Interesting. Not sure if the confusion is due to this being too big a paradigm shift from the usual API model. Or if the whole MCP discussion is mostly hype. Where would it sit, who is maintaining it? Would it be able to pull in multiple APIs and act as the central translation layer for them? will it be worth it. Lots of food for though here.
If CRS becomes the execution rail, who actually owns user intent? If Siri/ChatGPT/Gemini sit in front of MCP, CRS risks becoming middleware, not the new gatekeeper. Also, what stops CRS from simply becoming the next rent-seeker once they control programmatic access to ARI? We’ve seen this movie before with OTAs. If AI agents optimize purely on price, cancellation terms and availability, are we just accelerating hotel commoditization and margin compression again, just with better plumbing? Feels like the real battle isn’t CRS vs OTAs, but CRS vs the AI OS layer that decides what gets called in the first place.
Exceptional breakdown of how MCP fundamentaly reshapes distribution economics. The insight that AI agents compress the stack by bypassing aggregation layers to hit canonical ARI sources directly is key because it flips the incentive structure—CRS vendors get paid by hotels not guests so theres no arbitrage game. The comparison showing OTAs working through cached availability while agents need real-time transactional logic makes it clear why the traditional middlemen cant adapt thier existing models to this shift.
Interesting. Not sure if the confusion is due to this being too big a paradigm shift from the usual API model. Or if the whole MCP discussion is mostly hype. Where would it sit, who is maintaining it? Would it be able to pull in multiple APIs and act as the central translation layer for them? will it be worth it. Lots of food for though here.
If CRS becomes the execution rail, who actually owns user intent? If Siri/ChatGPT/Gemini sit in front of MCP, CRS risks becoming middleware, not the new gatekeeper. Also, what stops CRS from simply becoming the next rent-seeker once they control programmatic access to ARI? We’ve seen this movie before with OTAs. If AI agents optimize purely on price, cancellation terms and availability, are we just accelerating hotel commoditization and margin compression again, just with better plumbing? Feels like the real battle isn’t CRS vs OTAs, but CRS vs the AI OS layer that decides what gets called in the first place.
Didn't include Siteminder as a CRS player, deliberate choice or not at scale?
Exceptional breakdown of how MCP fundamentaly reshapes distribution economics. The insight that AI agents compress the stack by bypassing aggregation layers to hit canonical ARI sources directly is key because it flips the incentive structure—CRS vendors get paid by hotels not guests so theres no arbitrage game. The comparison showing OTAs working through cached availability while agents need real-time transactional logic makes it clear why the traditional middlemen cant adapt thier existing models to this shift.