The Battle for the Booking Layer: How Lodging Leaders Are Building Moats Against AI Disintermediation

Why Hilton, Marriott, and Airbnb are deploying proprietary digital tools, verified identity, and physical scale to defend direct bookings against agentic travel aggregators.

Hey everyone,

There was a moment, late spring, when I didn’t know why I was clicking send.

So I paused the PSFK and RIW newsletters over the summer. I didn’t really know what value they were delivering anymore, and I was worried the experimenting I was doing with them was starting to feel like noise rather than innovation.

And I spent the summer adding to…