IHG Hotels & Resorts has rolled out a beta of AI-powered conversational search on IHG.com and the IHG One Rewards mobile app, putting natural-language trip planning directly inside its owned booking channels for the first time. The US launch covers more than 7,000 hotels globally and positions IHG to reduce reliance on OTA discovery by capturing intent earlier in the guest journey.
How the Tool Works
Guests can type or speak prompts describing destination, trip purpose, preferred amenities, or travel style and receive curated hotel recommendations backed by IHG's verified property data and guest reviews. Results surface interactive maps, real-time availability, current pricing, and detailed property content. Critically for loyalty monetization, the interface supports booking in cash, IHG One Rewards points, or a points-and-cash combination — a direct lever for the program's 160 million members. During the beta period, the legacy keyword search remains alongside the new AI interface, giving operators and guests a parallel-run comparison.
Owner Visibility and Content Platform
For the roughly 7,000 franchise and managed hotel owners in IHG's system, the launch introduces a commercial imperative: AI search surfaces properties based on content richness, not just rate and availability. To address this, IHG plans to roll out an AI-optimized hotel content platform over the coming months. The platform will allow properties to upload floor plans, video walkthroughs, and updated imagery aligned with how conversational queries parse intent — matching a traveler asking for "a quiet room with a soaking tub near the French Quarter" rather than a simple city-and-date lookup. Hotels that invest in richer content profiles stand to gain visibility both within IHG's channels and across third-party AI discovery surfaces.
The conversational search debut follows IHG's launch of a native app integration within ChatGPT, and Chief Executive Officer Elie Maalouf framed both moves as outputs of a multi-year infrastructure investment. "Launching conversational search in IHG's digital channels transforms how guests interact with IHG and discover our incredible collection of hotels around the world," Maalouf said. "It's a milestone that builds on years of strategic investment in our digital foundations, including the unification of our data in the cloud and the continued evolution of our best-in-class technology platforms."
What Comes Next
IHG has signaled that agentic booking capabilities and deeper personalization are on the near-term roadmap — functionality that would allow the AI layer to complete a reservation autonomously once a traveler narrows preferences. That positions IHG alongside Marriott and Hilton, both of which have announced AI-assisted booking experiments, in what is rapidly becoming a table-stakes race among global hotel chains to own more of the discovery funnel before guests reach an OTA. The US beta will expand to additional markets as IHG refines the model on real user behavior.
For hotel operators evaluating direct-booking and loyalty technology, IHG's build-out illustrates how cloud-unified property data becomes a direct revenue asset once an AI query layer sits on top of it. The content platform rollout, in particular, mirrors dynamics seen in restaurant AI and digital ordering — where structured, machine-readable data increasingly determines which operators get surfaced to high-intent consumers.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
