Welcome to RemoteHotelier #80!
In today’s newsletter:
⚔️ Hilton’s CIO says AI agents threaten OTAs…
🤖 … and OTAs respond
📊 Over 75% of travel agents already use AI to sell hotels
🔌 + 2 new integrations
🤝 + 1 new partnership
🆕 + 4 new product updates
💼 + 3 new jobs in hotel tech
⚔️ Hilton’s CIO says AI agents threaten OTAs…
This week we're talking about AI agents in hospitality, starting with Hilton's CIO saying that AI agents put OTAs "under real threat".
Michael Leidinger says chatbots like ChatGPT now do the aggregation job that made OTAs valuable in the first place.
He expects that shift to push more bookings to Hilton's own website and app.
He also admits personal AI agents will likely become commissionable channels.
Agents that keep reshopping rates until arrival will send far more queries than bookings, which raises hotel tech costs.
Personally, I don't see why OTAs should be under threat. Aggregation was never their whole business. Booking and Expedia have supply, payments, customer service, loyalty programs, and marketing budgets most hotel groups can only dream of. They were also among the first to launch apps inside ChatGPT, so when an AI agent needs somewhere to actually book the room, where do you think it’ll go first?
And look closely at what he admits: agents will charge commissions too. Best case scenario, hotels swap one middleman for another and pay higher tech bills for all the reshopping. Hilton can negotiate with whichever agent wins because of its size, but a 40-room independent hotel can't. If anyone should worry, it's hotels with messy rates and thin content, because an AI agent won't be as patient as a guest scrolling through photos.
🤖 … and OTAs respond
In fact, Kayak co-founders Steve Hafner and Paul English just launched Lola, an AI assistant owned by Booking Holdings that works like an OTA of its own.
Instead of commissions, it charges subscriptions: a free tier, $5 a month for Plus, and $25 a month for VIP, with paid plans on 12-month commitments.
Lola passes back the commission it would normally keep, so one sample four-night stay costs $783 for a VIP member versus $997 on Booking and Expedia.
Concierge company Ten Group adds a human layer, with perks like upgrades and late checkout at roughly 5,500 to 6,000 hotels.
And they're not the only ones, because Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky committed to launching Airbnb's own AI agent in 2027, promising something much richer than a chatbot.
Did you think that OTAs would sit while AI *allegedly* eats their lunch? Booking is funding a rival to its own flagship, and Airbnb has put a date on its own agent.
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RESOURCES
📍 Next Event: World Travel Market London (3–5 November).
📅 See the full hotel tech event calendar.
💼 Check which hotel tech companies offer remote jobs.
💻 Get your PMS comparison spreadsheet.
💸 Get your RMS comparison spreadsheet.
📊 Over 75% of travel agents already use AI to sell hotels
What do the numbers say? Well, it seems like (human) travel agents are already putting AI to work. A global survey of more than 750 travel sellers across Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport shows over 75% use AI in their sales process.
Chatbots like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini are the most common tools (to the surprise of absolutely no one). But there are more relevant numbers for hotels:
94% of agents say rate parity is highly important.
63% would skip a property with inconsistent pricing.
And 90% rely on hotel descriptions to compare options.
That's the biggest point connecting this whole edition. Human or AI, every agent reads your rates and content before recommending you. If those are messy, they jump onto the next one.
INTEGRATIONS
🔌 RMS integrates with TrustYou: syncing reservations and guest profiles in real time to build a single profile for every guest that front desk staff can see inside RMS. [Link]
🔌 eviivo connects to Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy: so eligible property managers can distribute listings to over 300 million Bonvoy members straight from its channel manager. [Link]
PARTNERSHIPS
🤝 Mews becomes the first partner in Accor's new F&B Technology Program: rolling out Mews POS across its premium, midscale, and economy hotels. [Link]
PRODUCT UPDATES
🆕 Winnow launches Foresight: an AI forecasting web app built with Hilton chefs that predicts kitchen demand item by item, and early pilots cut leftovers by up to 69%. [Link]
Predicting how many croissants you need before baking them is a much better deal than weighing the leftovers in the bin afterward.
🆕 Holibob releases a free SDK: that lets travel and accommodation brands embed a ready-made storefront with over 500,000 bookable tours and activities into their own websites. [Link]
Holibob claims it cuts build time from six months to three days, which sounds like good news for anyone with a direct booking site and a busy team.
🆕 Smoobu launches a smart devices add-on: that lets short-term rental hosts manage locks from more than 15 brands in one dashboard, with guest access codes created and expired automatically based on booking dates. [Link]
It's powered by Seam, a unified smart home API, which explains how one add-on can suddenly talk to Nuki, Yale, Salto KS, and a dozen other lock brands at once.
🆕 FCS Solutions connects housekeeping, maintenance, and guest service in one platform: with FCS1, used by more than 2,800 properties and now extended with an AI Operator that turns guest calls into assigned tasks. [Link]
JOB BOARD
💼 Operations Manager | Remote (based in Netherlands) | Mews.
💼 Sales Development Representative (English Speaking) | Remote (based in Spain) | Canary Technologies.
💼 Account Executive - BI Team | Remote (based in United States) | Lighthouse.
That’s all for today, thank you for reading. If this was helpful, share it with someone who'd find it useful too:
See you next week!
Jose