Beyond the billboard
Anderson's earlier research famously showed that OTA presence (Expedia, Booking) lifted non-OTA bookings by up to 26% — the "billboard effect." Visibility on a third-party shelf generated demand elsewhere. AI breaks that mechanism. It is not a shelf at all. It is "a system that can interpret the intentions of the traveler, infer the trip, shape the choice set, and influence where the booking happens."
Four shifts
- From common visibility to individual interpretation. A request for "a nice hotel in Chicago" no longer returns the same list to everyone. AI distinguishes walkability-for-restaurants from family-space-with-flexible-cancellation without explicit filters.
- From dates-and-location to intent. Natural language replaces the structured search form. The competitive unit moves from "presence in a large database" to "relevance within an interpreted request."
- From broad marketplace to curated set. AI surfaces 10–20 recommendations, not the full inventory. Exclusion from the recommended set is more consequential than a poor ranking on an OTA results page.
- From visibility to representation. Success depends on how the AI understands and describes the property, not just whether it appears.
The new framing
"The traveler is not shown the shelf; the traveler is shown the assistant's small set of selections from the shelf."
Hotels must become "legible to AI systems" — clear identity, structured data, consistent information across sources, strong photography, authentic reviews. Direct structured data (e.g., via Model Context Protocol) is trusted more than crawled web content. Real-time operational connectivity — early check-in, room preferences, connecting rooms — becomes a competitive advantage suppliers hold over intermediaries.
What happens next
Anderson sees a hybrid interim, not immediate displacement. Incumbents will layer semantic search on top of existing infrastructure (Marriott's "Search with AI" being one example), preserving reviews, loyalty, and transaction trust. In parallel, new infrastructure like DirectBooker aims to connect hotels directly to AI systems with live pricing and direct-booking benefits — positioning suppliers as the authoritative source.
The arc Anderson traces: Billboard Effect → Google Effect → AI Effect. From visibility, to structured comparison, to interpreted intent plus curated representation.