AI Is Breaking Travel's Search Economics.
Good Morning Hospitality
06/08/26
•34m
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On Monday's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Brandreth Canaley, Michael Goldin, and Jamie Lane break down what AI is actually doing to travel economics and operations right now.
The conversation opens with a story that stops you in your tracks: one traveler used Claude to run 881,076 searches on Etihad Airways to find one flight. The infrastructure cost of that search exceeded the commission.
From there, the team digs into Brian Chesky's move to build an AI lab outside of Airbnb and what it signals about the platform's AI strategy, before closing with a look at what real AI adoption looks like at scale through Evolve's playbook of deflecting 60% of guest inquiries without human intervention.
This episode is presented by Cloudbeds & Bilt. Visit cloudbeds.com/gmh to learn more.
And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
And if you're leaving direct bookings on the table, StayFi turns your wifi into a guest relationship engine. Visit https://stayfi.com/goodmorninghospitality/ to learn more.
Previous Episode
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down a week where ownership, distribution, brand strategy, and climate risk all moved at the same time.
The conversation opens with two billionaires making moves on the Las Vegas Strip in the same week. Tilman Fertitta agreed to buy Caesars Entertainment for $5.7 billion while assuming nearly $12 billion in debt, and Barry Diller is preparing an $18 billion bid to take full control of MGM Resorts International. From there Sarah and Steve dig into a ten-year look at whether the direct booking fight actually paid off for hotels, Hilton's new Undergraduate brand targeting smaller college towns, and how sargassum seaweed is now showing up directly in Caribbean hotel occupancy numbers.
This episode is presented by Cloudbeds & Bilt. Visit cloudbeds.com/gmh to learn more.
And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to joinbilt.com/gmh to learn more.
Next Episode
Independent hoteliers are under pressure from every direction, and now there's an AI mandate on top of it all.
Wil sits down with Adam Harris, Co-Founder and CEO of Cloudbeds, to cut through the noise. Adam's argument: most operators aren't failing because they lack effort or the right tools.
They're failing because they haven't defined the problem, and they're sitting on fragmented data that makes even the best AI useless. The takeaway: AI isn't the strategy. Better questions, better data, and better decisions are.
This episode is presented by Cloudbeds. Connect with Cloudbeds at https://www.cloudbeds.com/gmh, and you can subscribe to Adam's newsletter here: https://www.cloudbeds.com/newsletter/
00:00 Meet Adam Harris
01:37 The Operator Squeeze
04:04 When Tech Becomes a Burden
07:25 AI Starts With Questions
08:37 Deterministic vs Probabilistic
12:24 Cleaning Up Hotel Data
13:49 Cloudbeds Signals In Action
16:35 Autonomous Coding And Caution
18:21 Future Of Hospitality Systems
21:55 Closing Takeaway
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