SiteMinder adds AI inventory access

SiteMinder said on April 15 it has started routing live hotel rates and availability into artificial intelligence booking channels, including ChatGPT and Claude. (siteminder.com) The company said the rollout covers its network of 53,000 hotels in 150 countries. It is extending its Demand Plus product, which already distributes inventory to Google, Trivago and TripAdvisor, into conversational tools where travelers search with prompts instead of filters. (siteminder.com) On the hotel side, the flow is simple: SiteMinder passes live rates and room availability into an artificial intelligence interface, and the traveler is sent to the hotel’s own booking page to finish the reservation. SiteMinder’s artificial intelligence distribution page says the connector can surface a property on ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude with “live rates” and “real availability.” (siteminder.com) On the intermediary side, SiteMinder is also opening its Channels Plus product to artificial intelligence-powered travel sellers. PhocusWire reported those partners can search, compare and book inventory inside their own interfaces, with reservations then passed through SiteMinder to the hotel. (phocuswire.com) The change lands as travel companies try to make sure their inventory shows up inside chatbots before travelers ever reach a search engine or online travel agency. Skift reported SiteMinder is positioning its hotel network to be “discoverable and bookable” through artificial intelligence trip-planning tools rather than only through metasearch and traditional online channels. (skift.com) The first partner in that push is DirectBooker, which SiteMinder named as its inaugural artificial intelligence demand partner. SiteMinder said DirectBooker connects live hotel rates to major and emerging artificial intelligence platforms. (siteminder.com) The technical layer underneath is Model Context Protocol, or MCP, a standard for giving artificial intelligence systems live access to outside tools and data instead of static text. Hospitality Technology reported SiteMinder is using MCP so booking agents can pull current hotel information in real time. (hospitalitytech.com) That matters for hotel inventory because room supply changes by the minute, and stale data can produce bad recommendations or failed bookings. SiteMinder said its new setup is meant to keep rates and availability current across both direct booking links and artificial intelligence-enabled intermediaries. (siteminder.com) SiteMinder’s chief executive Sankar Narayan told PhocusWire that hotels need to be “present and bookable at every new point of discovery.” The company is now betting that one of those discovery points is the chatbot window itself. (phocuswire.com)