Hey Siri, book me a hotel in Vegas

The example I gave started in my kitchen. My wife asked when I was traveling next. October, I said. Then she asked where I was staying, and I realized I'd forgotten to book a hotel. So I said, "Hey Siri, book me a hotel in Vegas from October 8-10 for a work trip."

That's how I described where booking was headed in Publicis Sapient's Guide to Next 2025, Issue 4 of its trends report on travel and dining, published in October 2024. I was head of product for travel and hospitality then. The report sets out five trends from C-suite research, and I'm quoted on two of them: generative AI held back by legacy processes, and AI voice assistants becoming a core part of travel and dining booking.

Checking the box

The first quote was about what most companies were doing with AI in 2024:

"Companies are increasingly adopting basic AI applications like content generation and SEO optimization. It might check the box when investors ask a question, or when the board asks a question like, 'What are you doing about this AI thing?' However, these surface-level implementations often fall short of realizing AI's full potential."

The report's research showed the gap. In travel and dining, 54 percent of leaders called generative AI "extremely important" for the next three years, but only 11 percent were using custom AI tools with their own data.

That same year my team shipped the other kind of project. Search with AI for Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy started testing in March 2024 and let travelers describe the trip they wanted instead of filling in a destination box. I talked it through at Skift in June.

Getting ready for the assistant

The Siri story sat in the voice-assistant trend. The report said, citing Apple, that Siri would be able to take action in and across apps by 2025, and that assistants like Apple Intelligence would reduce reliance on traditional booking platforms. My advice to brands closed out that section:

"Our devices will get smarter every year, reducing dependency on mobile apps and websites. Ensure your company is well positioned to adapt to personal assistant technology and be realistic about your brand's capabilities."

Update, October 2026

Two years on, we're still short of that Siri request.

Apple did move. On June 8, 2026, it introduced Siri AI, with personal context understanding, onscreen awareness and more systemwide app actions. It began rolling out in beta in English on September 14. Siri can act in apps people already use, like texting a friend in WhatsApp, and Apple says adding a restaurant recommendation to Tripsy is coming soon. But Apple's hotel example is surfacing a hotel confirmation number from an old email. Finding the booking is a long way from making it.

My read is that the phone makers are being conservative.

The assistants that book are coming from somewhere else. Meta launched Muse in September 2026, and it books travel. It's rolling out in the US on iOS, Android and the web. Skift found that it books flights through a direct connection to Duffel, while for hotels it opens a browser and shops consumer sites like Expedia and Hotels.com the way a person would. A separate system called Sentinel stops to ask before anything consequential. xAI released Grok Bot on August 11: agents that sign in to your apps, carry out multi-step tasks and stop for approval before buying anything. I've used it since mid-September, on my trading app.

Skift's point about Muse is that for hotels, the agent controls where it searches and books, and the hotel is left as a passive website with no say. The guest never opens the site; the agent does. The assistant I asked for in 2024 exists now. It just didn't come with the phone.