Wyndham CEO Geoffrey Ballotti said on the company’s earnings call that connecting Wyndham’s systems to major AI platforms costs less than $100,000 and that there are no transaction fees today for bookings that start in AI. The current setup is simple: the AI experience surfaces Wyndham options, then sends the traveler to Wyndham’s own website to complete the booking, rather than charging a commission inside the AI tool.
Why the travel industry cares
Hotel distribution is basically a battle over demand and costs. OTAs can deliver volume, but industry sources often describe typical OTA commissions in the 15 to 30 percent range (contracts vary by market and program). If AI chat becomes a common place where people begin travel shopping—and it keeps routing users to brand.com—hotels could gain demand without automatically paying an OTA-style fee per booking. That’s why Wyndham is calling this a new “AI-native” distribution path, not just a tech experiment.
Why the integration can be relatively low-cost
A big reason the price tag can look small is that connectors are becoming more standardized. Anthropic open-sourced the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to help AI assistants connect to external systems without building a custom integration for every pairing. In plain terms, MCP is meant to reduce “one-off plumbing” work and make it easier to plug the same hotel data and actions into different AI environments. Wyndham explicitly referenced connecting its MCPs to large language models, which fits that “build once, reuse across platforms” idea.
What to watch next
The big unknown is how AI platforms will monetize travel. Today’s flow is referral-like, but that can change if AI tools introduce paid placement, ads, or transaction-linked fees once they influence demand at scale. Another key development is whether AI experiences move from “discovery + link out” into true end-to-end booking and servicing. Wyndham has also discussed working with Google on an “agentic” booking experience in AI Mode, with timing referenced as the second quarter of 2026 in industry coverage—so the next update to watch is how those experiences launch and what commercial terms come with them.
Source: altexsoft.com
