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No AI (Artificial Intelligence) powered hospitality distribution models offer live pricing for hotels. So far, these platforms only display estimated prices. Needless to say this is a huge weakness when it comes to driving actual bookings and explains why AI hasn’t been a big gamechanger yet.
But this will change in 2025 and it is certainly just a question of time.
This is where access to real-time ‘ARI’ -availability, rates and inventory- comes into play, representing the next frontier in AI-powered hospitality distribution. Can you imagine when AI returns final exact prices? Something like the following simulation:
Travel tech companies (mostly OTAs, PMSs, channel managers and major booking engines) offer their own APIs to access real-time availability, rates and inventory (ARI). Existing metasearch players, such as Google Hotels and Tripadvisor, use these APIs and redirect customers to the different sites (hotel websites and OTAs). However, maintenance and scalability have been a big issue. Will AI platforms follow and implement these APIs or try a new approach?
Model-control Protocol or MCP, the catalyst between AI and real-time ARI?
MCP offers a standardized and scalable framework for enabling large language models or LLMs to access diverse data sources and tools in a scalable manner.
This advancement allows AI-based platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to integrate real-time data from hotel technology providers, including property management systems (PMS), channel managers, revenue management systems (RMS) and booking engines.
As a result, these platforms can extend their role beyond destination and hotel discovery, offering real-time availability, pricing and potentially even end-to-end booking capabilities, without users needing to leave the AI interface.
In theory, transactional functionality could also be embedded, enabling direct bookings through AI agents. This is certainly a potential scenario. However, it’s uncertain whether this aligns with the preferences of both consumers and hospitality providers. Similar initiatives, such as Google’s “Book on Google” and Tripadvisor’s “Instant Booking”, faced adoption challenges and were ultimately discontinued or set aside. In addition to market appetite, several critical barriers remain, including data security, payment integration, user privacy and brand loyalty.
Finally, although MCP presents an attractive and promising vision, it remains an early-stage concept. Adoption is still limited and highly dependent on organizational scale, technical readiness and strategic alignment.
What can hotels do today?
It’s in hotels’ interest to show their real-time direct prices in new placements, especially if they are growing triple digit in share. However, intermediation (mostly OTAs) also have their real-time ARI and are much more technologically advanced. Who’ll take the lead? If hotels remain passive, OTAs will occupy these new spaces and will drive these traffic and bookings to them.
Nevertheless, hotels can start preparing when the time comes. A quick guide would be:
- Familiarize yourself with metasearch fundamentals. Gain a thorough understanding of metasearch platforms, their key drivers (such as price accuracy and price competitiveness) and performance metrics (or KPIs such as impression share and participation rate). This will allow you to leverage metasearch for AI readiness as many AI tools are likely to rely on metasearch platforms for real-time availability and pricing data.
- Ensure your properties are already listed on key platforms such as trivago, Tripadvisor and especially Google Hotels. It is a real possibility that AI companies partner with existing metasearch players to show hotels’ real-time prices. Google’s Gemini once tested showing real-time prices from Google Hotel Ads in its results, although we cannot reproduce this result anymore.
- Have your properties sites indexed by AI search engines. Proactively reach out to AI providers and inquire about the steps required to index your website and display your real-time prices. There is not a thing such as “submit your URL to Google” as it wasn’t at the beginning when Google used Dmoz directory to get the URLs to index. But things will change soon.
- Make sure you build your live price feed. Larger groups should consider investing in their own API and have it ready to respond to millions requests per day. Smaller chains and independents should find solid 3rd party hotel tech companies to do the job by integrating directly to the PMS or CRS. AI platforms will demand ARI information in real-time when the time comes.
- Monitor developments closely to adapt your strategies in real-time. Engage with AI platforms and periodically ask them about their product news. Subscribe to news of travel tech websites such as Phocuswire, Skift, Hospitalitynet or Mirai’s blog, all good sources of news and advice. Change is now the only constant in hospitality tech and you need to stay updated constantly as the landscape is evolving rapidly.
- Develop robust tracking and attribution processes and technology. Many hotels are not familiar yet with booking attribution and vaguely know where all their reservations come from. Some hoteliers don’t even have access to their Google Analytics (or other tracking systems) accounts which are controlled by marketing agencies, leaving them blind to make the right decisions. This situation is already causing them big trouble, such as overspending in digital marketing, and missing opportunities only data allows you to identify. Hotels should fix this, implement a reliable performance measurement model and ensure all traffic is properly labeled for analysis. Only then they will know what share of traffic and bookings will come from AI platforms and AI-backed search engines.
No doubt this sounds like a lot of work for something that actually isn’t available right now. There’s always an argument for sitting back and seeing what others do first. After all, the early bird may get the early worm but the second mouse gets the cheese!
But the harsh reality is that this radical change will happen faster than you may expect. Real-time pricing APIs are already available (especially by large OTAs with all properties in the world) and AI search platforms are fastly growing their customer base. Artificial Intelligence is reshaping digital marketing, so expect a radical game changer in hospitality distribution very soon. As so few are prepared, it is likely that a few players will quickly gain massive advantages to the cost of others (this is after all a zero sum game). Why wouldn’t you want to be one of the winners?
