In Brief: Hotels cannot stop AI booking agents, but they can control how those agents access inventory and on what terms. Terence Ronson argues that operators should replace outright bans with clear access policies, contractual liability, direct booking connections and agent-friendly upselling—before AI moves from influencing travellers’ shortlists to completing their bookings.
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The Bouncers Have Arrived: Hotels Start Choosing Which Machines Get In – Image Credit Pertlink
On 11 November, at the Skift Commerce Summit in New York, MCR’s Tyler Morse said he wants to ban AI agents from booking his hotels. His reason is that agents “make more rational decisions” and don’t buy on impulse, so they are bad for upsell. “Everyone is going to ban the agents,” he said, and then admitted: “I can’t figure out how to do it.” United Airlines announced its own ban on AI bots the same day.
Morse has the diagnosis right and the prescription wrong. No hotel can ban its way out of distribution. If you shut the front door, the agent goes round the side: in Singapore and Japan, Agoda is already bookable through Meta’s Muse. If Meta then takes a cut on top of the OTA’s, you could pay twice for the same room.
The rope, not the wall
What hotels need is a bouncer: a policy that says which agents get in, through which door, and on what terms. Skift checked 50 hotel brand websites and found only 10 that address AI crawlers in their robots.txt files. Citi has offered the first line of that policy: liability for an agent’s mistake should fall on “the company that is actually coming with the agent,” not on the hotel. Meanwhile Duffel and Katanox are building direct PMS/CRS connections in which the hotel stays merchant of record.
Asia already has the queue at the door
Agoda’s 2027 Asia Travel Pulse surveyed 3,395 travellers across 11 markets. 53% now plan trips with AI, but only 7% would let it book and just 6% fully trust an agent to book on its own. So the agent is not booking your hotel yet, but it is already deciding whether you make the shortlist. Treat the 7% as a deadline, not as permission to wait.
What to do this week
1. Write an agent access policy, not a ban. Set out which agents you serve and through which connectors, and update robots.txt and your terms of use to match.
2. Put agent liability in writing. Turn Citi’s principle into a contract clause, and set out how refunds and no-shows are handled within your Decision Envelope.
3. Model double commission in your 2027 budget, per booking (TCPB).
4. Rebuild upsell for a rational buyer. Make offers structured and rule-based so an agent can accept them for the guest.
The guest who never gets tired is coming. Hotels that put up the rope now will decide who comes through the door, and the rest will find out from their OTA statement.
Terence Ronson
Terence Ronson is the Founder and Managing Director of Pertlink Limited, a boutique hospitality technology and AI advisory consultancy headquartered in Hong Kong since 2000, operating across the Philippines and Asia-Pacific. He chairs the AI Education & Training Subcommittee of the HFTP AI Collective and is an inductee of both the HFTP International Hospitality Technology Hall of Fame and the CHTA Hall of Fame.