Hotel distribution has just shifted on its axis. SiteMinder, the world’s leading hotel commerce platform, has announced a major expansion of its technology infrastructure that places 53,000 hotels across 150 countries inside AI-powered booking environments, including ChatGPT and Claude. The move, announced this week in partnership with AI demand partner DirectBooker, signals the most significant change to hotel discovery and distribution since the rise of online travel agencies two decades ago.
The Sydney-headquartered company has expanded two of its core products: Demand Plus and Channels Plus. Demand Plus, previously focused on metasearch platforms such as Google, Trivago and TripAdvisor, now extends into AI-driven conversational environments. Channels Plus, the platform’s multi-channel distribution solution, has been opened to AI-enabled online travel agencies and intermediaries that search, compare and book on behalf of travellers.
Both expansions are built on Model Context Protocol (MCP), a technical standard that gives AI platforms access to live hotel data in real time, rather than relying on static or outdated information. For hotels, this distinction is critical. AI systems without live data risk presenting inaccurate rates, unavailable rooms and outdated conditions, undermining traveller trust at the moment of booking intent.
The demand is already there
The timing reflects a profound shift in how travellers plan and purchase accommodation. SiteMinder’s Changing Traveller Report 2026, described as the world’s largest consumer survey on accommodation plans and preferences, found that eight in ten travellers now want AI assistance during their booking journey. That represents nearly four times the demand recorded just a year earlier.
The same research revealed that online travel agencies have overtaken search engines as the primary starting point for accommodation research for the first time in industry history, with OTAs now leading at 26% against search engines at 21%. Taken together, these data points point to a traveller who is moving faster, comparing more broadly and increasingly expecting technology to do the work of discovery on their behalf.
For hotel operators, the message is direct: if your property cannot be found and booked inside an AI assistant, you are already absent from a growing share of the purchasing journey.
How the model works
DirectBooker, named as SiteMinder’s inaugural AI demand partner, connects live hotel rates to major and emerging AI platforms. Under the Demand Plus expansion, a traveller interacting with an AI assistant can receive curated hotel recommendations, view real-time rates and complete a reservation directly on the hotel’s own booking page, preserving the direct booking relationship.
Through Channels Plus, AI-enabled intermediaries can access SiteMinder’s hotel inventory and manage the full booking journey within their own platforms, with reservations flowing through SiteMinder to the property.
Sankar Narayan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of SiteMinder, framed the move as a natural extension of the company’s core purpose. ‘Navigating the shifts in how travellers find and book hotels is what SiteMinder was built to do. As AI-driven hotel discovery accelerates, we are expanding Demand Plus and Channels Plus to give properties on our platform new ways to be found and convert demand across these emerging pathways. For hoteliers, that means being present and bookable at every new point of discovery, and that advantage will only grow.’
Sanjay Vakil, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of DirectBooker, positioned AI as a structural change in how travellers enter the booking funnel. ‘AI is creating a new front door for hotel discovery, and every hotel deserves to be found through it. SiteMinder’s partnership supports DirectBooker’s goal of ensuring hotels are the primary beneficiaries of this shift: capturing a new generation of demand while keeping the guest relationship exactly where it belongs.’
Operators are already watching
Industry response suggests the move addresses a concern that has been building quietly across hotel groups. Norman Arundel, Director of Hotels and Resorts at EVT, a hotel and entertainment group operating across Australia, New Zealand and Europe, described the shift as already visible in real-time guest behaviour.
‘We are watching guest search behaviour evolve in real time, and the direction is unmistakable: AI is becoming part of how travellers find and choose where to stay,’ Arundel said. ‘The imperative for hotels is to be discoverable in that environment, surfacing the right information at the right moment. At EVT, we see this as one of the most significant opportunities in hospitality right now.’
SiteMinder’s platform currently processes more than 300 million room nights annually and handles over 135 million reservations worth more than AUD 85 billion for hotel customers each year. That scale gives the company a substantial installed base from which to extend AI distribution without requiring individual hotels to build their own direct integrations with each AI platform.
What this means for hotel teams
The shift from search-led to AI-led discovery has quiet but significant operational consequences. Revenue management strategies built around metasearch visibility, OTA ranking algorithms and keyword-driven search behaviour will need to evolve alongside new AI discovery logic.
For hotel leadership teams, the questions are no longer purely technological. How hotels structure their data, maintain rate parity, present their property information and manage the guest relationship across AI-intermediated bookings will become central to commercial strategy. Distribution is no longer a back-office function.
The industry spent two decades learning to compete inside search engines and OTA platforms. The next phase of that competition is already under way, and this time, the front door is a conversation.
