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In the last week of September, the biggest players in the travel industry gathered in New York for Skift Global Forum. Over three days, the CEOs of companies such as Airbnb, Booking Holdings, Expedia Group, Uber and Hyatt took turns on the same stage to set out where they think the industry is going.
Our co-founder and CEO, Martim Gois and Head of Ecosystem, Enzo Aita were there, splitting their time between the main hall and meetings with hotel groups, booking platforms and travel media; setting out to listen as much as to talk. The way travellers find, compare and choose a hotel is changing quickly, and that moment of choice is exactly where Valpas works.
The big theme was hard to miss. AI agents and a handful of very large platforms are taking over more of the journey from search to booking, which leaves every hotel with a simple question: when a traveller, or an assistant acting for them, is weighing up the options, what makes them pick you? A complicated question with so many variables, so here’s five lessons we picked up from the week which might just help answer it.Cmaglfn(45%)
Travellers have plenty to choose from. The hard part comes after the search, when they have to feel sure about their pick, whoever takes that anxiety away wins the booking. Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin described her company's role in the same terms: "It's not about tech, it's about advice."
The good news for hotels is that many of those doubts can be answered before the guest books. Research we commissioned from Phocuswright found that pests such as bed bugs are travellers' number one concern when booking a hotel in the US, UK and France, ahead of cleanliness, value and staff. One clear signal at the right moment makes a difference. When a Michelin Key hotel in Finland started showing its verified bed bug safety during booking, its direct bookings rose 12.5%.
Almost every CEO on stage had an AI story. Airbnb's Brian Chesky confirmed that the company will be launching its own agent next year.
Chesky also made the point we've been thinking about quite a lot since; calling on AI leaders to work together, because the labs have the models but lack the ground truth: reliable knowledge of what is actually happening in the world.
Hotel recommendations show that gap clearly. An assistant comparing two properties can only work with what it can find, and reviews are opinions, often months old. A fact that is checked continuously gives it something solid to go on.
That's how the Valpas attribute works. Each room is verified as bed bug safe in real time, and that status is published in a format booking platforms and AI assistants, including ChatGPT, can read.
Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel highlighted growth in B2B through Agoda and Priceline, and that pattern goes well beyond one company with hotel chains handing more of their distribution to a small group of large partners.
Uber is a case in point. Since April, US users have been able to book hotels inside the Uber app, next to their rides and food orders, with rooms supplied through Expedia Group. For hotels, this means more guests will meet them inside someone else's app, where the copy on a hotel's own website rarely follows. Standardised information that any channel can display travels much better, whether it ends up on an OTA listing or in an AI agent's shortlist. Its for this reason (and more) , that we work with distribution partners so the Valpas attribute appears wherever the room is sold.
Banyan Tree's co-CEO reminded the room that climate change isn't hospitality's to solve alone. Few would argue with that, yet who should lead is still an open question. Our key takeaway here though was that when responsibility is shared, progress comes from whoever makes contributing easy, measurable and commercially sensible. Tighter EU rules on environmental claims, now in force, push in the same direction: if a hotel calls something sustainable, it needs the evidence.
Pesticide-free bed bug safety meets that bar. Valpas protects rooms without indoor insecticides, our methodology is independently verified by Bureau Veritas, and hotels can see the return in their bookings.
The boldest operational story of the week came from Hyatt's Mark Hoplamazian. Hyatt has moved its entire portfolio, more than 1,500 properties in over 80 countries, onto new core systems: Oracle OPERA Cloud for property management, Sabre SynXis for reservations and IDeaS for revenue management. Its owners asked for simpler technology, and Hyatt delivered at a scale few groups would attempt.
It's a welcome counterpoint to the idea that hospitality is slow to change. When owners, operators and guests can all see the benefit, the industry moves, and it moves quickly.
Put the week together and a clear picture forms. Guests want to feel sure before they book. The tools helping them decide, from AI assistants to all-in-one travel apps, rely on facts they can check. Those facts have to travel through fewer, bigger channels. And anything a hotel claims, on safety or sustainability, increasingly needs proof behind it.
Hospitality has been here before. Non-smoking rooms in the 1990s, Wi-Fi in the 2000s and sustainability in the 2010s each began as a cost and became something guests expect. We believe verified bed bug safety is on the same path, and New York made us more confident of it. The hotels that show it clearly at the moment of booking, make it readable on every channel they sell through and measure what it does for their business will be the ones setting the standard.
Thank you to the Skift team and to everyone who made time for us at what truly was a remarkable event.
