Guest behavior is not changing overnight.
By 2026, offering a digital experience will no longer differentiate hotel brands. That line has already been crossed. Guests already expect digital touchpoints as standard.
What will separate hotel brands now is something more fundamental: who owns the guest relationship, and where that relationship lives.
Mobile is already the dominant channel in travel. Booking.com has publicly stated that more than half of its reservations now happen through its app rather than the web, driven by speed, saved preferences, and frictionless repeat bookings.
OTAs trained guests to expect fast, simple, continuous mobile journeys.
They also proved something critical: removing friction increases profitability.
Guests learned convenience elsewhere. They now expect it everywhere.
The real question for hotels is no longer whether guests expect this experience.
It is whether hotels meet it inside their own channel, or outsource it.
Why guest expectations have changed in hotel journeys
Guests already manage most of their lives from their phone. Travel is no different.
From banking to shopping to mobility, everyday experiences are designed around speed, saved preferences, and continuity. Travel followed the same path, led primarily by OTAs.
Over time, guests learned to expect that managing a trip should be fast, simple, and consistent across moments.
These expectations do not reset when guests book direct or interact with hotel brands. They arrive already formed.
What guests expect from the hotel guest journey today
Guests do not want to manage their journey across multiple touchpoints.
- They don't want to book in many places.
- They don't want to receive confirmations somewhere else.
- They don't want to call the front desk for services.
- They don't want to check loyalty benefits in emails they barely open.
Each step may work on its own. Together, they create friction.
This friction shows up clearly in guest behavior. According to Phocuswire, 73 percent of travelers prefer hotels that offer self-service technology, including mobile check-in and digital access to services.
Skift reports that the same percentage of guests are more likely to return to brands that meet their technology expectations consistently.
What guests expect today is practical and concrete.
Fast, self-service access for the basics
Guests expect to manage check-in, reservations, and simple requests without waiting or calling. Canary Technologies reports that hotels using digital check-in and self-service flows reduce front desk interactions for basic tasks by over 40 percent.
Everything in one place
Guests no longer tolerate switching between websites, OTAs, emails, and multiple apps. They expect booking details, services, and stay information to live together in a single environment.
Visible benefits for booking and engaging directly
Loyalty only works when it is visible. According to BusinessDasher, loyalty members account for between 30 and 60 percent of room revenue at major hotel brands and spend over 20 percent more per stay than non-members.
A familiar, consistent brand experience
Consistency builds trust. Fragmented digital experiences weaken brand recognition, especially for repeat travelers moving across properties within the same chain.
Time and money saved without extra effort
Guests expect convenience to work in their favor. Best rates, perks, and options should be available without comparison shopping across channels.
Fragmentation already feels outdated.
The cost of fragmented hotel guest journeys
Despite these clear signals, many hotel chains still operate with disconnected systems.
Distribution remains heavily dependent on OTAs, which typically charge between 15 and 30 percent commission per booking depending on market and agreements.
- Pre-stay communication often relies on generic confirmation emails with low engagement.
- In-stay services sit in separate tools that guests must discover on their own.
- Post-stay, the relationship frequently returns to OTAs or paid remarketing channels.
The cost of this fragmentation is not just margin. It is ownership.
- Guests return, but through intermediaries.
- Loyalty exists, but remains underused.
- Repeat bookings happen, but require reacquisition every time.
Hotels are not losing guests. They are losing control of the guest relationship.
If you do not own the journey, someone else does.
What hotel brands need to control the guest journey
The challenge is not adding more technology for the sake of it.
It is making technology work together.
Hotel chains need to keep the guest relationship inside their own channel across the full journey.
That means:
- Maintaining a direct relationship end to end. Direct relationships drive higher lifetime value. Revenue Hub reports that direct bookings are around 9 percent more profitable than OTA bookings, and profitability can exceed 15 to 18 percent when ancillary revenue is included.
- Reducing dependency on intermediaries. Without fighting guest behavior,
OTAs will remain discovery channels. Winning brands move the relationship to their own environment once the guest engages. - Turning each stay into a repeatable revenue cycle. Visible loyalty, in-stay consumption, and frictionless rebooking compound over time. This is how revenue becomes predictable.
- Staying present between stays. Push notifications consistently outperform email for time-sensitive offers, according to CRM benchmarks cited by Skift.
This is not a short-term conversion play.
It is a long-term economics play.
Why centralizing the hotel guest journey matters
By centralizing the entire guest journey in one owned channel, hotel brands achieve three outcomes.
- They remove unnecessary friction and deliver a more consistent guest experience.
- They reduce dependency on OTAs to re-acquire guests they already own.
- They build loyalty loops that increase repeat bookings and lifetime value.
Centralization turns experience into revenue.
One place to manage the full hotel guest journey
This is where the Corporate App becomes central.
A single, branded app that connects booking, loyalty, in-stay services, and post-stay engagement into one continuous experience. Not as a collection of features, but as a relationship channel.
- Guests stay inside the brand’s environment.
- Hotels stay in control of the journey.
- Every interaction feeds the next one.
That is how one-time stays turn into repeat cycles.
Why ownership of the guest journey will define hotel brands in 2026
By 2026, guests will expect to manage their journey in one place, on their terms.
Hotel brands that meet this expectation will not only deliver better guest experiences. They will own the relationship, the data, and the revenue that comes with it.
Those that do not will continue paying to win back guests they already had.
STAY gives hotel chains a single, branded app to own the full guest journey.
From first booking to repeat stay, inside their hotel direct channel.
👉 Discover how our Corporate App helps hotel brands turn every stay into a repeatable revenue cycle
