Your wholesaler isn't worried about AI booking agents

While hoteliers debate whether AI agents are going to eat their direct bookings, the big wholesalers have already run the numbers. Emerging Travel Group, parent company of RateHawk, looks relaxed. Unbothered. According to Hospitality Net, wholesalers don't see AI agents as an enemy, but as just another distribution channel.

Their reasoning? Wholesalers operate on volume and thin margins. AI agents booking on behalf of the end traveler don't threaten that model, they scale it up. More volume over the same inventory. For them it's the same game, with a new intermediary in the mix. What a hotelier reads as a loss of control, a wholesale intermediary hears as an opportunity.

My take: the wholesaler isn't losing sleep because its model survives the AI noise. The one who should be uneasy is the hotelier who keeps outsourcing distribution without a data strategy of their own. The wholesaler will still be standing. The question is whether you, with your rate and your inventory, will have anything to negotiate with when the AI agent decides on behalf of the guest.