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GOOD DAY, READERS.

Amadeus has two product announcements coming Tuesday — AI Commerce, which makes hotels bookable through AI assistant channels, and the official launch of Amadeus Max, which lets hotel staff query data in plain English. But the bigger story is infrastructure. Amadeus is Google’s only B2B hospitality partner on the Universal Commerce Protocol, the framework being built to govern how AI agents find, book, and transact hotels. If UCP becomes the standard, Amadeus will have helped write the rules.

Hotels that can’t connect to agentic booking channels at speed and scale risk something worse than losing bookings to competitors — they risk not surfacing at all.

Skift Global Forum

The executives deciding how hotels connect to agentic channels will be in one room this September.

1000+ attendees, 600+ companies. The CEOs of Hilton, Booking Holdings, Expedia, and Accor on stage in NYC, alongside Amadeus President of Travel Decius Valmorbida. Tickets are discounted for the next 72 hours.

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Amadeus’ New AI Tools Are Part of a Bigger Hotel Booking Plan — Exclusive

Amadeus’ New AI Tools Are Part of a Bigger Hotel Booking Plan — Exclusive

by Adriana Lee

Amadeus will publicly introduce two hotel AI tools at HITEC, but its bigger play is infrastructure. As AI agents move closer to travel booking, the GDS wants to help define how hotels are found, priced, changed, and paid for.

Tripadvisor To Sell TheFork for $700 Million to Fuel Its Bet on Experiences

Tripadvisor To Sell TheFork for $700 Million to Fuel Its Bet on Experiences

by Bailey Schulz

The sale gives Tripadvisor the cash to chase the $1 trillion experiences market through Viator.

Africa Is Not a Country, But the Travel Industry Keeps Treating It Like One

Africa Is Not a Country, But the Travel Industry Keeps Treating It Like One

by Robin Gilbert-Jones

A localized Ebola outbreak is leading to a continent-wide demand slump. The mechanism is well understood and almost nothing has been done about it.

MSC CRUISES + SKIFT

MSC Cruises just named its second private island in the Bahamas, and the move signals how cruise lines are rethinking the onshore experience as a core strategic asset.

For $7 a week, Skift gives you something the industry is missing – the full picture. Subscribe today for 25% off.

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Norwegian Air To Buy Nordic Leisure Travel Group in $843m Bet on End-to-End Travel

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IHG Spent 8 Years Rebuilding Its Hotel Systems. Now It Says the Payoff Is Starting.

SKIFT PODCAST NETWORK

Hotels know more about their guests than ever before, but most of that information is trapped in disconnected systems.

In this clip from Good Morning Hospitality: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk discuss one of hospitality's biggest technology challenges: getting dozens of systems to actually talk to each other.

From restaurants and spas to valet, retail, and guest rooms, travelers interact with countless touchpoints during a stay. Yet many operators still lack a unified view of the guest experience.

The conversation explores what becomes possible when hotel data is finally connected—from more personalized service to smarter recommendations and increased revenue—and why implementing those systems remains one of the industry's toughest operational challenges.

SKIFT TRAVEL 200

How are public travel companies performing around the world? The Skift Travel 200 pulls the data you need to understand global market movements. Paid subscribers get full access here.

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