Skift Take

Many execs at hotels and online travel agencies are playing a fun game called "Guess How AI Will Disrupt Us Before It Actually Does."

Sean O'Neill

Hotel companies are continuing to game out how the innovations and disruptions brought about by generative AI will impact them. But it's still early days.

"There's been a lot of hype," said Jess Petitt, SVP of commercial strategy, insights, and analytics at Hilton."The number of hotel bookings that are actually generated using Generative AI is infinitesimally small," Petitt said. "But in the next five years, the [technology] will make a huge impact."

Here are several themes we heard from Petitt and others who spoke on-stage at the Destination AI summit in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

Distribution Will Get More Complex

Hotel executives frequently asked how device makers like Apple, Amazon (with its Alexa products), and Samsung might weave generative AI into their operating systems.

In one vision of the future, tech giants like Apple will apply generative AI to all of a person's personal data on their phones. Gen AI will allow them to make more relevant travel recomm