AI now picks the hotel for your guest, and the Philippines launched its own with no data

The week opened with an uncomfortable argument picked up by Hospitality Net: Google AI Mode is erasing the research phase where guests compared hotels and made a choice. Now the AI serves one option and she takes it. That slice of the funnel, the one feeding OTAs and comparison sites, shrinks. And this is not a ten-year trend.

The same piece carries Pertlink's open letter to the Philippines' Tourism Secretary over the government's AI assistant, launched without data from the DOT, the Department of Tourism. Building a public tourism assistant without the official data source raises the question of how it will answer with anything more than brochures. It closes with an idea I share: resort sales teams get built from the inside, training people who already know the product, not hiring in.

My read: if AI now picks for the guest, the margin moves elsewhere. To direct sales, to reception upselling, to the resort's own data. Whoever holds their inventory, their history and a trained team plays with an edge.