Author note: Every week, I scan the tourism and hospitality industry for reports, updates and changes that could affect how hotels are discovered, marketed and booked.
What’s changed in the hospitality industry in 24–31 August 2026?
Ho Chi Minh City hotel performance pointed to strong demand with very little new supply, Da Nang showed how creator marketing is becoming measurable distribution, and both Google and ChatGPT moved further into the commercial side of travel discovery.
🏨 HCMC hotel RevPAR grew more than 15% with almost no new supply
Ho Chi Minh City had around 25,500 midscale-and-above hotel rooms across 265 properties in Q2 2026, according to JLL.
No new hotels opened during the quarter, while approximately 60% of the market remains unbranded.
Against that constrained supply, hotel RevPAR increased more than 15% YoY during the first half of 2026, with ADR remaining strong and occupancy broadly stable.
JLL expects limited new supply to continue supporting rates and RevPAR through the second half of the year, with several planned openings pushed into 2027.
The signal: When demand is growing and supply is constrained, the marketing question changes.
Hotels don’t only need to ask:
“How do we generate more demand?”
They can also ask:
Which demand do we want? How much of it can we capture directly? And are we giving away high-value bookings unnecessarily through intermediaries?
That brings brand positioning, distribution, direct booking, paid acquisition and search visibility much closer together.
Source:
JLL — Ho Chi Minh City Hotel Market Dynamics Q2 2026
📱 Da Nang is turning creator marketing into a distribution channel
Da Nang Tourism and Klook brought more than 120 creators from 20 countries and territories into the destination for Kreatorverse 2026.
Da Nang’s wider Storytellers programme had reached 219 creator registrations by August, almost 70% higher than in July.
But the bit I found more interesting wasn’t the creator count.
Klook’s creator ecosystem connects content to personalised affiliate links, allowing inspiration to be connected directly to bookings.
Klook says its network now includes 30,000+ creators across 88 markets, while bookings generated through creators increased 246% during 2025.
That last number comes from Klook itself, so I’d treat it as company-reported performance rather than an independent industry benchmark.
The signal: Influencer marketing starts looking very different when you can connect content directly to a transaction.
The traditional hospitality organisation often separates:
Social → Content → Affiliate → OTA → Distribution → Performance marketing
The traveller doesn’t.
They might see a creator’s video, click an experience, compare accommodation and book during the same journey.
For hotels, creator marketing may increasingly need to be measured as part of distribution, not simply awareness.
Source:
Da Nang Tourism — Kreatorverse 2026
🧳 Google is making hotel advertising more aware of the traveller’s trip
Google introduced another set of Demand Gen updates on 27 August, including several specifically aimed at travel.
Google says Demand Gen campaigns can increasingly surface local activities, events and real-time offers, while hotel ads can show properties that are more relevant to particular audiences.
Google is also testing direct messaging from YouTube Demand Gen ads and expanding its AI-powered creative tools.
The signal: Hotel advertising is moving from selling a property to understanding the context of a trip.
That distinction matters.
A traveller isn’t necessarily searching for:
“Hotel X.”
They may be trying to solve:
Where should I stay for three nights near this event?
Which hotel works for a family trip?
Where should I stay if I’m travelling for business?
The platforms are getting better at connecting those signals.
Hotel marketing still often starts with static:
Room + price + photo + Book Now.
There’s an increasing gap between that and what the advertising platforms know about the traveller.
Source:
Google — August 2026 Demand Gen update
💬 ChatGPT Ads became available across 31 European markets
ChatGPT Ads expanded into 31 European markets, with self-service access becoming available at the end of August.
Travel is particularly interesting here because researching and planning trips already fits naturally into conversational AI.
Travellers can ask:
Where should I stay?
Which neighbourhood is best?
Compare these hotels.
Build my itinerary.
Advertising is now entering that environment too.
The signal: The AI discovery layer is developing its own commercial layer.
For the last few years, most GEO conversations have focused on earned visibility:
How does a hotel become mentioned, cited or recommended in an AI answer?
We now need to start thinking about another layer:
Earned AI visibility + paid AI visibility.
It’s far too early to know how important ChatGPT Ads will become for hotel acquisition.
But the category now exists.
Source:
OpenAI — ChatGPT Ads expands across Europe
One thing I’m thinking about
These stories look like separate parts of hospitality marketing:
- Hotel performance.
- Creators.
- Google Ads.
- ChatGPT.
But they point toward the same change.
There is demand.
There are more ways than ever to influence that demand.
And more platforms are positioning themselves somewhere between discovery and transaction.
For hotels, I think the useful question becomes:
Who controls the path between someone wanting to travel and that person eventually making a booking?
An OTA can own part of it.
Google can own part of it.
A creator can own part of it.
AI can increasingly own part of it.
And ideally, the hotel owns more of it too.
That’s why I increasingly see search, GEO, social, paid media, distribution and direct booking as one connected system, rather than six separate marketing channels.
That’s this week’s Demand to Direct.
I spend a lot of my work in AI, Search and hospitality researching these changes anyway, so this newsletter is where I’m sharing the few updates I think are actually worth keeping — along with the original source and a thought on why they matter.