There is a new type of traveller emerging. They may not visit your website or click on an advertisement. Nor will they speak to anyone. They rely instead on their AI agent to plan their trip, compare prices, negotiate and book all aspects of it. This is a major shift in the way travel is found and transacted. It requires a fundamental redesign of hotel technology stacks.
Are hoteliers prepared for this new generation of guests and digital representatives? Take a look at how AI-driven traffic on websites is already having an impact.
- According to Ahrefs, 63% of websites receive AI trafficThe highest percentage of small sites are located in smaller areas.
- A survey by Adobe reveals that traffic generated by generative AI (chatbots, or AI-powered search assistance) on U.S. Travel websites increased 1,700% between Jul 2024 and Feb 2025.
- Cloudflare Between February 2024 and march 2025, the monthly traffic for generative AI grew 251%.
What does all this mean for the Hospitality Industry?
The majority of hospitality tech stacks were not designed for AI. They were built for humans and not machines. Legacy systems are slow and fragmented. They cannot speak the language of autonomous artificial intelligence. Hotels must redesign their infrastructure to remain visible and bookable within an AI-first ecosystem. This means embracing AI-native protocol, real-time data interoperability and machine-readable formats.
Is your data AI-ready?
AI agents have radically changed the way hotels collect, manage and present data. The traditional website design, which is optimised primarily for visual appeal with manual navigation, does not allow for AI-driven technology to be used. The following criteria must be used to evaluate the systems of hotels:
- Structured data formats Use schema.org markups to make hotel availability, prices, and amenities available to AI crawlers.
- Real-time accessibility: Ensure APIs provide fast and accurate responses to AI agent queries, with a latency of under 100ms, ideally, but definitely, under 200ms. API response time should never exceed 3 seconds.
- Interoperability: Adopting protocols such as Model Context Protocol (MCP), you can achieve seamless interactions between hotel systems and AI platforms.
- Dynamic Content Updates: Automate the updating of inventory and prices to reflect changes in real time, so that AI agents have access to the most recent information.
Hoteliers who fail to meet the standards may become invisible to AI agents. These agents prioritize systems that can deliver clean, actionable information. By preparing data for the new user class, hotels can ensure that they remain competitive in a travel ecosystem which is increasingly automated.
Building a focused and AI-ready architectural foundation
Modern hospitality stacks Begin with unified ecosystems of data that aggregate guest profile, operational metrics and market signals in cloud-based repositories. It eliminates the silos that exist between revenue management, PMS and CRM systems. AI innovation requires the integration of semantic meaning over data. This allows real-time analyses of guest preferences and occupancy trends.
Clean data pipelines allow hotels to deploy AI copilots.
- Change room rates based on market demand
- Predict guest preferences (room, meal selection, room settings, etc)
- Answer customer queries using conversational AI
- Optimize housekeeping routes, inventory orders and other aspects.
These systems continuously learn, improving their efficiency and personalisation with time.
MCP integration and the A2A economy
AI agents are a new paradigm that opens up a whole new world for hotels. They can now actively participate in the agentic economic system. The hotels can no longer rely passively on the traditional distribution channels. To succeed, hotels must adopt strategies that create seamless interactions with AI agents. This will open up new avenues for revenue generation, booking, and personalisation. It all starts with understanding the Model Context Protocol, which is the foundation for the Agent to Agent (A2A), and implementing it.
MCP is an evolving protocol which transforms hotels to active participants in A2A. It standardises the way AI agents interact with hotel systems. This allows them to expand their capabilities by connecting and interacting with other agents. This is beneficial to hotels, as it allows them to:
- Travel solutions that are more comprehensiveHotels can offer bundle packages, which include flights, transport, and local experiences. All of this is coordinated seamlessly.
- Reach a wider publicIntegrating with AI travel platforms allows hotels to reach customers in new segments and expand their reach beyond the traditional channels.
- Increase efficiency and lower costsAutomation of routine tasks with AI agents reduces the need for humans to perform them, allowing staff to concentrate on more valuable activities.
MCP, which is rapidly evolving, can potentially eliminate fragile integrations of APIs. It allows properties to connect to multiple services using a MCP gateway. Imagine an AI travel agent booking hotel rooms, spa treatments, and dinner reservations seamlessly by interacting directly with the hotel’s agent.
Optimizing the agent experience
Traditionally, websites focused on the User Experience (UX). The rise of AI has forced a shift in focus to the agent experience, which must take into account a new set of technical priorities.
- AI-accessible inventory: GraphQL can be used to expose amenities, rooms and other add-ons. It also allows multi-property packages to be booked in a singular transaction.
- Machine-readable content: Consider SEO from the perspective of LLMs and how they view brand visibility. Implement tags for preferential crawling.
- Agent Experience (AX) design: Create parallel versions of the website that are optimized for API interaction. It is important to maintain semantic consistency and support multiple data sources. This includes social graphs as well as query graphs.
- Dynamic commission structures Create lower AI-specific Affiliate tiers, and offer bulk booking discount for high-intent queries.
AI: a transition from legacy systems
The transition from a purely agent-mediated landscape to one that is mediated by agents has become a reality. Hotels who delay the implementation of MCP capabilities and a user-friendly infrastructure run the risk of significant market share loss within 12-18 month as AI travel planning becomes more mainstream.
By forming strategic partnerships with AI-based travel platforms, forward-thinking properties have already gained an advantage over their competitors. Hoteliers must transform their digital infrastructure quickly to be preferred partners in an A2A economy where AI agents will increasingly facilitate guest relationships.
Hotels must adapt to the AI-first architecture. a modern technology stack by:
- Cloud native platforms that offer open API access can gradually replace on-premises systems.
- Microservices are a great way to integrate MCP with a data-platform architecture that is easily composable.
- Consideration of website SEO and the agentic presentation paths.
- Retraining the staff to AI-assisted workflows and reducing manual data input.
The Agentic AI age will see a revamped stack that will increase operational efficiency, and optimise channels in real time. This is done by automatically redistributing the inventory among the most profitable guest profiles and channels. The first-movers in the hotel industry will be able to shape the new distribution paradigm, and they’ll have more control over their digital future.
