Imagine a guest sitting on their couch asking an AI assistant on their phone to find a pet-friendly boutique hotel in Lisbon for the next weekend under $200 a night. Without MCP, the AI will search the web, find generic listings, maybe pull some information from an OTA and give an approximate answer.
NB: This is an article from GuestCentric
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The guest would then have to go through multiple websites to verify the information, check prices and book.
With an MCP the AI directly queries your hotel’s system. It checks real-time availability, sees your actual rates, reads your pet policy and can even complete the booking right there in the conversation. No OTA in the middle, no commission. It’s just a direct booking from a conversation.
Mike Rawson, CIO of citizenM put it well: MCP shifts hotels “from coding to describing intent”, enabling anyone from general managers to front desk teams to shape the guest journey without waiting on developer backlogs.
Why this is a Turning Point for Hotels
OTAs currently hold about 55% of hotel booking market share. The commissions they charge typically range from 15% to 25% per booking. In a $200 room that’s $30 to $50 going to the OTA every single night.
Hotels have been fighting this battle for years, investing in their own websites and direct booking incentives. And it’s worked to some extent: hotel websites consistently deliver the highest value per booking (average of $516 according to Siteminder’s 2025 data), because direct guests tend to book longer stays and add extras.
But now there’s a new challenge: travelers are increasingly starting their search not on Google, not on Booking.com but inside AI assistants. According to Pew Research Center, 57% of U.S. adults already interact with AI at least several times per week. And in travel specifically, 86% of travellers who’ve used AI have done so to find or book accommodation.
The question is not if AI will change hotel distribution. It’s who will control the conversation when it does. And this is where MCP becomes genuinely exciting for hoteliers.
