Is Your Property Ready for AI-Native Hotel Distribution? What Expedia is already offering your guests inside ChatGPT. Are you ready? Expedia has built an AI-native shopping experience inside OpenAI’s App SDK that structures every guest request, every room search, and every follow-up into a disciplined, rules-driven workflow. This is the environment where your hotel is being compared. This audit helps you understand the rules Expedia uses and how to prepare your property for agentic hotel distribution. 1. How Expedia Handles Every Guest Search Every message with hotel or lodging intent triggers a new AI search. The system does not rely on general knowledge. It always runs a structured query with updated parameters. For hotels, this means: Your property is being judged in real time based on how clean, complete, and machine-readable your data is. 2. How Expedia Chooses the Guest Experience (Map vs Carousel) The AI decides the visual experience for the traveler. Map view is activated when the guest cares about proximity Hotels near landmarks, airports, attractions, beaches, parks, stadiums. Carousel view is used for general city searches Citywide queries, amenity-based requests, review-based filtering. Examples: “Hotels near Eiffel Tower with spa” → map “Paris hotels with free Wi-Fi and restaurant” → carousel Hotel takeaway: If your hotel relies on neighborhood or proximity value, you need clean geographic metadata or you will not surface in the map layer. 3. Session State: Expedia Remembers Everything Expedia maintains search context across the full conversation: Destination, dates, guests, rooms, filters, amenities. When the traveler updates something, Expedia merges the new constraint and re-runs a complete search. Hotel takeaway: Static content and half-complete rate data put you at a disadvantage. The AI expects complete, structured, always-current inventory. 4. Atomic Results: Every Search Is a Clean Slate Each call produces a new, independent set of results. Nothing is stitched together from earlier calls. No merging, no blending, no attempts to combine multiple searches. If the traveler adds a filter, Expedia runs a fresh, complete search. Hotel takeaway: Your listing must perform well under every variation: “Rooms near downtown”, “king room”, “pet friendly”, “free parking”, “under 300 dollars”. 5. Input Rules Hotels Must Know Expedia’s AI will only behave correctly if data is consistent. Key rules the system enforces: Location rules Always disambiguate the city and region Full location is mandatory Bed types Returned only when explicitly requested Must match known bed-type categories Sorting NEAREST for proximity searches Relevance for amenity or review-based searches Pagination Starts at offset 0 Moves forward only when the guest asks for more Resets when search criteria change Hotel takeaway: If your content does not match Expedia’s structured expectations, your property will drop out of competitive queries. 6. The Date Logic That Governs Every Search Expedia’s AI decides the correct year based on the guest’s intent. Rules: If today is before that month, use the current year If today is in or after that month, roll to next year When ambiguous, choose the nearest future match Example: If today is January 15, 2025 and the guest says “hotels in January” → January 2026. Hotel takeaway: This is how guests are now shopping. Your systems must be ready to answer future-dated queries accurately, with clean ARI. 7. What This Means For Your Sales Team Expedia’s AI is now the first impression for millions of travelers. Your hotel is competing inside a structured environment where: Incomplete data excludes you Poor metadata downgrades visibility Missing room details reduce match quality Weak location data removes you from map-based searches Inconsistent ARI breaks date logic and availability ranking This is no longer about pretty photos or OTA copywriting. This is about whether your hotel’s digital blueprint is ready for AI-native distribution. 8. AH Audit: Are You Ready To Compete? Use this checklist. Readiness Questions for Your Property Is your location, neighborhood, and proximity metadata accurate and machine-readable? Are your room types structured consistently across all channels? Do your ARI rules support future-dated agent queries? Are your amenities consistently tagged and complete? Are your cancellation rules accurate at the offer level? Does your site publish clean structured data that AI can trust? Are you prepared for an environment where every guest inquiry is answered instantly by an AI agent with Expedia-level precision? If not, Agentic Hospitality helps you close the gap.
