For decades, the hotel industry has fought to reclaim control of its direct booking channel. First from traditional travel agents, then from OTAs, and more recently from Google itself.
NB: This is an article from The Hotels Network, one of our Expert Partners
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and stay up to date
But the latest challenge isn’t a middleman in the traditional sense. It’s something entirely different:
Operator.
It doesn’t compare prices across OTAs. It doesn’t pull up a list of hotels ranked by star ratings or location. It doesn’t encourage travelers to visit your website at all, unless they already know your name.
Operator, OpenAI’s new AI “Computer Use” agent, is the next iteration of search. And if left unchecked, it may accelerate a shift that hoteliers aren’t ready for: a future where AI books rooms without guests ever visiting a hotel website.
What is Operator?
Operator is an AI-powered assistant designed to handle tasks on behalf of users. It navigates the web, searches for flights, hotels, restaurants, and events, and, after checking in with the user, completes bookings. It doesn’t just suggest options. It acts.
The promise? Frictionless travel planning. No more opening ten tabs to compare prices. No more endless scrolling. Just a simple, seamless, AI-driven experience where guests say what they need, and Operator delivers the best match.
But here’s the catch.
During testing, Operator overwhelmingly directed searches to OTAs rather than hotel websites. Unless a traveler specifically requested a hotel by name, the AI defaulted to aggregators like Booking.com and Expedia.
Let that sink in.
This is not a Google-style search where potential guests sift through multiple options. Operator makes the choice for them. And if your hotel’s brand isn’t top of mind, the AI will route that guest straight to an OTA.
Which means the battle for direct bookings is about to get even harder.
The Four Audiences of a Hotel Website
For years, hotels have optimized their websites for one type of visitor: humans. The strategy was simple, drive traffic, tell a compelling brand story, and optimize conversion.
But in the age of AI, your website will now serve four distinct audiences:
- Humans – The guests who still arrive via direct search, digital marketing, or loyalty-driven intent.
- Human Agents Like Operator – AI tools booking on behalf of guests, favoring the most structured and authoritative data sources.
- The Hotel’s Own AI Chatbots – On-site assistants that engage users, answer questions, and attempt to convert visitors.
- Crawlers (SEO & AI) – The behind-the-scenes bots scraping data for search engines, AI models, and voice assistants.
Here’s the problem: hoteliers want more humans on their site, but that number is going to shrink. AI will increasingly act as the gatekeeper, filtering search results before a human ever clicks a link.
Which means when a human does land on your site, you need to convert them. And you need to do it fast.
