Key Takeaways
- Marriott has launched Ask Bonvoy, a conversational AI search that lets travelers find hotels across its roughly 10,000 properties in plain language, starting as a U.S. English beta with a global rollout planned later in 2026
- The core of the strategy is grounding answers exclusively in Marriott's own verified data to keep its nearly 283 million Bonvoy members inside its own site and app rather than on external AI
- Hilton and IHG are building similar conversational AI search, turning the "entry point" of travel discovery into a contest that is reshaping how commerce and booking operators win traffic
Marriott steps beyond the search box
Marriott starts to roll out AI chat trip search; Hilton, IHG also building conversational AI search to keep guests on their sites and apps.
skift.comOn June 16, 2026, Marriott International, one of the world's largest hotel companies, began the beta rollout of a conversational AI search tool called Ask Bonvoy. Instead of typing dates and place names into a form as they have for decades, travelers can now ask in everyday language, such as "a resort for a family of four with a spa and golf," and narrow down candidates from the roughly 10,000 hotels Marriott operates worldwide.
Marriott is quietly shifting away from the search boxes and filters that have been the default for online travel search. The current beta is limited to U.S. English and is available on Marriott.com and the iOS and Android Bonvoy apps to a subset of members and new sign-ups. The company expects this measured rollout to absorb real-time feedback and sharpen performance ahead of a global release planned for later this year, eventually opening up to its nearly 283 million Bonvoy members.
What Ask Bonvoy actually does
Ask Bonvoy runs on Marriott's own proprietary AI architecture. It interprets a traveler's natural-language query, identifies the purpose of the trip, and surfaces relevant, curated candidates from the portfolio. Conditions such as "good for families," "near the beach," or "strong on spa, dining, and golf" are absorbed within the flow of the conversation.
What sets the tool apart is how it generates answers. Where typical generative AI draws on the open web, Ask Bonvoy grounds its responses only in property data that Marriott owns and has verified. This design ensures accuracy on amenities like dining, spa, and golf, and avoids the misinformation that hallucinations can introduce. CEO Anthony Capuano frames it as bringing conversational AI "to the heart of how travelers explore" the portfolio.
In the current beta, travelers can still use traditional date and location filters alongside the new experience. Once a guest settles on a property within Ask Bonvoy, the tool hands them off to Marriott's existing booking flow; the AI does not complete payment itself. Chief Revenue and Technology Officer Drew Pinto says the design is meant to serve both travelers who know exactly where they want to go and those still in the discovery phase. Over time, Marriott plans to support loyalty points-based searches as well.
Why "staying inside your own data" is a strategy
Read closely, Ask Bonvoy's design reflects a clear business strategy that goes beyond technical robustness: keeping the entire trip-planning journey within Marriott's own ecosystem.
The starting point of travel search is in flux. As more people ask external AI such as ChatGPT or Google's AI Mode "what hotel should I book," hotel chains risk being compared, and sometimes shown alongside competitors, before a traveler ever reaches their site. Grounding responses solely in its own data lets Marriott avoid surfacing rival properties, suppress misinformation, and steer bookings toward Marriott.com and its apps.
What is striking is that even as Marriott builds this walled garden, it is also planting flags in everyone else's. The company is working with Google on its forthcoming AI Mode travel product and is participating in OpenAI's advertising pilot program. Skift characterizes this as a reasonable hedge at a moment when no travel company is yet sure where travelers will actually begin their searches. Tend your own garden, but buy real estate in others' too. That two-front posture is, for now, the pragmatic answer.
Hilton and IHG join the fight for the entry point
Investing in conversational AI search is not unique to Marriott. Major chains are moving into the same territory one after another.
In March 2026, Hilton released the Hilton AI Planner, available to all visitors on its site. It builds a trip from conversational prompts and proposes candidates from the portfolio, and is reported to be lifting early booking conversion. At the same time, Hilton's CIO has flagged the need to grapple with the cost of generative AI, the so-called "tokenomics," a reminder that running these tools is not free.
IHG took a somewhat different approach. The company offers an app that runs inside ChatGPT, letting users search and compare its more than 7,000 hotels within ChatGPT, while also planning to add conversational search to IHG.com and the IHG One Rewards app. The idea is to be discoverable on external AI while routing the final booking back to its own direct channels. In contrast to the walling-off pursued by Marriott and Hilton, this is a hybrid model that captures external traffic and converts it internally.
Together, these three approaches signal that the hotel industry has entered a contest over who controls the entry point of search. The same is true for online travel agencies, where Expedia and Booking.com appear as ChatGPT apps and Expedia has embraced AI agents as an opportunity rather than a threat. The whole journey of discovery, search, and booking is being reorganized around AI agents.
Implications for commerce and booking operators
Ask Bonvoy is not just a hotel-industry story. It carries several practical lessons for any commerce or booking operator handling products and services.
First, your structured product data has become a competitive asset in the AI era. Marriott could build conversational search on its own verified data only because it had organized property information in machine-readable form. Whether you hold amenities, pricing, and availability in a form an AI can interpret accurately determines whether you can power your own AI, or risk being misrepresented by someone else's.
Second is the design decision of how to balance feeding external AI with keeping customers in your own channels. Just as Marriott advances both a walled garden and external integrations, the answer is rarely to bet on one or the other. Raising the experience value of your own channels while preparing to be discovered by agents like ChatGPT and Google should proceed in parallel.
Finally, even as AI becomes the entry point for conversation, the reliability of payment and booking remains the lifeline of the business. The fact that Ask Bonvoy currently hands processing off to existing booking tools reflects a deliberate separation between the conversational experience and dependable transaction handling. How to build the infrastructure that smoothly connects discovery through to booking and payment via agents will be the next point of debate.
Conclusion
Marriott's Ask Bonvoy is less a feature addition than one answer to a pressing question: as traveler search migrates to AI, how do you protect and leverage your own data and customer touchpoints? Ground answers in your own data to ensure reliability, keep nearly 283 million members inside your site and app, and at the same time never neglect to establish footholds on external AI. This two-front strategy, alongside the moves of Hilton, IHG, and the OTAs, mirrors where the initiative in travel commerce may be heading. As the starting point of search shifts from forms to dialogue, this transition is an occasion for any operator with product data and customer touchpoints, not just hotels, to reconsider where they stand.
