Google is testing AI hotel booking in the US, Amadeus enters UCP infrastructure
Google has launched a limited US test of agentic hotel booking in AI Mode. For hotel distribution, the bigger news than the test itself could be the infrastructure being built behind it.
Google in early August started testing agentic hotel booking on a small portion of traffic in the US, the company confirmed to Skift. Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel also said that Booking is among the first partners included in the test. Google has not yet disclosed how much of the booking process is actually completed within AI Mode, nor whether the current test uses the full transactional model that the company is developing.
The direction, however, is quite clear. Back in November 2025, Google announced the possibility of comparing hotels and completing the booking with a chosen partner, and among the companies it is working with, it listed Booking.com, Expedia, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, and Choice Hotels International.
UCP is changing the most important part of the story: the transaction itself
Universal Commerce Protocol For accommodation, an AI conversation should connect directly with availability, price and booking. According to Google's documentation, the hotel or other vendor remains the merchant of record and retains the relationship with the guest, booking data and the post-booking process.
That is a key difference compared to the traditional OTA model. Google wants to be the place where the guest discovers, compares and potentially completes the purchase, but without formally taking on the role of the accommodation seller.
Amadeus is taking a direct role in the new model
And other large companies are working on UCP-u. Amadeus confirmed in its first-half results that it is working with Google as the first B2B foundational partner on the development of UCP for accommodation. The company is simultaneously developing infrastructure designed to enable hotels to offer fully integrated bookings within the AI channel.
For independent hotels in Croatia and the wider Adriatic region, developing their own AI agent is not crucially important in the short term. It is more important to have a quality CRS, up-to-date rates and availability, structured hotel content, and a distribution connection that new AI channels can use.
Google is still accepting partners onto the waitlist for UCP for Lodging. If the US test expands, Hotel distribution It could shift from the fight for clicks to the fight over whose inventory an AI agent can find, verify and book instantly.
