Hospitality leaders have heard it all before: first it was websites, then OTAs, then mobile. Each time, hotels lagged behind, losing control of distribution until clawing back pieces of it years later. But this time is different. With AI, there will be no “catching up.” The storefront has already shifted. Walk through today's guest journey and it's obvious. AI is the new gatekeeper. Google's Gemini connects flights, hotels, and maps into one seamless planning experience. Guests no longer browse ten blue links. They ask a question and receive an instant itinerary, complete with rates and reviews. Even when a traveler asks directly for your hotel, the “direct” booking request doesn't reach you. AI routes it back into meta search, where intermediaries and Google's own layer own the conversion. Intent that should be yours is intercepted. Your brand story? Boiled down into two sentences of machine-written copy. Amenities, spa details, cleanliness scores — all compressed and served up as the definitive version of your hotel. The guest believes the AI. Why wouldn't they? It feels neutral, objective, and fast.Meanwhile, social feeds double as storefront windows. TikTok reels rank top resorts in 30 seconds, bypassing your website entirely. For Gen Z, this is the trusted source — not your homepage. And when they do click through from social, they don't land on your site. They land on Linktree hubs and aggregator profiles. The storefront is fractured, but it's never yours. Hotels are already losing AI the way they lost mobile — but with one critical difference. There will be no rebound cycle. AI-native storefronts aren't a channel shift; they are the infrastructure of how guests plan and book. Once control is lost here, it's permanent.That's why Agentic Hospitality built AgentSite and the agentic commerce layer—to give hotels a fighting chance inside these generative flows. To make them visible, accurate, and bookable where the guest journey actually starts.
