Google has officially entered a new phase of inbox intelligence. With the rollout of Gmail features powered by Gemini AI, the inbox is no longer just a place where emails arrive. It is becoming an AI-curated feed that prioritizes relevance, engagement, and perceived importance.
NB: This is an article from Cendyn
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For hoteliers, this shift represents more than a product update. It signals a fundamental change in how marketing emails are evaluated, surfaced, and consumed by guests. While traditional deliverability still matters, visibility is now determined by how much attention your emails earn.
What’s changing in Gmail
Gmail’s Gemini-powered updates introduce several new capabilities, but not all of them directly impact email marketing performance. Understanding the difference is key.
AI overviews help individual users summarize long email threads and ask natural-language questions such as “What hotel did we stay at in Charleston last fall?” These features are designed for productivity and search within the inbox. While useful for end users, they do not directly influence whether a marketing email gets seen.
Help me write and suggested replies assist users with drafting and responding to emails. Again, these tools are largely about convenience rather than inbox placement.
The most significant change for marketers is AI Inbox prioritization.
Gmail will increasingly rank emails based on engagement and relevance, surfacing high-priority messages and “VIP” senders while pushing lower-value content out of view. In other words, delivery no longer guarantees visibility. Your email may technically arrive, but if Gmail’s AI decides it is not important to the user, it may never meaningfully appear in the inbox.
This shift is subtle, but its impact is profound.
Why this matters for hotels
Hotel email programs often face unique challenges. Long-standing guest lists, infrequent engagement cycles, and broad promotional sends can all work against engagement over time.
Gemini’s AI is designed to reward senders who consistently deliver value and penalize those who generate noise. That means hotels with strong engagement practices stand to benefit, while those relying on volume-based strategies may see performance decline even if their emails are technically delivered.
The inbox is becoming less about who shows up and more about who earns attention.
