Travelers,
Is anyone else exhausted? What a marathon weekend that was between Halloween, the end of soccer season, a helluva Broncos game, and daylight savings.
I can’t tell if I’m sick or just parenting two elementary school kids and running a travel company while still posting an article every week on Substack.
Our family dressed as the characters from Home Alone because my son is basically Kevin and my daughter wanted to be Joe Pesci, because my daughter is amazing.
I was home (not alone) for the first weekend in ages, and regrettably emailed my host agency to tell them that my family could no longer spare me for their incredible conference in a couple of weeks. My children and husband mutinied after my back-to-back work trips, and I decided that peace at home was worth the cancellation. I will miss the opportunity to meet with our hotel partners and fellow advisors, but expect much of the discussion to center around their coming booking platform upgrades (I hope).
Believe it or not, how you book your hotel keeps many of us in the industry up at night. AI search optimization is changing our industry at lightning speed, and the hotels and advisors who manage to keep up will be the ones who capture the most market share in the coming months. The Upgrade continues my discussion from last week about how you book your hotel.
If you make it to the end of my article, this week’s Lobby Bar covers a luxury cruise that abandoned its travelers in Cambodia, a castle that sold for half its value, a billionaire’s role in Vail Resorts’ board fight, and a Napa hotel that advisors can book before everyone else.
Happy Travels!
Anne Marie
🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes
The Booking Hunger Games
ShopMy, TikTok, Hotels, OTAs, ChatGBT, and Advisors are all after the same click
How do you book your travel? This sounds like a simple question, but in my industry, it’s not. The answer depends what you are booking: hotels only, tours and activities, transfers, air, cruise, safari? That answer then tells me which avenue to take, whether I book your hotel on our booking portal, through a hotel’s preferred partnership portal, or by emailing or calling its reservations office.
For a more complex trip, I usually work with a destination management company, or DMC, for local expertise, and in a place like Africa I may use a tour operator who works with multiple DMCs.
It used to be that the hotel piece of an itinerary was the most straightforward, but today booking channels are proliferating like baby bunnies, and every AI company or existing platform with an audience wants to tell you why you should use its channel to book your hotel. I sit on a VC advisory board and I can’t tell you the number of pitches they receive from companies looking to optimize some portion of the travel industry via AI.
Last week, I wrote about AMEX and other credit card platforms. This week, I continue the conversation with a look at other booking channels.
The booking channel arm wrestling match is on full display at the moment. ShopMy, the creator storefront platform, opened a travel and hospitality category the last week of October.6 TikTok has been adding hotel booking to its app and paying creators who send guests to it.8 And on November 3, Rosewood opens Rosewood Beyond, a booking window available only through Rosewood’s trusted travel advisors and Independent Consultants.13
Each one is a bid to own your booking. Hotels would love it if you booked direct so they could keep their margin, but when they cannot drive direct business, they would rather pay an advisor 10 percent than an OTA such as Expedia 25 to 35 percent.
What the heck is a GDS?
A global distribution system, or GDS, is a business-to-business marketplace. It collects live inventory and pricing from airlines, hotels, car rental companies and rail operators and passes it to travel agencies through a standard connection.1 If you are not in the travel industry, dear reader, you have likely never heard of a GDS. You may think you are booking on an advisor portal, a hotel website, or a platform like Expedia. These all tie into a GDS.
Three companies own almost the entirety of the GDS market.
Amadeus, based in Madrid and founded in 1987 by Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa and SAS, handled about 43.5 percent of worldwide air agency bookings in 2024.
Sabre, in Southlake, Texas, grew out of American Airlines’ 1960 reservation system and handled about 36 percent, with its strength in North America.
Travelport, formed from Galileo, Apollo and Worldspan, handled about 20 percent and does best in the UK, the Middle East and among independent agencies.1
Those shares measure air bookings, and each company also carries hotel and car rental content.
Sabre came first, and the others followed over the next three decades. I was trained on Sabre, which looks like a giant DOS platform and requires codes straight out of the early days of computers. Today most advisors use “skins” that integrate with Sabre and are more user friendly.
In 2026, the three are fighting over who sits between an AI assistant and a booking. Amadeus wants to be a layer every automated booking passes through, Sabre has backed a consumer trip-planning product called MindTrip, and Travelport is pitching itself as the most open connector.2
OTAs
Online travel agencies, or OTAs, are the consumer side: Booking.com, Expedia and their sister sites. The guest searches, compares and pays on the OTA’s site, and the hotel pays the OTA a commission.
HOTREC, the European hospitality trade association, found that OTAs produced about 30 percent of hotel bookings in Europe in 2025 against 51.3 percent direct, and that Booking Holdings and Expedia together hold 85.4 percent of the OTA share.3 That survey covers hotels of every tier, so read it as a measure of channel mix and not as a picture of luxury.
I tend to find that at more luxury tiers, travelers book direct with hotels or through advisors rather than via an OTA. These OTAs charge hotels 25-35% of a booking to have their properties listed on them. They also have a tendency to publish rates that hotels haven’t approved.
Travel Advisors
Yes, we still exist. No, we aren’t all 80 years old.
The travel advisor and agency channel is growing faster. Onyx CenterSource, which processes hotel commission payments to agencies, reported that commissionable agency room nights rose 11.8 percent year over year, while Booking Holdings and Expedia each grew room nights 6 percent. Commission payouts to agencies rose about 13 percent on a like-for-like property base. Volume drove the increase; the average commission rate rose 0.8 percent.4
When a traveler books through an advisor, the advisor can make the reservation in several ways:
Direct with the hotel reservations team, by listing their IATA number and following up with an invoice for commission after the client travels. This is the same rate a client would see booking the hotel directly, because of rate parity agreements, though the booking may come with benefits like included breakfast and a priority upgrade.
Via a booking platform that the advisor or their host agency has built to tie into a GDS such as Sabre. Rates here are also held to rate parity.
Through a hotel’s preferred partner program, such as Rosewood Elite or Four Seasons Preferred. These programs sit outside rate parity, so a hotel can offer certified advisors rates the public cannot see, behind a password-protected portal.
Affiliate Links
Say you see an Instagram reel or a TikTok recommending a hotel and you click the link. That is an affiliate link: a tracked URL that, in theory, credits the booking to whoever posted it. The guest books on someone else’s checkout page, either the hotel’s site or an OTA’s, and a cookie records the click. If the guest books inside the tracking window and completes the stay, the creator earns a commission. The guest holds the reservation, and the creator sees a line in an earnings dashboard.
For years, hotels have tried to work out whether paying influencers or comping their stays leads to bookings. It is a hard channel to track, much harder than advisor bookings, which tie directly to an IATA number. The world of cookie tracking and affiliate links is contested and cutthroat, as the kerfuffle around Phia shows.
ShopMy’s guide lists how a booking can fail to track: the guest books through another site, an agent or the hotel directly, clicks a different affiliate link first, switches devices, or books after the cookie window closes. Cancelled bookings earn nothing, and commission stays pending until the stay is complete and the brand approves it.5
ShopMy and TikTok
ShopMy built its business on fashion and beauty creators who link products from a storefront. I have used it to build packing lists that earn a small commission, and I have made about $1,000 in two years. I find it most useful for gift lists, and I am forever intrigued by ancillary businesses that align with a travel agency.
In October ShopMy opened the same mechanics to hotels, resorts, rentals, experiences and car rentals.67 A creator pastes a property’s official URL, and ShopMy shows a commission rate if the property is eligible. If none appears, the creator can paste the same property’s page from Expedia or Booking.com.5 Domenica Ida of Lux Travels Insider Lux Travels Insider pitched it this way on November 1: “ShopMy is bringing affiliate commissions to the travel industry, and your hotel recommendations might finally be worth more than a thank-you text.” She says creators can link “directly to hotel websites rather than relying exclusively on third-party booking platforms.” Her post includes a referral link.7
Brand Partners such as San Ysidro Ranch and Proper Hotels work with ShopMy directly, while Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, Expedia and Vrbo come through affiliate networks and set their own rates. ShopMy’s guide says travel advisors can use the platform to supplement their existing businesses.56
TikTok added a Booking.com integration that gives each hotel a page and lets users tag hotels in videos. Under TikTok GO, hotels post tasks for creators with at least 1,000 followers, who earn commission, a travel voucher or both.8
Stay22 serves bloggers and newsletter writers by routing bookings to OTAs such as Kayak, Booking.com and Expedia for a revenue share.9 Salty Vagabonds notes that direct programs like Stay22 may pay more on some brands than ShopMy, and that creators can run both.6
Advisors building their own portals
Advisors have watched this contest from the side that holds the reservation, and some have started building their own booking buttons. Eli Wagner is one of the top advisors under my host agency, Coastline. She is a powerhouse of an advisor, and works her tail off. I’ve consistently been impressed by what she’s managed to build.
Frustrated with the tools we had available to us, Eli built her own proprietary booking portal that clients can use at any hour. It’s more user friendly than our existing white labeled site developed by our host agency.
She told me the problem it solves: clients at two in the morning who do not want to bother the office and book on a credit card or through a hotel app. Her answer to them is “no, bother us! Like, give us the easy ones too. That’s the whole point. Like, we make money on that too.”10
The portal captures the booking, and her team then contacts its hotel partners, so clients are “still getting that Wagner bespoke touch.” A client can tie a Marriott Bonvoy number to the booking, and it appears in the Bonvoy app immediately.10 She said the build took “time and money” and a lot of trial and error, and that she became a tech founder inadvertently.
Fora went the same direction at larger scale, building an integrated booking platform with Travelport as its first integration partner.11 My husband and I spent two years building a travel technology platform before I became an advisor, and we shut it down in 2020. It is a lot of work, and Eli got hers across the finish line.
Preferred Partner Portals for Hotels
Preferred Partner programs, which many luxury brands built for their highest-booking advisors and their clients, are not subject to rate parity, so a hotel can offer them rates a public website cannot. Most of the time, the program attaches benefits such as breakfast, an upgrade when available and a property credit to the rate the hotel already publishes, much like a consortium such as Virtuoso. There’s Ritz Carlton STARS, Accor’s Hera, Four Seasons Preferred, Rosewood Elite, and many, many others.
This week, your social media feed may be flooded with reminders of a special booking window for Rosewood hotels. Rosewood Elite is an invitation-only preferred partner program for certified advisors.12 Rosewood Beyond is, in Rosewood’s words, available exclusively through its trusted travel advisors and Independent Consultants.13
Bookings open November 3 to 10, 2026, for stays through June 30, 2027. The offer is 30 percent off Best Available Rate at participating properties, with a property-specific benefit and no minimum stay. Beyond uses the room these programs have: it changes the rate itself, for eight days. Advisors book through Rosewood Elite via a preferred GDS, Rosewood Central Reservations, or the hotel directly.13
The advisor channel gives Rosewood a defined group of sellers, a fixed window and a booking path behind a password-protected portal that the hotel can count and close. Because Rosewood Beyond has no public offer, no affiliate link can point to it.
Eli’s comment on AI describes the advantage better than I can: “AI is not going to call up the GM that you just had drinks with the night before and be like, ‘Hey, my client’s coming to see you. Make sure you give them that good upgrade.’”10 A link sends a guest to a hotel’s checkout. An advisor calls the hotel before the guest arrives.
Alpenglow books Rosewood Beyond stays through Rosewood Elite from November 3 to 10, 2026.
TLDR
I won’t get into credit card portals, which are the last booking channel to cover, as I discussed them at length in last week’s The Upgrade. Let’s just say they aren’t my favorite competitor.
The TLDR (too long didn’t read) summary is that there are many ways to book your hotel, and with AI becoming one of the primary ways to search for your stay, everyone is entering the fray to try to win your booking.
How you book your trip all goes back to my article about who you trust with your travel.
If you decide to place your trust in the person who brings you The Upgrade Weekly, even after a holiday of dressing up as a character from Home Alone and shepherding kids to sports games and Halloween parties, reach out to me at AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com and I’ll help you book your Rosewood Beyond stay this week.
You can also log your interest for your Rosewood booking here using our handy dandy tool.
🗝️ The Lobby Bar
Hospitality updates, promotions, gossip, and the occasional pun
A cruise sold as a home for life is stranded in Cambodia. Villa Vie Residences suspended the MV Odyssey’s round-the-world voyage on October 27, leaving 203 passengers and 156 crew stuck in Sihanoukville, with the operator blaming fuel costs. (Sopheng Cheang, The Associated Press via CP24)
Oheka Castle sold at auction for $72 million. The undisclosed buyer paid about half the castle’s May valuation of $137 million and must honor weddings already booked through March 31, 2028. (Daniel Edelson, Ynetnews)
Oasis wants four seats on Vail Resorts’ board. The hedge fund, which owns 9.6 percent, nominated former Disney CEO Bob Chapek and Olympic skier Picabo Street, and Vail says Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, who has said he wants to buy Park City Mountain, steered some of the picks, which he denies. (Kristine Weller, KPCW; Kevin McCauley, O’Dwyer’s)
Rosewood Calistoga is open to advisors before the public. Advisors can reserve stays from April 15, 2027 starting at $2,100 a night now, while public booking opens November 4. (Juan Ruiz, Upgraded Points)
ShopMy’s first creator report on travel links is mixed. Salty Vagabonds, writing weeks after launch, reports bot traffic on links, less reliable hotel booking tracking, cancellations that remove commission, and slower conversion than beauty and fashion; the post includes a referral link. (Salty Vagabonds, saltyvagabonds.com)
Sabre’s CEO says Amadeus holds a monopoly. Kurt Ekert made the claim on Sabre’s first-quarter 2026 earnings call and said Sabre is exploring regulatory and legal approaches; Amadeus has not directly rebutted it. (TDN Editorial Team, Travel Distribution News)
Alpenglow can check Beyond availability at participating properties before the window closes on November 10.
Sources
1. Travel Code, “GDS Explained,” Sept. 17, 2026
2. Travel Distribution News, “Three GDS, Three Bets,” July 17, 2026
3. Hospitality Net (HOTREC data), Oct. 21, 2026
4. Travel Market Report (Onyx CenterSource data), Aug. 5, 2026
5. ShopMy Help Center, “Travel & Hospitality”
6. Salty Vagabonds on ShopMy travel, Oct. 29, 2026
7. Domenica Ida, Lux Travels Insider, Nov. 1, 2026
8. Tubefilter on TikTok hotel booking, Aug. 8, 2025
10. Eli Wagner interview, The Upgrade, Sept. 15, 2026
11. Fora, booking platform launch, Aug. 15, 2023
12. MilePro, Rosewood Elite description
13. Rosewood Beyond advisor communication and 2026 trade brochure
Hunger games indeed! And proliferation of AI-based hotel optimization startups is out of control. But I guess that’s the case for almost any industry now
This is such a great read! Also, thank you so much for mentioning us in your article. 💗