Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

What the Google AI Mode partnership reveals about who sets the terms when discovery happens inside someone else’s platform Jul 2, 2026 Every major chain built its AI tools for a journey that starts on the chain’s own platform. Piece one of this series made the case that fewer travelers start there anymore. Marriott saw…

The company booked a record 1.2 billion room nights in 2025 and its shares are down 15% this year — the market is pricing agentic disintermediation before a single AI agent has booked a hotel at scale Jul 2, 2026 Driving the news. Booking Holdings just had the best year in its history. Revenue of…

Marriott’s corporate booking tool routes straight into its own reservation system, signing accounts at four times the expected pace — and the company now says it’s pushing managed-travel buyers to book direct Jul 2, 2026 Driving the news. In an interview published July 1, Marriott’s chief revenue and technology officer, Drew Pinto, described the next…

Google reports 62% of travelers come back to it to book after going deep with AI — then previews the checkout meant to end the round trip Jul 2, 2026 Driving the news. At the first Travolution Connects event last week, Google’s UK head of travel, Ailish English, put numbers on a pattern most hoteliers…

The platform known for running independents just shipped group-sales tools, a 4,000-room calendar, and hotel-standard accounting — the toolkit of the enterprise systems it used to sit beneath Jul 2, 2026 Driving the news. On June 2, Cloudbeds announced its biggest product release to date — eight new capabilities across group sales, event spaces, direct…