Marriott says it already wins the AI answer. It's buying ads there anyway.
ChatGPT's advertising business is on pace to take a billion dollars a year, and since August 31 anyone in Europe can buy space in it. Your hotel included.
by Markus Busch
Both things are true, and he said them in one sitting. At a Bank of America investor conference on September 9, Marriott's chief executive Anthony Capuano was asked where AI is actually turning up. The biggest change, he said, will be in how travelers find and book hotels. Marriott is handing Google and OpenAI as much material about its properties as it can, so its hotels come up prominently when someone asks. He then pointed to reports saying Marriott already comes up more readily than any of its competitors. And in the same session he said Marriott is testing OpenAI's advertising platform.
The content strategy is the one that worked. For two years the advice to hotels has been about content. Fix the descriptions, fill in what's missing, get the reviews right, be the property a machine can describe accurately. Marriott ran that play with a team no independent could afford to hire, and by its own account it finished first. Then it went and looked at the price of the space underneath the answer.
What it is buying into. OpenAI put its own numbers out on August 31. Its advertising business is now on pace to take a billion dollars a year, and it got there in under seven months. Tens of thousands of companies are buying, in more than forty countries, with most campaigns now priced by the click or by the result — the same way you pay for a Google ad when someone searches your town. And OpenAI describes, in its own words, the moment the ad appears: a person working out what they want, deciding what matters to them, weighing one option against another. That is a guest building a shortlist, described by the company renting out the space next to it.
The door is open, and that is the part to read slowly. In May, OpenAI opened the platform so any business could buy directly instead of going through a salesperson. Europe got that on the day of the announcement above. No invitation, no waiting list. Google sells placement inside its own AI answer by invitation only. This one has a checkout. An open door sounds like your chance, and it is also how a price gets set — by whoever wants the space most. The largest hotel company in the world is in there now.
What it means for your hotel. OpenAI says the ads sit apart and don't change the answer itself. Take that at face value and the recommendation still comes from what the machine can read about you. The content work still counts. What's new is the paid line underneath it, and the chain that already wins the unpaid half is testing whether the paid half is worth having as well. You can watch this from your own desk for nothing. Open ChatGPT on a free account, ask it what a guest coming to your town would ask, and look at what sits below the answer. See who is already there. Then work out how long that space stays cheap once the chains decide it works.
Somewhere this week a guest types your town into ChatGPT and reads what comes back. Marriott is already finding out what it costs to sit underneath it.
Read also: Your AI recommendation is not for sale. But a resort like yours can earn it. · Google's now selling placement inside the AI answer — starting with IHG, by invitation only · The search that used to send you a guest now keeps her
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