Booking.com Reveals AI Trust Gap, Skift Acquires Hospitality.fm and WLT&H, Ocean City Blocks Rental Crackdown

Booking.com’s Global AI Report Shows Travelers Are Ready to Use AI, But Not Ready to Trust It

• Booking.com has released a major global report on how travelers feel about AI, based on responses from over 37,000 people across 33 countries. 
• 91% say they’re excited about AI, and 89% want to use it for future travel planning. But there’s a sharp contrast between enthusiasm and trust.
• Only 6% of respondents fully trust AI. Just 12% are comfortable letting it make decisions without human input, while 25% say they actively don’t trust AI to act alone. 
• There’s also a measurable regional divide in sentiment. In North America and Europe (EME and NORAM), over 30% of respondents say they distrust AI-generated information. 
• In contrast, distrust drops to just 17% in LATAM and APAC, where AI usage is higher and attitudes are more optimistic.
• According to the report, 67% of travelers have used it during a trip, not just for planning, but also for real-time help like translation, updates, and local navigation. 
• When it comes to trust in travel advice, AI is already outranking humans in some contexts. 24% of travelers say they trust AI assistants for trip planning, compared to 19% who trust coworkers and just 14% who trust influencers.

Snigdha’s Views

• Booking.com is staging its next wave of AI tools, and this report sets the tone, while hinting that what’s next will be more autonomous, embedded, and personal.
• They’ve already integrated OpenAI’s LLMs into their systems to power tools like Trip Planner, Smart Filters, Review Summaries, Property Q&A, and Help Me Reply. 
• This shows how far they’ve already gone in embedding AI into the full guest journey, and signals that more is coming.
• For property managers, the takeaway is clear. AI use is now mainstream, 67% of travelers have used it during trips. To keep up, managers need to implement AI-powered guest messaging, offer real-time local tips, and use smart tools to anticipate and answer traveler needs quickly.
• But trust is still a gap, and that’s the opportunity. Guests still want the human layer. That’s where managers win: instant replies, but with host curation; itinerary help, but with human nuance. AI gets you discovered. Trust gets you booked again.

Skift Acquires Hospitality.FM and Women Leading Travel & Hospitality to Expand Content and Community Reach

• Skift has acquired two niche media properties: Hospitality.fm, a podcast network focused on short-term rentals and hospitality, and Women Leading Travel & Hospitality (WLT&H), an executive leadership community.
• Hospitality.fm brings shows like Good Morning Hospitality, giving Skift a direct content channel inside the STR space. 
• Its founder, Wil Slickers, now appointed as Skift’s Director of Audio & Video Strategy, shared: “Skift is the perfect brand for me and these podcasts, and I couldn’t be more excited for what’s next.”
• WLT&H, previously run by NAPCO, brings in a U.S.-based membership network of women executives. It’s a natural fit for Skift’s event and content business and could plug into initiatives like Skift Global Forum or a women-in-leadership content vertical.
• Skift CEO Rafat Ali said these acquisitions are part of Skift’s “intentional growth strategy,” aimed at deepening community ties and expanding multimedia reach 

About Skift:
Skift is a global travel intelligence company known for its news, research, events, and advisory services.

About Hospitality.fm
It is a podcast network focused on short-term rentals and hospitality, founded by Wil Slickers. 

Women Leading Travel & Hospitality

It is an executive community for women in travel, offering events, coaching, and networking. 

Snigdha’s Views:

• With these two acquisitions, Skift is pulling two high-engagement verticals, STRs and executive leadership, into its owned media ecosystem. 
• Hospitality.fm gives Skift more than just content; it gives them direct control over how STR topics are shaped, packaged, and distributed across platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok.
• In our earlier interview with Wil, he shared how Hospitality.fm was built to help STR voices get discovered and monetized. That mission now expands with Skift’s global reach.
• Women Leading Travel & Hospitality, meanwhile, plugs directly into Skift’s B2B monetization engine, offering a structured, paying community of women executives that can be layered into events, content series, and advisory programs. 
• For short-term rental managers, this means more STR-focused media from a mainstream travel outlet, and potentially more opportunities to get featured, heard, or involved. 

Ocean City Voters Reject Proposed Short-Term Rental Restrictions in Close Special Election

• In a narrow vote, Ocean City, Maryland, residents have overturned a proposed ordinance that would have imposed strict new limits on STRs. 
• The measure, originally approved by the city council in March, failed in a special election with 834 votes against and 800 in favor.
• The ordinance would have introduced a minimum five-night stay for short-term rentals in Ocean City’s R-1 single-family districts and MH mobile home district in 2025 and 2026, escalating to a 31-night minimum starting in January 2027. More than 4,000 homes across these six zoning areas would have been affected.
• Local group, Ocean City, Maryland Property Rights Inc., led a successful petition campaign, arguing that the ordinance ignored the area’s longstanding vacation rental culture and would hurt the local economy.
• The campaign collected 1,327 signatures and mobilized voters to oppose the ordinance.
  

Snigdha’s Views:

• Ocean City just joined a small but growing list of U.S. cities where residents have pushed back, and won, against strict STR rules
• It’s similar to recent efforts in Missouri, where STR owners successfully fought back against reclassification and tax hikes.
• STR operators and property managers should take note: organized, data-backed advocacy can work.
• The era of sweeping, unchallenged STR crackdowns may be fading, especially in vacation towns where the economic upside is hard to ignore.