The short term rental sector is entering a period of upheaval as artificial intelligence powered search and large language models begin to influence how travelers discover and book stays. Industry leaders acknowledge there is uncertainty over how far these tools will disrupt traditional booking patterns and which models will dominate, but they agree that operators must act quickly. Large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude, along with Google’s experiments with advertising in artificial intelligence mode, are creating an environment where new startups can help property managers grow direct bookings and reduce reliance on large online travel agencies.
Early usage of large language model search remains modest but is rising quickly. Phocuswright research found that travel search via large language models more than doubled between the first and second half of 2025, but traffic remains comparatively small. Forge Holiday Group chief executive Graham Donoghue said he puts the figure at 7% of traffic, including 6% from Google and Microsoft Bing AI overviews and 1% directly from large language models. Property manager Pass the Keys reported a similar pattern, with head of marketing David Judd estimating that zero click results contribute 8-10% of traffic and warning that companies that ignore this shift risk becoming irrelevant in about two years. Judd also noted that increases in direct and organic traffic are probably not enough to compensate for the 15% you might be dropping on traditional search, highlighting the attribution challenges created by new search formats.
Direct bookings remain significantly underdeveloped across the sector, which makes artificial intelligence driven channels particularly attractive. A report from Hospitable noted that nearly four in 10 hosts (38%) reported receiving no direct bookings in 2025, while nearly half (48%) received 1%-10% of bookings directly, and Hostaway research found that although 70% of operators have a direct booking website, nearly two thirds (62%) get less than a quarter of their bookings through direct channels and 18% receive none at all. Simply Owners reported that 61% of its owners get over half of their bookings directly, yet 60% said this share has not increased over the last year, even as 17% of hosts cited direct bookings and 25% chose smarter automation and artificial intelligence as the trends most likely to impact their business in 2026. Startups such as HostAI and The Host Co see an opportunity as travelers shift from search engines to conversational trip planning, with HostAI chief executive Amirali Mohajer stating that the amount of traffic clients get from artificial intelligence platforms has grown 24x year over year and now represents a high single digit share of overall traffic, and forecasting that once the dust settles he could see 20% of clients’ bookings coming from traffic referred by artificial intelligence and in five years another 15%-20% from transactions that come through artificial intelligence apps.
To compete in this new environment, short term rental companies are rebuilding their websites, content and measurement frameworks around artificial intelligence centric discovery. Forge Holiday Group uses multiple methods to track referrals and tools such as Peec AI, where the team takes 2 or 3 million keywords, builds long form prompts to generate 2,000 to 3,000 conversational prompts and then tracks share of citations in generative answers, while also taking advantage of Microsoft’s AI Performance reporting in Bing Webmaster Tools. Pass the Keys configures specific channel groups in Google Analytics because search engines are slow to identify the artificial intelligence channel, while marketing teams grapple with the long standing problem of sourcing and attribution. Founders like Annie Munro Sloan of The Host Co and Pierre-Camille Hamana of Hospitable argue that detailed storytelling, unique inventory and rich experiences that feed guest reviews are becoming critical inputs for large language models that rank options at the top of the funnel. As agentic models advance and standards such as WebMCP and Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol emerge, operators are also bracing for new paid media formats inside large language models, with some already testing beta programs in anticipation of artificial intelligence native search evolving into a measurable performance marketing channel.
