ChatGPT’s travel app integrations hit turbulence early
OpenAI's plan to turn ChatGPT into a booking assistant raises questions about reliability, user behavior, and future competition for travel brands
OpenAI’s latest update lets users book hotels, flights, and rentals directly through ChatGPT by connecting with apps like Booking.com, Expedia, and Zillow. While investors cheered, early testing shows the experience is clunky and unreliable — and it raises bigger questions for hoteliers about what role AI assistants will play in the travel booking journey.
Key takeaways
- Unreliable booking experience: Early users report errors and rigid text commands when trying to search for hotels or flights, making ChatGPT’s integrations far less intuitive than traditional booking sites.
- Limited travel functionality: ChatGPT can only interact with one partner app at a time, preventing real-time comparisons or price checks across platforms like Booking and Expedia.
- Potential data control risks: As ChatGPT becomes a middle layer between travelers and booking sites, hotels could lose visibility into how their inventory is displayed and which factors drive conversions.
- Distribution strategy impact: If travelers start using AI assistants to search and book stays, hotels may need to rethink how they manage visibility, rates, and content within these emerging ecosystems.
- Partner hesitation: Travel brands see ChatGPT as an additional acquisition channel, not yet a replacement for their native apps or Google traffic, given its early technical issues and low conversion potential.
- Long-term outlook: For now, ChatGPT’s “everything app” vision looks premature — but as conversational search improves, hoteliers should watch closely how AI intermediaries might reshape guest discovery and booking behavior.
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