Most operators are focused on whether they show up in Google search results - it’s the right instinct, but an increasingly incomplete one.
IDC published research this year on how AI agents are increasingly making decisions on behalf of guests - researching options and completing bookings without the guest ever visiting a website. IDC predicts that by 2030, 30% of travel bookings will be executed by AI agents. If your data is incomplete, outdated, or fragmented, you effectively disappear from the agent’s decision set. You don’t rank lower, you don’t appear. And it’s worth checking with whoever manages your website that you haven’t inadvertently blocked the crawlers that would surface you.
Being discovered by an AI is only half the picture. The other half is being bookable through one. This is where MCP comes in - a protocol that allows AI assistants to connect directly to reservation systems, reading live availability and completing bookings in the same conversation. The question worth asking your reservation platform is whether they’ve built this, and if so, whether your venue is connected.
As I wrote about last month, Google has taken a different route. Through AI Mode in Search, Google is already surfacing restaurants and taking bookings using inventory data they hold through Reserve with Google - data that providers like ResDiary, SevenRooms, OpenTable, and Resy have already shared with them. Google didn’t wait for reservation platforms to build MCP connectivity, they used what they already had.
If you’re not on Reserve with Google, you may already be missing from the most immediate AI booking channel available. And if you are, Google owns the moment the guest decides where to eat - even if the booking itself still flows through your reservation platform.
The channels this applies to are wider than most operators have mapped. BCG’s AI-First Hotels report flagged that AI providers embedded inside banks and credit card companies could integrate hospitality inventory via commercial agreements with distribution systems and become primary booking surfaces. Travelers would interact with an AI front end - finding and booking without knowing what the underlying platform is. This isn’t a prediction - Amex acquired Resy in 2019 - a card network has owned a restaurant reservation platform for almost seven years.
Being visible to AI isn’t just about having a good website - it’s about whether your data is clean and machine-readable, which platforms hold your inventory, and whether your reservation system has built the connections that make you bookable through AI channels. Google’s move with AI Mode is one answer to the discoverability problem, but it’s one channel. Reservation platforms need to be building MCP connectivity regardless - otherwise operators are back in the same position they were with OTAs, with one platform owning the moment and everyone else following their rules.