Les Roches' Derchi: Hotels Without MCP and Direct APIs Face 'Algorithmic Invisibility'
Les Roches professor Francesco Derchi argues hotels need Model Context Protocol connectivity, unified data and trained staff to stay visible to booking agents, as OTA commissions run 15 to 25 percent.
If an AI agent builds a personalized itinerary, a hotel needs direct API architecture to answer it instantly — or it does not appear in the result. That is the argument from Francesco Derchi, Associate Professor and Director of SPARK at Les Roches, in a Hospitality Net opinion piece on the 2026 distribution overhaul.
He names three shifts. The technical shift: hotels need the Model Context Protocol and direct API connectivity rather than relying on legacy central reservation systems and global distribution networks. The data shift: unified architecture through customer data platforms matters more than siloed property management systems, and poor data organization creates what he calls “algorithmic invisibility.” The workforce shift: staff need data-informed decision-making skills and system fluency to validate automated recommendations and deliver on-site what was promised.
The commercial stake is OTA commissions, currently 15 to 25 percent. Derchi says operators who adopt these changes can reduce that dependence and reclaim control of distribution.
The channel is already being built. Blastness has partnered with DirectBooker to list live hotel inventory inside ChatGPT and Claude. The partnership charges commission only on completed bookings, with no setup or fixed fees, at rates described as less than one-third of typical OTA rates. Blastness brings a portfolio of more than 2,000 hotels.
The test for an operator is concrete: can your current stack return a live rate and availability to an outside agent without a human or a legacy intermediary in the loop? Ask your PMS and CRS vendors whether they expose an MCP or API endpoint, and what it returns. A property that cannot answer that question is betting its direct-booking share on agents never learning to ask.
Source: Hospitality Net — The Algorithm is in the Middle: Navigating the 2026 Intelligence-First Distribution Overhaul Auto-generated brief — verified before publishing.