Google AI Mode For Hotels

Google AI Mode Is Coming for Hotel Bookings: What Operators Need to Know

For years, the travel booking funnel has started in roughly the same place: a guest searches on Google, clicks through to an OTA or hotel website, and books. That funnel is about to change. In November 2025, Google announced that AI Mode will soon enable users to search, compare, and complete hotel and flight bookings directly within its AI-powered interface — no need to visit an OTA or hotel site at all.

The feature is being built with launch partners including Booking.com, Expedia, Marriott, IHG, Choice Hotels, and Wyndham. Google won't process payments itself — partners remain the merchant of record. But the shift in where discovery and decision-making happen is significant. For hotel operators and STR managers, this introduces a new distribution dynamic that requires attention now, not after it launches.

What Changed

Google's AI Mode is an agentic search experience that goes beyond listing links. Instead of showing ten blue results, it lets users describe what they're looking for in natural language — "a family-friendly hotel near the beach in Malaga for under €150 a night" — and returns curated options with prices, reviews, amenities, and direct booking capability.

The agentic layer means Google's AI doesn't just retrieve results — it takes actions. It compares schedules, prices, and amenities across partners. It filters based on guest preferences. And it enables the booking to be completed within the AI interface through the partner's payment system. Google has described this as completing the loop from inspiration to transaction without the user leaving the search environment.

This builds on capabilities Google already rolled out for restaurants (through OpenTable and Resy), events (Ticketmaster, StubHub), and personal services (Booksy, Vagaro). Hotels and flights are the next — and most commercially significant — category.

AI Mode's Canvas tool adds another dimension: visual trip planning that integrates itineraries, flight data, hotel options, and Google Maps into a single workspace. Travel Weekly reported that this positions Google not just as a search engine for travel, but as a full planning environment.

Why This Matters for Hotels and STR Operators

The scale of the opportunity — and the risk — comes down to one number: 75+ million daily active users on Google AI Mode globally. That's a massive audience making decisions in an environment where traditional SEO, metasearch placements, and OTA listings may not carry the same weight they do today.

For operators currently dependent on OTAs for distribution, the immediate question is whether your properties will be visible inside AI Mode. If Google's AI recommends hotels and vacation rentals based on data from its OTA partners, then your listing on Booking.com or Expedia becomes the pathway to appearing in AI Mode results. Properties not listed on launch partners may not surface at all during the initial rollout.

For operators with direct booking websites, the implications are more nuanced. AI-powered search could eventually be trained to surface direct hotel websites alongside OTA results — early signals from tools like ChatGPT's Atlas browser and Perplexity suggest this is possible. But the launch configuration prioritizes OTA partners. Direct booking visibility in AI Mode is not guaranteed and will likely require structured data, updated content, and strong review profiles.

The deeper strategic concern is about where demand generation happens. If guests increasingly discover, compare, and book properties inside Google's AI interface, the platforms that control that interface gain disproportionate influence over which properties get seen. Today, operators can compete for visibility on OTAs through pricing, reviews, and listing quality. In an AI-curated environment, the factors that determine visibility may be less transparent and harder to influence.

This isn't just a Google story. The competitive landscape is shifting rapidly. OpenAI's ChatGPT has apps from Booking.com and Expedia. Perplexity partnered with SelfBook for hotel reservations. Travel Weekly's analysis of agentic AI in travel described this as the fastest-moving innovation cycle the industry has seen in decades. Multiple AI platforms are racing to capture travel intent at the earliest possible stage.

Risks and Blind Spots

The biggest risk for operators is passivity. AI-driven booking is coming regardless of whether individual properties prepare for it. Operators who wait to see how it plays out may find that their competitors have already optimized for AI visibility while they were still debating the relevance.

There's also the question of data ownership. When a guest books through Google AI Mode via a Booking.com integration, who owns the customer relationship? Google controls the discovery. The OTA processes the transaction. The operator provides the stay. The guest may never visit the operator's website, see their brand, or enter their CRM. The layers between operator and guest continue to multiply.

Pricing transparency could cut both ways. AI Mode's comparison capability means guests will see competing properties and prices side by side — potentially with more context than a standard OTA results page provides. Properties with strong review profiles and competitive pricing benefit. Properties relying on information asymmetry or positioning tricks do not.

Analysts remain cautious about the pace of adoption. BTIG noted that investor concerns about OTA disruption may be overstated, arguing that travel's complexity — price volatility, loyalty programs, ancillary services, cancellation policies — creates friction that limits full automation. Consumer comfort with AI making autonomous booking decisions is still limited. But the direction of travel is clear.

What You Should Do Now

Ensure your listings on Booking.com and Expedia are fully optimized. These are confirmed Google AI Mode launch partners, and your presence on these platforms is your most likely pathway to visibility in AI-driven search. Complete property descriptions, high-quality photos, accurate amenity listings, and strong review profiles all contribute to how AI tools evaluate and recommend properties.

Invest in your review strategy. AI tools rely heavily on review data when making recommendations. A property with a 4.7 rating and 200 reviews will outperform an equivalent property with a 4.3 and 40 reviews in any AI-curated environment. Actively solicit reviews and respond to them — this data feeds directly into AI recommendation models.

Start treating structured data as a distribution asset. If you operate a direct booking website, implement schema markup for hotels and vacation rentals. This makes your property's data machine-readable, which is how AI tools discover and compare options beyond their OTA partnerships.

Monitor AI-driven traffic sources in your analytics. As Google AI Mode and similar tools roll out, new referral patterns will emerge. Set up tracking now so you can measure the impact as it happens, rather than noticing months later that your traffic sources shifted.

What to Watch Next

Google has not announced a firm launch date for hotel and flight bookings in AI Mode. When it does launch, watch for whether vacation rental platforms beyond Booking.com and Expedia are included. The competitive response from OTAs will also be telling — if they see AI Mode as a threat to direct traffic, expect defensive moves like deeper loyalty programs and exclusive inventory.