The cost of intermediated distribution is already on the books. Accor and H World put a direct booking at roughly 4% to 5% of revenue, against 10% to 15% for an OTA commission, and cited that spread when they moved to link their hotels this summer.
AI agents are now entering the same path. An agent that surfaces a hotel room also has to settle payment and credit the traveler’s loyalty account. Whoever controls that sequence sets the economics for every company further down it.
Change Commerce Summit is a new, one-day event on November 11, 2026, at Apella by Alexandria in New York City, running the afternoon into evening, the day before Switch Aviation Forumfor the executives deciding where to commit capital as the stack consolidates.
The Questions We’re Building the Day Around
- Discovery vs. Ownership: When AI mediates the booking, who owns the customer relationship?
- Build vs. Wait: Should you build direct capabilities now, or wait for the channel chaos to settle?
- The Payments Land Grab: Which payments infrastructure is worth betting on for the next five years?
- Beyond NDC: NDC got the industry this far. Who’s actually building on top of it?
Speakers Confirmed So Far
- Tyler MorseChairman and CEO, MCR Hotels
- Doria HolbrookPresident, Oro Mobility, Hertz
- Adam SchwabCo-Founder and CEO, Luxury Escapes
More speakers and full session details to come.
Join Us at Skift Commerce Summit
The room is for executives who own commercial results at travel sellers, including airlines, hotels and their owners, OTAs, cruise lines, mobility providers, and tour operators. Investors backing those companies attend too.
We’ve kept the room operator-heavy on purpose. Companies that sell into travel, such as GDS and payments providers, attend through a separate vendor tier that we cap. Where the fit check shows a company sells into travel, we’ll switch the registration to a vendor ticket or issue a full refund.
If your team has commerce bets on the table for the next budget cycle, we’d like you in the room.
Source: skift.com
