Not long ago, a guest would visit your website, browse your rooms, and book. Today, they might engage in a conversation on many new, emerging commerce channels. They might ask ChatGPT to find a mountain resort with golf courses and a spa. They might find a competitor leveraging social selling to book new guests. They might complete the booking without ever touching a website, staff, or a brands booking systems.
That’s the shift already underway. And many hospitality brands don’t even know it’s happening. Others are taking a wait and see approach, while those that will thrive in the coming economy are taking proactive steps to capitalize on conversational commerce.
The Rise of Conversational Commerce
Conversational commerce is not a trend. It is the next interface of intent.
OpenAI’s new Agent and App SDKs are unlocking a wave of “social agents” that can discover, recommend, and complete purchases directly in chat. At the same time, the Agentic Commerce Protocol allows a guest to transact inside an AI platform while the brand still fulfills and manages the booking. Other channels are beginning to emerge as well that will continue to dip into your direct bookings if you don’t take heed.
This is what happens when search, chat, and checkout merge into one fluid interaction. Guests are moving toward it faster than most luxury operators realize.
The Missed Conversational Booking
Every conversation that doesn’t lead to a booking is no longer a missed email or ignored call. It’s a missed signal. A guest asked a digital agent for guidance, and your property wasn’t there to answer. We are getting feedback on perhaps the most important signal of all; guest intent.
In the coming years, many luxury brands will see steady website traffic, but quieter phones and inboxes. They will attribute it to “market softening.” In truth, the conversations simply moved elsewhere. The risk is not that AI will replace the booking agent. The risk is that the conversation that once happened with you now happens without you.
The New Gatekeepers of Discovery
When AI intermediaries become the first point of contact, discovery no longer begins with your brand. It begins with the prompt. The algorithms decide which resorts appear, what order they appear in, and how they are described.
Without direct integration, your offers may be absent from those responses. Even when they are included, the human connection that once defined luxury can be lost in translation.
Luxury thrives on context, anticipation, and memory. AI can handle the mechanics of booking, but not the art of belonging.
The Strategic Imperative
Luxury leaders must now think in two layers:
- The visible experience guests still touch and feel.
- The invisible infrastructure where intent is formed and fulfilled through digital conversation.
That means preparing your brand to participate in these new conversational ecosystems. It means giving your data, content, and systems the structure to speak fluently with the AI agents guests already trust.
Those who adapt will not lose intimacy. They will gain new access points to serve guests at the exact moment of desire.
The Philosophy of Presence
In the next era of luxury, presence will no longer mean a lobby greeting or a follow-up call. It will mean being discoverable, trustworthy, and transactable inside every intelligent channel a guest chooses.
Luxury has always been about anticipation. Conversational commerce is anticipation, digitized. The question is not whether AI will change how guests book. It’s whether your brand will still be part of that conversation.
I firmly believe The Conversation IS the Commerce™
