Wyndham Is Treating AI Shopping Bots Like Hotel Guests

On Wyndham’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Geoff Ballotti described AI booking agents as a new type of guest the company is built to serve. Wyndham feeds rates and availability straight from its reservation system to agents including Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots and Instinct, and its booking engine is reportedly live in several AI assistants.

The motive is cost. Morgan Stanley puts online travel agency commissions at 10% to 20%, compared with about 5% for a hotel brand’s own site. The bank models Wyndham shifting 2.5 percentage points of bookings away from agencies by 2028, a smaller gain than the 4 points it models for Marriott and Hilton.

Wyndham also touts AI voice software in more than 1,700 hotels that has handled over 3 million calls this year and books at an average 15% above the published rate. Ballotti says it has lifted the share of direct bookings by more than 5 percentage points. U.S. RevPAR rose 6% in the quarter.

Analysts disagree on loyalty. Ballotti expects Wyndham Rewards membership to become something travelers tell their agents to honor, while Morgan Stanley argues the smaller program makes it less likely to capture savings. Agent traffic is still light, but hotels are building the pipes early.

Sources: Skift