Google confirms Agentic hotel booking testing as Booking Holdings consolidates B2B units

Google began limited testing of agentic hotel booking for US users
Booking Holdings consolidating B2B units into single platform called Booking Partner Services
Migration of Priceline B2B partners underway, potentially extending into 2027
Hilton reorganised sales into three prongs for different buyer needs
B2B buyers have dramatically changed post-Covid, requiring new sales approaches

Google has moved agentic hotel booking from promise to product test, with a spokesperson confirming to Skift that limited testing has begun for users in the United States.

Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel referenced the tests on an earnings call this week while discussing partnerships with AI platforms. “I think Google may have come out today, a small percentage of their traffic seeing their agentic booking … we are one of the first with them,” Fogel shared. Google said it tied the test to plans it made last November for an upcoming agentic booking tool for flights and hotels. The company would not provide more details, saying only that more information would come soon. Google Maps has brought AI hotel search into a surface already built around location, transit, routes, and nearby businesses. A traveller can now chat with Ask Maps to ask for a hotel with a specific feel or proximity to other venues, and get actual pricing and availability, not ranges or estimates. Google’s example included a traveller asking for a top-rated hotel with an artsy vibe within walking distance from a gym and restaurants for a conference in downtown Miami.

Meanwhile, Booking Holdings has begun consolidating its three brands’ separate B2B businesses into a single platform called Booking Partner Services, with migration of Priceline’s B2B partners already underway. The new platform represents the latest step in a major overhaul of how Booking Holdings through Agoda, Booking.com, and Priceline sells travel inventory to banks, airlines, and other partners. Skift reported exclusively last month that Booking Holdings was forming a new B2B unit under Agoda CEO Omri Morgenshtern. Migrating all of Booking Holdings’ B2B partners onto the new platform may take until the end of this year, and could extend into 2027. “It’s a big task,” a source familiar with Booking’s B2B transition shared. “They’re going to put everybody on the same platform, externally, move people from one API to another for a bunch of the.”

Hilton has also spent several years reorganising its global sales operation for business travel in response to how corporations now shop for and buy hotels. “B2B buyers have dramatically changed post-Covid,” Frank Passanante, Hilton’s senior vice president and global head of sales, shared in a Skift interview at the Global Business Travel Association conference in Chicago this week. The old model was often a person-to-person transaction. Hilton shifted to thinking in terms of three prongs, or groups, for different needs. Some are largely unmanaged accounts served through digital self-serve portals for both shopping and booking. Some are customers who buy digitally but want someone on the call when they get stuck. And there are still the large accounts, where direct sellers act as personal advisors on complex negotiations. Sellers are now aligned with different sales rhythms and different ways of going to customers.