Before the Booking

The guest who will book your hotel this month is already planning.

They are not on Google. They are not browsing an OTA. They are having a conversation with ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity — describing what they want, where they want to eat, what kind of experience they are looking for. And your property is either part of the answer they are getting, or it is not.

Before the Booking introduces the Hotel AI Discovery Gap — the distance between what your hotel actually offers and what AI can find, describe, and recommend about it. It is not a quality problem. It is a visibility problem. And it is costing hotels revenue across every line of the P&L before a single booking is ever made.

Written for hotel owners, asset managers, general managers, and directors of sales and marketing, this book explains:

• How AI has fundamentally reshaped the way travelers plan trips — and why most of the hospitality industry has not yet absorbed what that means for revenue
• Why the find and choose phases of the guest journey — invisible to your reporting systems — are now where revenue is won and lost
• Why your F&B, spa, events, and experiences are AI-visible revenue centers that most properties are currently leaving unmanaged
• What the leadership decision to close the gap looks like — and the specific questions to ask of every team and partner involved

This is not a technology book. It is a revenue book. The discipline it describes is learnable, the investment is not in new headcount or new technology, and the window to act is open now.

The traveler is already planning. The question is whether your property is part of the answer they are getting.

About the Author

Amber S. Hoffman is the founder of The FS Agency, an AI visibility consultancy working with hotels and destination marketing organizations across North America, Europe, and Asia. Before The FS Agency, she spent more than a decade as a food and travel writer, building two culinary travel publications, and taking her to more than seventy countries. She has spoken on digital strategy and destination marketing at World Travel Market, ITB Asia, the World Food Travel Association, and the European Tour Operators Association, among others. Alongside their travel publishing work, Amber and her husband Eric conducted social media and digital marketing training for hotels across Asia, including properties within the Marriott portfolio.

She writes at fsagency.co.