Hotels Are Losing Travelers’ Discovery Window — And Scrambling to Get It Back

Hotels are now competing earlier in the travel journey as discovery shifts to social platforms, recommendations, and AI tools.

At the International Hospitality Investment Forum (IHIF) in Berlin earlier this week, executives from Hilton, Marriott, TUI, Minor, and Kempinski outlined how they’re responding to an increase in travelers deciding what kind of trip they want long before a hotel brand enters the picture.

“From a search perspective, people type in ‘Give me the best diving spots in Africa.’ They don’t say they want to go to a four-star, five-star hotel,” Peter Krueger, CEO of TUI Holiday Experiences, said. “The search behavior is changing, and therefore we have to change how we promote our products.”

That creates a new problem for hotel groups. They used to fight hardest when trave