The AI search shift is here, and the window to act is now

For more than two decades, the hotel distribution playbook was clear: optimize for Google, manage your OTA relationships, and drive direct bookings through your website. That playbook is being rewritten.

Our Head of Brand and Content, Adam Swart, recently sat down with Mercedes Blanco, VP of Enterprise Growth at Lighthouse, and Carrie Ell, VP Business Development North American at The Hotels Network, to unpack not only what this shift means for hoteliers, but what they can do about it.

A “Google Moment” for hotels

Mercedes opened with a framing that sets the stakes clearly: we are living through what she calls a “Google moment.” Just as Google redefined information discovery two decades ago, displacing what came before it almost entirely, AI is now doing the same to search. The comparison feels dramatic until you look at the numbers.

ChatGPT now has over 800 million users. AI-driven travel search is growing 50% faster than traditional search. According to a recent Simon Kucher survey, 43% of travelers are already using AI when planning their trips. And projections suggest AI could account for roughly 35% of all travel searches worldwide.

To put this in context: when Apple launched the App Store in 2008, it had six million users. ChatGPT reached 800 million. The scale of this revolution dwarfs the mobile era, the one that prompted an industry-wide sprint to build mobile apps and adopt a “mobile first” philosophy. The lesson from that period was simple: those who moved early set the standard. Everyone else played catch-up.

There is one critical difference with AI search that makes it more consequential than Google ever was for hotels. When a traveler searches on Google, they get a list of links. They do the work of filtering, comparing, and deciding. When a traveler asks an AI agent for a hotel recommendation, the AI makes its own decision. It chooses which hotels to surface and which to ignore. There is no page two. There are no maps. There is just a recommendation that reads like a conversation.

The question, as Mercedes put it directly: “Is your hotel showing up? And what are you doing to make your hotel visible within those AI recommendations?”

The OTAs didn’t wait, and neither should hoteliers

While most hotels were still learning what the ChatGPT App Store was, Booking.com and Expedia were already inside it. Both were day-one launch partners when the marketplace went live in October 2023. They did not wait and see. They are actively training AI to think of them as the primary gateway to hotel inventory.

Being on Booking.com or Expedia does technically mean your property can surface through their ChatGPT integrations. But as Mercedes noted, that is the same as asking whether you are comfortable letting someone else decide when to show you, how to describe you, and at what commission. It is the digital equivalent of not having your own website that ranks on Google.

Introducing Connect AI: Three pillars for the AI era

Lighthouse built Connect AI to give hotels a seat at the table. As Mercedes explained, this is not a chatbot for your website. It is a new infrastructure layer that makes your hotel discoverable, accurately represented, and bookable, directly, inside AI conversations.

Connect AI is built around three pillars:

Get discovered. When a traveler asks an AI agent to find a boutique hotel with a pool in a specific city, your property cannot afford to be overlooked if that description fits you. Connect AI ensures you surface in the relevant AI conversations, not just as a footnote, but as a recommended option.

Get understood. AI draws on whatever data exists about your property online. Left to its own devices, it might describe your hotel in ways that are outdated, incomplete, or simply wrong. With Connect AI, you control the narrative, your amenities, your tone of voice, your identity. AI describes your hotel exactly as you want it to be described.

Get booked directly. When a guest is ready to say yes, they are sent directly to your booking engine, not to a third-party OTA. Connect AI integrates your live rates and direct booking links into AI conversations, so the channel advantage stays with you.

What this looks like in practice

Carrie walked attendees through a live demo of the experience from the traveler’s perspective. When a user searches for a hotel in ChatGPT, the Connect AI app surfaces relevant properties with personalized content and seasonal messaging. The traveler can explore reviews, photos, and property details within the interface, and when they’re ready to book, a single “Book Now” button routes them straight to the hotel’s own booking engine. No OTA in the middle.

The app is AI-native — built into the ChatGPT ecosystem as a direct knowledge source rather than a bolted-on integration. Travelers connect once; after that, ChatGPT draws from it automatically for relevant searches. ChatGPT will also organically surface the app to users whose intent matches its content, so hotels benefit from passive discovery too.

How the technology works

For those curious about what is happening under the hood, Carrie offered a clear explanation. Connect AI is built on two key technologies. The first is GEO-structured content — Generative Engine Optimization, the AI-era equivalent of SEO — which structures hotel information so AI engines can read and trust it.

This content can also be applied directly to a hotel’s own website schema, improving organic discoverability across AI platforms beyond ChatGPT. The second is MCP (Model Context Protocol), a standard that functions like an API for AI, enabling live rate data to feed into the app in real time. Setup is handled almost entirely by Lighthouse’s team, with the hotel reviewing and approving content before it goes live.

Answering the questions everyone is asking

“We’re already on Booking.com and Expedia, doesn’t that mean we’re already in ChatGPT?”

Yes, but through someone else’s channel, at their terms, and at a commission cost. Connect AI gives hotels their own presence, with branded content, direct rates, and direct booking links. Branded hotels that participate in Connect AI gain a double advantage: their brand app directs to their booking engine, and so does the Connect AI app.

“Will this work for independent hotels, not just big brands?”

Connect AI is built to work for any hotel, independent or branded, from any booking engine. The technology has no such limitations. Independent hotels, in fact, stand to gain the most, a direct presence in ChatGPT that competes alongside OTAs and major brands on equal footing.

“Will this expand beyond ChatGPT?”

ChatGPT is the only platform that has opened an app marketplace at scale for B2C travel use. Others, including Perplexity and Claude, have not yet released comparable infrastructure. When they do, Lighthouse intends to be there. As Carrie put it: “Wherever we need to be, we intend to be there.”

They were right on track, and the proof launched a week later

Everything Adam, Mercedes and Carrie described in that webinar was not a forecast for some distant future. It was already in motion. Just one week after the session, the Connect AI app, The Hotels Network, went live inside the ChatGPT App Store — a real, working product behind everything they had outlined.

At its core, the app solves a problem that has been quietly growing: hotels have no presence in the AI conversations where a growing number of travelers are now making decisions. Connect AI changes that. It embeds a hotel's verified details — amenities, rates, property story — directly into ChatGPT as a trusted source. A traveler asking for help planning a trip to Lisbon isn't browsing. They're close to a decision. The app puts your hotel in that moment, with your content, your rates and a direct path to your booking engine. No OTA in the middle.

The funnel hasn't disappeared. It's just moved. It begins inside a conversation, not a search bar, and the filtering travelers once did across multiple tabs is now being done for them. Hotels that have established themselves as properties AI can accurately find and describe are the ones showing up in those conversations. Those that haven't are absent from a journey they never knew was happening.

The question isn't whether to act, it’s how quickly you can.

Watch the full webinar, and learn more about the launch of the first direct booking app in ChatGPT.