoever controlled discovery captured revenue, creating the foundation of digital commerce. That model now faces disruption. Generative AI changes how people get information online. Apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini engage users in conversation and generate direct answers, not lists of links.

By reducing the need to click through to other sites, these systems erode aggregators’ gateway function and ability to capture user intent at the top of the funnel, which is the foundation of their traffic and revenue. In travel, generative AI threatens giants like Expedia and Booking.com by transforming online discovery. As conversational AI tools answer questions directly, traditional platforms risk losing their gateway role. Incumbents must shift from functional efficiency to emotional engagement, adapt to AI-driven ecosystems, and reframe data advantages. Success depends on delivering personalized, inspiring experiences that keep travelers engaged throughout their journey.
Online travel is the perfect test case for how AI could upend the aggregator model.

Expedia and Booking.com dominate digital travel, running platforms that handle about half of global bookings. Like all aggregators, they thrive on scale, where more travelers attract more suppliers, making the platforms essential, which lets them negotiate better terms, grab larger commissions, and charge higher ad rates. To sustain that scale, online travel agencies chase early discovery demand with paid prominence on Google, which commands 90% of global search. Marketing eats their biggest budgets, with Expedia burning more than half its 2024 revenue, $6.8 billion, and Booking.com spent about 30% of its revenue, over $7 billion. AI scrambles those economics. Google holds travelers longer in its AI-boosted search for trip planning. Bookings may still hit agencies, but discovery drifts from their sites, starving cross-sells and network effects. It could worsen. Generative AI aids planning now, but search engines and startups test agentic AI that acts on its own after grasping goals, tweaking itineraries via linked systems. Entire trips could be planned and booked inside AI, skipping sites entirely, handing newcomers control of the intent-to-decision path.

Hotel Sites at Risk
AI-driven travel search is upending Google and the hotel industry’s reliance on website traffic for revenue. Tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini now deliver instant accommodation rundowns, sidestepping brand sites entirely and sparing travelers the slog of multiple clicks. Chains, commanding 72% of the US room supply, might initially gain from their data-rich sites, which are ripe for AI extraction of rates, perks, and facilities, yet this masks bigger risks to visibility as answers consolidate away from direct visits.

Adaptation Strategies
As travellers increasingly turn to personal AI assistants for planning and decision-making, hotels must fundamentally rethink their digital strategy. Being merely “visible” online is no longer enough; offerings must now be machine-readable and action-ready. For AI models acting on behalf of users, content and inspiration alone are insufficient. What truly matters is the ability to complete a booking and process payment.

Achieving this requires standardized, secure APIs that allow personal language model assistants to interact directly with availability, pricing, policies, and payment systems. This is where a new category of AI infrastructure begins to emerge.

Personal AI assistants act as an intermediary layer between hotel systems and user-facing assistants. Instead of forcing individual hotels to manage complex integrations with multiple AI platforms, this layer provides a unified interface for queries, bookings, and payments.

Hotels become AI-ready, discoverable by decision-making models, while retaining full control over pricing, policies, and direct guest relationships. This shift does not mark the end of hotel websites but rather a redefinition of their purpose. Instead of serving as the primary transaction point, websites evolve into sources of trust, brand identity, and contextual depth, while transactional logic moves into the API layer. Content-rich websites that share local insight, authentic storytelling, and a human perspective on the destination remain valuable. They serve not as gateways but as reference points that both guests and AI systems can use to validate choices.

Independent and boutique hotels may be especially well-positioned in this AI-driven landscape. A chef curated 48-hour itinerary, a profile of the artist behind a signature interior piece, or a seasonal narrative spanning winter après ski menus to summer rooftop aperitifs all provide the contextual richness that AI models increasingly rely on as user queries become more conversational and specific. Combined with readiness for direct AI-driven bookings, this creates a new form of competitiveness defined not by web traffic but by accessibility to intelligence.

AI Front Desk Automation
AI-powered receptionists are automating front desk operations for hotels, handling bookings, guest requests, and communications through email, WhatsApp, and voice. These tools run around the clock with no training costs, helping cut staffing expenses by 20% to 50% during labor shortages. They streamline check-in and check-out processes for both online and in-person guests, manage extras such as spa treatments and rentals, and integrate with property management systems, booking engines, and channel managers.

Final Thought
Artificial intelligence is redrawing the battle lines of online travel, wresting control from established players and handing tools to sidestep the middlemen. What matters most is the revolution in how journeys begin. AI does not just answer queries; it anticipates desires, dismantling old hierarchies of search and opening doors for nimble newcomers with bold ideas. The booking behemoths, which were built on lavish ad spends to own Google’s top spots, now scramble to protect their digital real estate, hoping rapid reinvention alongside Big Tech keeps their empires intact. Yet the prize will go to those who master subtlety over speed, trading rote transactions for deeply tailored adventures where first-mover agility trumps all. Hotel sites will endure if they evolve. Bland chain listings may fade in AI’s long summaries, while those rich with unique stories stand to capture the spotlight.