IHG Becomes the Third Major Chain to Launch AI Concierge Search

IHG Hotels & Resorts launched a US beta of AI-powered conversational search on IHG.com and the IHG One Rewards app, covering more than 7,000 hotels across 19 brands in over 100 countries, with 1,900-plus properties in the pipeline. Guests describe a trip in natural language — destination, purpose, preferences — instead of filling in fixed search fields, and get back tailored recommendations with interactive maps, live availability, and pricing, bookable with cash, points, or a blend of both directly inside the conversational flow. CEO Elie Maalouf called it a milestone that “transforms how guests interact with IHG.” IHG says an AI-optimized hotel content platform and agentic booking capabilities are coming in subsequent months. (Hospitality Net’s coverage carried the same announcement.)

The launch makes IHG the third major hotel group to ship its own conversational AI search, after Hilton’s AI Planner and Marriott’s Ask Bonvoy — and the pattern behind all three is the same: defend direct-booking share as guests start their search inside a chat interface instead of a traditional search box. Hilton’s version, described by Complex General Manager Chintan Dadhich in a Hospitality Net op-ed, is built around reframing the interaction from “which hotel?” to “which experience?” — the same trip-first, property-second logic IHG is now shipping. Dadhich’s account also points at where the category is headed next: Hilton paired its AI Planner with a Be My Eyes integration that trained OpenAI’s visual assistant on Hilton properties specifically to improve accessibility for guests who are blind or have low vision, extending the same conversational infrastructure into a use case beyond booking conversion.

Three chains committing to owned conversational search in the same season is a real signal, not a coincidence — the direct-booking math only works if guests actually start the trip inside a brand’s own channel rather than an OTA or a general-purpose AI assistant. IHG naming an AI content platform as the next release is the tell: the booking interface is table stakes now, and the next fight is over whose property data the assistants actually recommend from.