Google's agentic hotel booking is live in the United States, and hotel brands now sit on the same shelf as the OTAs inside the comparison engine — with loyalty points factored into the price. That is the distribution shift Kari Anna Fiskvik, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Nordic operator Strawberry, wants hoteliers to take seriously.

Speaking ahead of the Skift Data + AI Summit Europe on October 6, 2026, at Mastercard London, Fiskvik argues the room brands that get represented inside those agents will be the ones with clean, structured, complete data — not the ones with the best model.

What does Google's agentic hotel booking change?

Google's agentic hotel booking inside AI Mode, launched in the US, lets travelers search, compare, and assemble a booking through a single interface. Hotel brands sit next to OTAs, and the tool already compares cash rates against loyalty points. The traveler still selects the room and approves payment, but the agent handles the searching, comparing, and assembling behind the decision.

For sellers of travel, the immediate question is who gets surfaced. Fiskvik is direct on the point. "The model is rapidly becoming a commodity," she said. "Your data, and the plumbing underneath it, are not."

The asymmetry she flags: stand-alone hotels and smaller groups will find it harder to remain digitally discoverable as the entry point consolidates. Meta has launched its own travel app, adding a second large funnel with similar representation logic. Hotels competing for placement inside both surfaces now need inventory, identity, and rate data engineered for machine-readable answers, not human-facing brochures.

Where Strawberry is testing the booking moment

Strawberry is already running its own conversion test. On Villa Copenhagen's website, the group's AI concierge Vivi returns current pricing and packages within seconds when a guest asks for a double room in October. No "contact us for availability" detour — just a bookable answer and a confirmation link.

Fiskvik framed the opportunity as "turning every guest question into a bookable moment." For revenue managers, the implication is that any inventory, rate, or package inconsistency surfaced inside a chat-style booking flow now costs the booking, not just the click.

What does Strawberry's ransomware history say about AI governance?

Fiskvik draws her data-first stance from a 2021 incident. The Conti ransomware group took down most of Strawberry's systems mid-pandemic. The group was back online in four days — not from compliance binders, she said, but from people who understood what mattered.

The argument she pushes to European regulators: paperwork does not equal safety. "I would like to see regulators spend as much energy on whether a rule actually works as they currently spend on whether it is documented," she said. For operators, that means weighing how much compliance effort also buys recovery capacity — a question now landing on European hotel AI governance checklists.

Where should AI cut first — and where should it stop?

Fiskvik ranks the booking funnel as the first place AI earns its keep. Discoverability, search, and the presentational layer of a stay can go fully digital — and at some Strawberry properties, largely have. The stay itself, she insists, stays human.

"Hospitality for most is largely a people business before it is a technology business," she said. "Just because we can build a model capable of replacing a person doesn't mean we should."

On workforce, Strawberry is taking a public stance. The group identifies as a people, planet, profit company and says it does not want AI to replace entry-level roles where young staff start and learn. Hotels building efficiency plans from AI need a junior talent plan running alongside them, or the talent pipeline that fills their management tracks in five years thins out now.

What should travel sellers watch next?

Three distribution shifts will reshape European hotel sales over the next 24 months if Fiskvik's read holds:

• Agentic booking inside Google AI Mode expanding from the US into Europe
• Meta's travel app gaining share of discovery before any direct booking integration matures
• MICE and group business moving into agent-driven comparison flows for the first time at scale

Strawberry's internal bet is that integration, identity, and rate plumbing now beat model selection in the AI capex list. Fiskvik joins Bryan Batista of Skyscanner and Benjamin Cany of Amadeus on the Skift Data + AI Summit Europe stage in London on October 6, where the next test of that thesis will land.