How People Are Using AI For Booking Flights, Hotels, Restaurants

How Hotels Can Thrive in an Agentic AI World: From SEO to MCP With the launch of GPT 5, operator, and a slew of Agentic AI tools, the age of booking a hotel or flight with an AI Agent is upon us. For the consumer it accelerates the ability to digest information, discover, and book hotels, but what about from the perspective of the hotel operator? Past: Complex Human Centric Flow Today, when a user has the idea of a “family-friendly boutique hotel in Tuscany under $500 a night with vineyard views” it’s a complex human-centric project. You might start with Google with that query, click around for reviews, blogs, hotel websites, OTA listings, and amalgamate that information into an idea of where you’d like to stay for your vacation. It’s tried and true but inefficient and subject to SEO and OTA reliance. Enter the world of AI Agents and explosive use of ChatGPT, what does it look like. Today: ChatGPT Discovery and Query The entrance of ChatGPT and LLM chat has enabled the consumer to be 100x more efficient when discovering and booking travel. As opposed to spending hours researching manually, the LLM parses down the information into a digestible and easy format for the consumer to make a decision. Future: Agentic AI But what about in a world where you have a personalized agent that you want to actually do the booking? What about when you have super detailed requirements or questions to help you decide. I’ve discussed the AI future of travel before when it comes to voice, but this is a much more complex problem to solve. Pain Points Today for Consumers Any ChatGPT power user soon realizes the imperfection of ChatGPT when it comes to travel. Verifying that the hotel recommendations do in fact have a kids club or whether the Deluxe King Suite actually has Sea Views is a minefield of incorrect information. The trust level and accuracy level isn’t high enough for me to trust a true agentic AI agent to take over and handle everything for me yet. So what is the solution? Pain Points Today for Hotels And with the rise of #ChatGPT it creates tons of complexity for hotel operators. SEO traffic is significantly down, there’s risk of commoditization and the funneling of AI traffic to the top hotels and destinations, your information may be inaccurate or out of date based on a blog from a decade ago, and customer service gaps exist when a consumer wants to know whether you have late check-out, EV chargers, or whether the pool is heated. We’ve seen the first step with the rise of ChatGPT has been a solidification of OTAs with $BKNG highlighted in #OpenAI Operator and $EXPE testing out plugins. But is an OTA-first world best for consumers and hotel operators? How does this actually develop over time? The Solution: Model Context Protocol (MCP) for Travel Enter MCP, the “USB-C of AI Agents”: The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a newly emerged solution for the data disconnection. It’s an open standard that lets AI assistants plug into external data sources and tools in a universal, secure way. Every request and response follows the same JSON format, so an AI agent can discover what tools (data, API endpoints) a hotel exposes and use them immediately. In practice, MCP gives AI agents a consistent method to query databases, ask questions of proprietary systems, and even execute transactions without custom-build integrations. For hotels imagine turning all of the APIs and data feeds that hotels and travel supplies already have (Expedia EPS, HotelBeds, PMS, booking engines) into callable tools than an AI like ChatGPT can use in real time. Today ChatGPT often gives back quasi-accurate or generic information about a specific hotel, but with an MCP ChatGPT can literally ask your system “Do you have a one bedroom suite with an ocean view available on August 30th under $500?”, and get a structured answer back from a hotels inventory in real time. Most importantly it isn’t limited to search queries. It can expose almost any functionality or data you choose. This means with an MCP an AI agent can book a stay, cancel or modify a reservation, offer concierge services, check loyalty points, book ancillary services like a massage or local tour, and answer detailed questions. Why this Matters for Hotels In the old days of SEO, your website was your digital storefront. In the OTA era your OTA listing page became just as critical. In the AI era your “landing page” is effectively your structured data schema or the machine-readable profile of your hotel that AI agents will consult. Without AI-friendly data feeds, your hotel might simply not show up in tomorrow’s AI-driven search results. We’ve already seen solutions like Lighthouse's Connect AI pop up that help to bridge the divide between hotels and AI-powered travel planning. With the advent of the internet the average hotel went from an active participant in the marketplace to a passive participant with the rise of OTAs. MCP integration can enable a hotel to become an active participant again as opposed to a database entry in somebody else’s system. The Bottom Line: MCP gives hotels a way to reclaim visibility and direct interaction in an AI-driven world.

hotel bookings natively on perplexity are quietly growing. it's one of the under-the-radar features we have right now that has a massive potential to disrupt the ad industry. google's second biggest adword category i think.