IHG Reports Strong U.S. Demand, a Middle East Hit, and a Bet on AI Content Over Scale
Photo Credit: Exterior of Six Senses London, which opened in March 2026. IHG
Skift Take
IHG is changing how guests search on its own channels. The bigger question is whether its content infrastructure will make it show up when they search everywhere else.
IHG Hotels & Resorts is adding a natural-language search tool to its website and app, the company confirmed on its first-quarter earnings call Thursday.
The tool will allow guests to describe in their own words where they want to go and the hotel features that matter to them, across IHG’s more than 7,000 hotels.
CEO Elie Maalouf said IHG is also working with Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Maalouf's argument for how IHG wins in AI search differs from its peers — Marriott and Hilton have cited sheer scale, while he is pointing to content infrastructure.
“I think the most important thing is getting your system and getting your content ready and getting your technology platform ready, so that when people do AI searc
