Chains tell investors AI will book with them. The fine print says maybe not.

Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt each wrote AI into their annual reports as a risk to booking direct. On their earnings calls, the same companies call it an advantage.

by Markus Busch

On February 10, Marriott said two things about AI on the same day.

On its morning earnings call, chief executive Anthony Capuano told investors the company was optimistic that AI would bring more travelers into Marriott Bonvoy and "help strengthen our direct booking channels." That same day Marriott filed its annual report with US regulators. In the section on how hotel rooms get booked, it warned that AI built into new and existing travel intermediaries could change how guests plan, book and pay, "potentially eroding brand loyalty, increasing distribution costs."

Same company, same day, opposite directions. Neither statement is false. One is what Marriott expects. The other is what Marriott has to tell its shareholders could go wrong.

What the chief executives say

The confident version is easy to find. Capuano told investors in February that Marriott was among the first companies working with Google on its AI Mode travel product, built so that a booking made there is processed inside AI Mode instead of ending in a link. By June, Marriott had started rolling out Ask Bonvoy, its own conversational search, on marriott.com and in the app. Behind both sits a loyalty program that added 43 million members last year and ended it with 271 million.

Hilton's Chris Nassetta went further. Asked on the April 28 call how AI and the OTAs would play out, he said AI gives Hilton an advantage in building more direct business. More than 80% of Hilton's business is already direct, he added.

Hilton repeated it this week. On September 29, its chief information officer, Michael Leidinger, said onstage that AI assistants have put the OTAs "under real threat" by doing what the OTAs used to do: pulling a scattered market into one view. Nassetta had made the scale argument days earlier: Hilton is about a quarter of the quality hotel supply in the United States, and that matters to whoever wins the agent race.

What the annual reports say

The annual reports read differently.

Hilton filed on February 11. Its report says that big technology platforms, large language models among them, entering travel booking could divert bookings away from our direct channels and raise its hotels' cost of selling a room. It was the first time Hilton had formally listed AI as a risk to how it sells rooms, Skift reported.

Marriott's warning is the one above, and where it sits matters. The paragraph opens with the OTAs, moves to search engines that send guests looking for a Marriott to an intermediary instead, and ends with AI. It also adds a detail that matters to anyone who has signed an OTA contract: Marriott's agreements with the intermediaries generally run two to three years.

Hyatt's report names four AI assistants by brand and says they may serve as alternative distribution channels, now or later. A few lines on, it says it expects to keep earning most of its business through its own channels. Both sentences sit in the same filing.

A risk section is where a company lists what could go wrong, in writing, for shareholders. All three chains filed AI in the same place: in the paragraphs about Booking, Expedia and the search engines.

Inside Hilton, the worry isn't only in the legal language. In May its marketing chief told Skift that agentic AI could bypass hotel apps altogether: "We may all very well lose our front doors."

Where the agents have gone so far

The record so far supports neither side completely.

In August, Google switched on hotel booking inside AI Mode in the United States. Choice, Hilton and Wyndham were the first chains showing a price in points. Marriott, Wyndham and IHG worked with Google on the agent. So did Booking and Expedia.

When Skift tested Meta's new Muse agent in September and asked for a New York hotel, the agent opened a browser and went to Expedia and Hotels.com. Booking says traffic from AI assistants is still under 1% of its room nights and has not moved in quarters.

Booking claims the word the chains use, too. In its second-quarter results, it said the share of room nights booked through its own direct channels held in the mid-fifties. Direct, for Booking, means the guest came straight to Booking.

No chain has published a number for bookings that arrived through an agent. Neither has any OTA.

Ten years of book-direct

The agent is not arriving at a blank page. After a decade of book-direct campaigns, Skift found in May that the OTAs' share of chain bookings had held steady or edged up. What the chains won was lower commissions, better contract terms and bigger loyalty programs. In 2025, Marriott's members booked about 75% of its US room nights.

So the share the agent is supposed to move is the same share the chains have fought over for ten years. Their own filings say the fight could go either way.

What it means for hotels

None of these filings is about an independent hotel. Both stories still end at its front desk.

If the calls are right and agents book the flag direct, the OTAs' hotel business leans harder on rooms without a flag. Those rooms are yours. If the filings are right and the agent books through the intermediaries, you reach the agent the way you reach most guests today: through an OTA, at its commission, on a line of the monthly invoice.

The chains have one cushion you lack. When three in four of your US room nights come from loyalty members, as Marriott's do, an agent that ignores your website still has to deal with your guest's points. An independent's guest arrives without that history, and the agent weighs what it can read: the rate, the reviews, the listing.

The chains did not wait to find out. They worked with Google on the agent themselves. An independent's connection runs through its vendors.

On Monday, email your booking-engine provider and your channel manager. Ask whether they connect your rooms to hotel booking in Google's AI Mode, and if not, by what date. Get the answer in writing.

Hilton reports its third quarter on October 27. So far, nobody has put a number on what the agents booked.

Read also: US hotels have the brands, the apps and the points. The OTAs still take the booking. · Google just put agentic hotel booking into testing

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