eTourism Trends and News

OpenAI is considering a new monetization concept in which it would take a share of the financial value derived when its AI tools help customers make commercially valuable discoveries or inventions. According to The Information, the company’s CFO has floated the idea that OpenAI could receive a “cut” of outcomes when its technology directly contributes to profitable results. This proposal would go beyond traditional subscription and usage fees and represents an exploration of licensing, profit-sharing, or outcome-based pricing models. The idea signals a broader shift in how AI platforms might align their financial interests with the success of enterprise customers.

Key takeaways

Outcome-based pricing concept: OpenAI is considering taking a cut of value created when its AI materially contributes to profitable outcomes, rather than charging only for access or usage.

Google says the way guests discover hotels is changing, with conversational AI increasingly shaping early trip planning while traditional search remains critical at the point of booking. Travelers often explore destinations and hotel options through AI tools, then return to Google search to confirm details and book on trusted hotel or brand sites. For hoteliers, this means success is less about ranking for broad keywords and more about making properties legible to AI through images, reviews, and clear signals of guest intent. As AI-driven discovery accelerates, Google’s advice is to adapt now and refine over time rather than wait for certainty.

"Hotel wholesalers like Hotelbeds, WebBeds, and Expedia Partner Solutions continue to play a role in global travel distribution, but their traditional business model is under increasing pressure as artificial intelligence reshapes how hotels are discovered, priced, and booked. While wholesalers still generate meaningful transaction volumes, their overall share of hotel bookings remains relatively small compared with OTAs and direct channels. AI-driven booking agents, API-based connectivity, and platform consolidation are accelerating structural change across distribution. Long-term survival will depend on wholesalers’ ability to redefine their value beyond legacy intermediation.

Key takeaways

Wholesalers’ limited market share: Hotel wholesalers account for only a small single-digit percentage of global online hotel booking revenue, making their strategic importance smaller than often assumed.
AI-driven disruption: AI-powered booking tools and automated decision-making systems are reducing the need for traditional intermediaries and compressing distribution layers."

In its 2026 What the Future (WTF) Report, KAYAK analyzes billions of user searches alongside survey data from 14,000 Gen Z and Millennial travelers to identify emerging destinations and behaviors. The report highlights a growing preference for less crowded, lower-priced locations and a clear move away from social-media-driven travel choices. Artificial intelligence is positioned as a central force in travel planning, with many travelers trusting AI recommendations more than personal networks. Overall, the findings point to a more personalized, flexible, and experience-focused approach to travel in 2026.

Google is removing reviews from restaurant Google Business Profiles at unprecedented levels, reflecting a broader crackdown on review quality, authenticity, and compliance. Both positive and negative reviews are being deleted, often through automated systems that flag suspicious patterns rather than individual intent. Restaurants, which rely heavily on reviews for discovery and conversion, are particularly exposed to these changes. The trend is altering how trust is built, how local search rankings behave, and how operators must think about review strategy going forward.

Key takeaways

Restaurants hit disproportionately hard: Food and beverage businesses experience higher-than-average review deletions due to high review volume and frequent abuse patterns.
AI-driven moderation: Automated systems increasingly remove reviews that appear incentivized, repetitive, or coordinated, even when customers are real.

The hospitality industry enters 2026 with a growing consensus that fragmented technology is no longer sustainable. A conversation between Shiji and Amadeus highlights a shift away from tactical integrations toward genuinely integrated platform thinking. The focus is moving from systems that merely exchange data to environments that operate as a single, coherent whole. This evolution reflects rising operational complexity, higher guest expectations, and the need for technology that supports, rather than burdens, hotel teams.

Key takeaways

From integration to coherence: Simple system connectivity is no longer sufficient; hotels need platforms that align data, workflows, and decision-making into one operational logic.
Partnerships mature under pressure: Strategic alliances, shaped during the pandemic, now prioritize reliability, scale, and clarity over short-term feature expansion.

In addition to traditional SEO efforts, the increased use of AI for travel planning requires hotels to implement new strategies like Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) to ensure their property appears in the AI summaries and snippets potential guests are using to make their booking decisions.

A debate at Skift’s Megatrends event highlighted broad agreement that artificial intelligence will transform hotel distribution, while exposing meaningful disagreement over how quickly that transformation will play out. While AI is expected to increasingly mediate how travelers discover and book hotels, adoption will depend on consumer trust, economic incentives, and operational execution across the industry. For hoteliers, the discussion pointed to gradual but structural pressure on traditional OTA commission models, alongside emerging — yet uneven — opportunities to strengthen direct distribution. The takeaway was pragmatic rather than dramatic: AI will reshape hotel bookings, but change will arrive in phases, not overnight.

Key takeaways

AI-driven discovery will steadily reshape demand: As AI tools become part of trip planning, traditional search rankings and OTA merchandising will lose influence, shifting how hotels are surfaced to travelers.
Revenue risk matters more than visibility loss: The larger threat for distribution platforms — and indirectly for hotels — is not fewer clicks, but declining monetisation as AI changes who captures booking value.

Apple is preparing a major overhaul of Siri, replacing its traditional voice assistant with a full-time generative AI chatbot later this year. The new system, reportedly built on a customized version of Google Gemini, would turn Siri into a persistent, conversational interface across Apple devices. While the change promises a more capable assistant, its impact on travel will depend largely on how much access Apple grants third-party developers. Without deeper integration options, Siri may remain a gateway to apps rather than a platform for end-to-end booking.

Apple’s decision to integrate Google’s Gemini models into next-generation Siri marks a significant shift in how travelers may plan and book trips from their phones. By embedding advanced AI directly into the iPhone experience, Apple and Google are moving closer to the traveler’s moment of intent—often before a browser, OTA, or hotel website is opened. For hoteliers, this raises new questions about how properties are surfaced, compared, and recommended by AI-driven assistants. The development signals a gradual but meaningful change in the distribution landscape rather than an overnight disruption.

"Payments in travel are evolving from a technical necessity into a strategic foundation for guest relationships. Drawing on insights from a WiT Singapore panel with leaders from Ant International, Visa, BigPay, Mandai Wildlife Group, and Agoda, it shows how travel’s complexity has consistently pushed payment innovation forward.

For hoteliers, the key implication is that payments now influence trust, conversion, loyalty, and personalization across the entire guest journey. Rather than ending the transaction, payments increasingly enable relevance, resilience, and long-term value for both guests and operators."

"Europe’s online travel landscape is changing in ways that matter directly to hoteliers. While Booking.com has long dominated demand, recent regulatory pressure and strategic shifts are opening new distribution paths. Expedia Group is not trying to beat Booking.com head-on in consumer traffic; instead, it is expanding through B2B partnerships, technology platforms, and bundled distribution that sits behind the scenes. For hotels, this signals a more fragmented OTA environment, new opportunities for incremental demand, and a renewed need to think strategically about channel mix and pricing control."

AI is reaching a stage where access to advanced assistance could meaningfully shape opportunity and inclusion. To expand access while maintaining affordability, ChatGPT plans to introduce advertising tests for its free and low-cost Go tiers in the U.S., while keeping paid Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans ad-free. The company positions ads as a way to reduce usage limits and extend capabilities without charging all users. Throughout this shift, ChatGPT emphasizes that trust, privacy, and answer quality remain central.

"Artificial intelligence can write, design, code, and complete tasks at breakneck speed. It can help business leaders draft emails, create agendas, and quickly prepare for important meetings and difficult discussions.

It can do all of that with just a few voice commands—but it still can’t do the hard work of leadership itself. Generative AI cannot set aspirations, make tough calls, build trust among stakeholders, hold team members accountable, or generate truly new ideas.

That work remains deeply human—and more important to get right than ever before, given the scope of change and uncertainty with which today’s organizations are dealing."