cards inside ChatGPT, then move to WyndhamHotels.com to complete the booking. Scott Strickland, Chief Commercial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, said “conversational AI is reshaping how travellers discover and book”, while Wyndham described the launch as a way to support guest discovery, booking and owner ROI. In the Middle East, where multilingual demand, fast-changing development pipelines and destination storytelling all matter, this is a major commercial cue. Arabic and English content, local context, transport details, cultural experiences and real-time availability need to be clean enough for agents and compelling enough for humans. THE BORING AI IS THE MONEY AI The most useful AI in travel may also be the least glamorous. Less robot concierge. More staffing model, maintenance alert, revenue recommendation, energy optimisation and invoice automation. Wyndham’s 2026 Hotel Owner Trends Report captures this neatly. Nearly all hotel owners surveyed, 98%, have started incorporating AI into their business, but only 32% have embedded it across most aspects of operations. Almost three-quarters want to do more but feel overwhelmed and unsure where to start. Current uses are highly practical: 64% of AI adopters use it for operational efficiency, 54% for energy efficiency and 53% for revenue optimisation. Guest-facing use remains much lower, with 11% using AI to enhance the guest experience and 9% for personalisation. That tells the industry something useful. The first wave of AI return is likely to come from the back of house: better forecasting, smarter pricing, lower energy use, predictive maintenance, automated “The industry survived the internet, OTAs, mobile, metasearch, guest reviews, contactless check-in and the era of people filming breakfast buffets for TikTok. It can survive agentic AI”
Skift has described AI models as new travel gatekeepers, where visibility depends on being mentioned, not simply ranked. Amadeus also found that 69% of travellers rely solely on AI search summaries, while GEO and SEO have become a top demand- generation priority for hoteliers. This is where panic should become practical. AI agents need accurate, structured, current information. Room types, amenities, policies, dining hours, children’s facilities, accessibility, sustainability credentials, images, local experiences, meeting space, parking, transfer times, pet rules and cancellation terms all need to be machine-readable and consistent across channels. A hotel with three different names for the same suite, outdated restaurant hours and
a buried PDF of its spa menu is not being mysterious. It is making itself hard to sell. Accor has already moved directly into this space, launching the ALL Accor app in ChatGPT in January 2026. Travellers can search Accor hotels by destination, dates, guests and preferences in natural language, then move to the ALL platform to book. The service works in more than 20 languages and is explicitly designed to increase portfolio visibility in AI-led discovery. Wyndham has moved in the same direction, launching what it describes as the first native ChatGPT hotel app from a major economy and midscale franchisor in the US. Built for conversational search, the app allows travellers to explore around 8,400 hotels through map-based navigation, amenity filters and interactive hotel
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