Major hotel groups are pushing harder to get travellers to book directly — both to avoid the commissions charged by online travel agents (OTAs) and to position themselves for a future in which AI “agents” do the booking.
Loyalty as the battleground
Marriott, the world’s largest hotel company, said its Bonvoy loyalty programme — which signs up customers directly rather than through intermediaries — had roughly 260 million members at the end of September, up about 18% year on year. Rivals including Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham have likewise leaned on technology and richer perks to drive direct bookings. Hilton, for instance, has made elite loyalty status easier to reach and struck partnerships — such as one with Explora Journeys, the luxury arm of MSC Cruises — that let members spend points beyond its own hotels.
The cost of the middleman
Operators have long chafed at OTA fees, which typically run in the region of 15–25% of a booking. The industry-wide OTA fee burden has been estimated at around $25 billion a year. Hotels still value OTAs for the incremental demand they bring, but they increasingly want stronger direct relationships to reduce their dependence on those channels. As Bernstein analyst Richard Clark put it, chains do not want to rely on expensive platforms where it is hard to defend their position. Direct bookings also hand hotels more guest data, enabling more personalised, repeat-driving experiences.
AI agents: threat and opportunity
The rise of AI booking assistants cuts both ways. Marriott chief financial officer Leeny Oberg has suggested bookings made through AI channels could end up cheaper than those via OTAs, and Wyndham chief executive Geoff Ballotti called tools like ChatGPT and Gemini a “unique opportunity” to reduce OTA reliance, noting the company’s own AI tools are already encouraging direct bookings. The strategic prize is clear: if a traveller’s AI agent can be persuaded — through clean inventory feeds, member rates and loyalty hooks — to book direct, the chain avoids the OTA toll while keeping the customer. This connects to the broader emergence of agent-driven commerce.
The platforms push back
The OTAs are not conceding. Glenn Fogel, chief executive of Booking Holdings (owner of Booking.com and Priceline), acknowledged direct competition with hotel loyalty programmes but argued that a traveller is “one click away” from switching, so hotels must keep improving service. Expedia’s chief commercial officer, Greg Schultz, maintained there is “room for all of us” in a roughly $3 trillion travel industry and that the platforms add complementary value.
Limitations and what to watch
How this plays out is far from settled. Membership numbers are a useful signal but not the same as booking share, and loyalty schemes are costly to run. The AI-agent dynamic is still emerging: whichever loyalty programmes first become genuinely machine-readable — queryable by an agent, points balance and all — may become the default, but the standards and economics for that are unproven. Executive comments here reflect the commercial interests of the companies making them, and the figures come from company disclosures and analyst estimates that can change. The direction of travel is toward direct booking and agent-mediated commerce, but the balance of power between hotels and platforms remains open.
