Guests are starting to plan and book through AI assistants. In August 2026, Google switched on hotel booking inside its AI Mode search experience in the United States, with ten launch partners completing reservations without the guest ever visiting a hotel website. Booking Holdings is testing an agentic assistant of its own, and Agoda's CFO has said a comparable tool is coming.
None of this has landed on most Malaysian properties yet. But SiteMinder's research found that 8 in 10 travelers already want AI assistance somewhere in their booking journey. So the direction is clear enough to prepare for, even while the timing is not.
Here is the reassuring part. The most valuable preparation costs nothing and involves no new software. It starts with making sure the information about your property is correct, complete and consistent.
An AI Assistant Can Only Recommend What It Can Read
AI booking tools rely on information about your property, such as room types, rates, amenities, policies, availability, to answer guests and recommend suitable hotels. They do not visit your hotel or call your front desk to double-check the information.
So if your room types are named inconsistently across your booking engine and your OTA listings, your check-in time lives only in a staff member's head, your accessibility details or breakfast arrangements are blank, the AI assistant may not have enough information to accurately recommend your property.
It could skip your property in favor of one with clearer information. Or worse, it could give the guest incorrect information, and the guest arrives expecting something you never offered.
Mews put it plainly in its 2026 industry outlook that the hotels AI can "find, trust and send business to" will be the ones that cleaned up their data first.
This is not a new problem wearing a new hat. Incomplete property data has always cost you conversions on your own booking engine. AI simply raises the price of leaving it undone.
Where to find it in Softinn: Room type amenities and facilities that appear on your Booking Engine listing are managed in the Softinn Account Portal — see How to Edit the Room Type Amenities & Facilities for BE Listing.
One Property, One Version of The Truth
The second issue is inconsistent information. . Most hotels describe themselves in four or five places at once : booking engine, PMS, each OTA listing, the hotel's own website, Google Business Profile. Over time, information across these platforms can become different.
For example, your website may say check-in starts at 2 PM, while an OTA listing says 3 PM. Or your Booking Engine may show breakfast as included while another platform says otherwise.
A guest who notices different information may contact the hotel to confirm. An AI assistant may simply use the information it can find. If that information is outdated or inconsistent, the answer given to the guest may also be wrong.
The fix is simple and entirely within your control:
- Give every room type one clear name and use that same name everywhere, including in your channel mappings.
- Write down your policies about check-in and check-out times, cancellation, deposits, children, pets, in plain language, in the system, not in an email thread.
- List your amenities honestly, including what you don't have. "No lift" is useful information, not a weakness.
- Keep one source of truth for rates. If your prices live in three places, they will eventually disagree.
Where to find it in Softinn: Room type naming and room description is set up in the Softinn Account Portal and mirrored to your PMS and BE Extranet listing; check-in and check-out times sit under General Settings in Account Portal. Links to the relevant guides are at the end of this article.
What AI is Good At and What It Isn't?
It is worth being clear-eyed, because there is a lot of noise in this market.
AI is genuinely good at repetitive, high-volume, low-judgement work: answering the same six questions at midnight, filling in forms, checking one list against another, drafting the reply you were going to write anyway. That is real time back. .png?width=668&height=455&name=frame_generic_light%20(93).png)
It is not good at judgement, and it is not good at anything where being confidently wrong is expensive. It does not know your neighborhood. It cannot read a tired guest's face, and it cannot fix a stay that has gone wrong. Your front desk officer can.
That is why we think about AI as removing repetitive work, not removing people. A front desk that has stopped re-typing rates is a front desk with time to notice the guest who needs help. That trade has always been the point.
At Softinn, Adam, our AI Hotel Assistant, is already rolling out in the Booking Engine, and more AI capability is in development across the suite. We will be straightforward with you about what each piece does and, just as importantly, what it does not.
Start Here
Pick one room type this week. Open it up. Check the name, the description, the photos, the amenity list, the occupancy, the rate plan and the policies attached to it. Fix what's wrong. Then do the next one.
The hotels that get the most from AI over the next few years will not be the ones that bought the cleverest tool. They will be the ones whose information was already in order. That work you can start today, with what you already have.
Softinn builds hotel software for independent and boutique properties across Malaysia and Southeast Asia — PMS, Channel Manager, Booking Engine, Contactless Self-Service Kiosk, and more. If you'd like help getting your property data in order, talk to our team or browse the Softinn Knowledge Base.
Get your property data in order — Softinn Knowledge Base guides
Room types and amenities
- How to Edit the Room Type Amenities & Facilities for BE Listing on Softinn Account Portal?
- How to Manage and Update Your Room Types on Softinn Account Portal
Rates and policies
Caren
Caren is a Co-Founder of Softinn and a qualified accountant (ACCA). She didn't set out to be a blogger. She just noticed things that needed to be said. After years of building a team, hiring, and developing & testing software for independent hotels across Malaysia and Southeast Asia, she writes here to share what she wishes someone had told her - about people, and about the tech ecosystems they work with.
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