Lighthouse unveils Connect AI
Lighthouse announced the launch of Connect AI, an new AI engine designed to enable deeper connection between hotels and AI powered search and travel planning platforms.
Connect AI addresses two critical challenges: AI agents lack the ability to access structured rate, availability, and contextual hotel information; while hotels lack the ability to enable direct booking capabilities and provide real-time information via AI.
Despite the rapid adoption of AI for travel planning, hotels are significantly underrepresented in AI-driven search results.
This presents a significant missed opportunity for hotels to drive direct bookings with a new generation of travelers, Lighthouse says.
It says Connect AI creates a comprehensive data bridge between the hospitality industry and the rapidly expanding ecosystem of AI travel planning platforms.
For Hotels: Connect AI acts as a powerful AI engine, enabling hotel chains and groups to be easily discovered and directly bookable by AI agents. This ensures hotels are surfaced relevantly in AI-powered travel planning queries.
For AI Agents & Large Language Models (LLMs): Connect AI provides a data layer, leveraging the Model Context Protocol (MCP) that offers AI agents and LLMs scaled access to real-time rates, availability, and hotel information. This empowers AI platforms to deliver highly personalized and actionable travel recommendations to their users. It will work across multiple AI platforms such as Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.
“We’re seeing travelers increasingly turn to AI tools for trip planning, and our data shows this shift is accelerating faster than anyone anticipated,” said Juanjo Rodriguez, Head of Marketing & Direct Growth Products at Lighthouse.
The primary benefits of Connect AI include:
Enhanced Discoverability: Connect AI increases the visibility of hotels, ensuring they are prominently surfaced by AI agents used by travelers.
Comprehensive Information Accessibility: Connect AI ensures AI agents have access to all necessary information through a standard Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, including current rates and availability, alongside crucial hotel information.
Direct Bookability: Connect AI facilitates direct bookings from users through their AI agent of choice, streamlining the conversion process and empowering hotels to capture more direct revenue.
Unmatched scale: Lighthouse’s existing infrastructure powers connected data solutions for 80,000+ hotels and monitors rates and availability for more than 300,000 properties with 1.7B daily price changes globally
“Connect AI represents a new approach to marketing and distribution strategy,” said Sergio Zertuche, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Palladium Hotel Group, which has adopted the technology.
“We see this as an exciting opportunity to connect with travelers in new ways. With the speed of AI adoption, we want to ensure our properties are discoverable and bookable.”
Connect AI is now available to select hotel partners as part of an early access program.
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