Marriott and Wyndham revealed more of their plans to use agentic AI this week, and such efforts are a potential threat to online travel agencies.

Many investors seemingly think agentic AI will enable hotel chains to cut OTAs out of the picture. One reflection of that fear: Booking Holding share price is down roughly 30% over the past few weeks despite a recent strong earnings report.

But BTIG analyst Jake Fuller said the fears are overstated.

For one thing, the vast majority of the world’s hotels are independents and less able to break away from OTAs.

And the top 15 global chains control only around 51,000 of the world’s roughly 1.2 million properties. So their offerings alone wouldn’t give AI platforms enough hotel inventory.

“That’s one of the main reasons that Google never cut OTAs out in paid search,” Fuller wrote in a research note Thursday. “The same AI platforms working with Marriott and Wyndham are also working with Booking and other OTAs. They need to in order to address the vast preponderance of the accommodation options.”

Booking said this week that a low double-digit percentage of its total room nights come from the top global chains. That means perhaps 85% of its room nights come from smaller chains, independent hotels, and short-term rentals.

Booking also argues that it provides independent hotels with technology solutions, including payments, language translation, advertising and customer service, that they would be hard-pressed to accomplish on their own.

“Chains represent a small piece of the global accommodations, BKNG has limited chain exposure & we continue to see OTAs as partners of choice given breadth of supply, global payment networks, service infrastructure & hefty advertising budgets,” Fuller wrote.

Independents aren’t necessarily locked into OTAs anymore, some executives argue. AI has lowered the barriers to building direct distribution technology, said Sanjay Vakil, co-founder and CEO of DirectBooker. In addition, many independent hotels already work with channel managers and other tech aggregators, Vakil said, who could help them distribute through the AI platforms.

Independents also have a financial incentive to seek out AI distribution: some independent hotels have forked over 25% or more in commissions to the OTAs, Vakil said.

Still, Vakil said hotels will have to consider whether they want to anger Booking. “If Booking is sending you 30% of your customers, I probably wouldn’t mess with it,” he said.

It should be noted that despite all the talk about agentic AI, very few bookings are taking place today through these AI platforms.