Op-Ed: Google's AI Booking Standard Leaves Travel Agencies "Out of Scope"

Who sits on the council writing the rules for AI hotel booking matters for every intermediary, and an op-ed on Hospitality Net argues travel agencies are being written out.

Alejandro Berdonces Corroto, a travel-tech product manager who spent 15 years in distribution, including 12 at Spanish group-travel operator Estiber, says Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) lodging draft excludes agencies and group business.

Governance

The UCP lodging council has 16 permanent seats. Google holds six, and Amadeus, Booking.com, Expedia, Hilton, Marriott and Trip.com hold one each. Four further seats are open to any organization. Travel agencies and tour operators hold no permanent position.

Gaps in the specification

According to the author, the word "commission" does not appear in any file in the specification repository. Agency fields such as agency name, IATA number or agent identifier are missing, and group terms like "allotment," "attrition" and "rooming" are absent.

Timeline

• September 11, 2026: a reviewer raised the missing agency fields.
• September 21, 2026: the proposal author declared agency use cases "out of scope."
• September 24, 2026: the draft was merged into the standard.

The council described agency fields as a possible "additive, non-breaking change" later.

Why groups matter

The author cites Marriott's CFO, who said on the February 2026 earnings call that "group business is in the ballpark of a quarter" of the company's room nights worldwide. Hilton's website limits online group bookings to "up to 25 guest rooms."

Recommendations

Hotels should encode group terms such as cutoff dates, attrition and deposit schedules as structured data rather than PDFs. Agencies and associations should submit formal proposals, because "standards are written by whoever shows up."

This is an opinion piece; the council's positions are as characterized by the author.