Agentic Hospitality has appointed veteran sales leader David Wiley as vice president of sales, a move that underscores how high the stakes have become for hotels as travel discovery shifts from traditional search and booking sites to AI-native, conversational channels.

Announced on December 30, 2025, the hire signals a decisive push by the Louisville based startup to accelerate adoption of its infrastructure level AI platform at a moment when autonomous travel agents, large language models and natural language search are rapidly reshaping how guests find and book hotels.

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A Strategic Hire for an AI Native Hotel Future

Agentic Hospitality describes itself as an AI native distribution and infrastructure company built to help hotels stay visible and profitable as travelers increasingly ask digital assistants to find and book trips in everyday language instead of browsing dozens of websites.

In this environment, the visibility of a hotel inside AI driven recommendation engines depends less on traditional marketing spend and more on structured, machine readable data and direct connections to AI platforms.

Wiley joins Agentic Hospitality at a critical inflection point. The company has been rolling out its Agentic Hospitality Cloud, a platform that uses Google Cloud infrastructure, Vertex AI and generative models to turn hotel content, pricing, availability and guest data into AI ready signals that can be consumed by search engines and conversational agents.

The platform is designed not only to surface hotels in natural language queries but also to support direct booking experiences that compete with online travel agencies.

As vice president of sales, Wiley will lead early stage customer engagement, focusing on independent hotels, resort groups and larger brands that are reassessing their digital distribution strategies in light of rapid advances in AI.

His remit stretches from education and market development to building a commercial playbook that can scale across segments, with a particular emphasis on helping hoteliers understand why AI infrastructure is becoming as fundamental as a website or booking engine once was.

From Disney Parks to Enterprise Tech: Wiley’s Career Path

Wiley brings more than 25 years of sales and leadership experience, including over two decades in hospitality. He began his hospitality career at Disney in 2010 in an entry level role and rose steadily through the organization. By 2017 he was serving as a sales director in California, overseeing business development, marketing and operational leadership across key markets.

That tenure gave him deep exposure to destination level demand generation, complex group sales cycles and the operational realities that hotel leaders face day to day.

After Disney, Wiley transitioned into enterprise technology, most recently serving as an account executive at Microsoft, where he managed strategic travel and leisure accounts.

There he worked on large scale digital transformation projects, from cloud migrations to data platforms and analytics, gaining direct experience in how global brands modernize their tech stacks while maintaining security, compliance and operational continuity.

Agentic Hospitality’s leadership cites this dual background in on property hospitality and enterprise tech as a critical asset.

Wiley is expected to bridge the knowledge gap between AI architects and hotel owners, translating complex issues like schema markup, model context protocols and persistent memory into business outcomes such as direct revenue, lower acquisition costs and improved loyalty.

Why AI Travel Discovery Changes the Game for Hotels

The backdrop to Wiley’s appointment is a profound shift in consumer behavior. Instead of typing “hotels in Miami with a kids’ pool” into a search engine, more travelers are starting to ask AI assistants open ended questions such as “Where should I stay in Miami for a long weekend with toddlers and a beach nearby?”

Those systems now synthesize information across multiple data sources and, in some cases, can complete the booking within the same conversation.

Industry voices, including Agentic Hospitality founder and chief AI officer Brad Brewer, have been sounding the alarm that the results of these AI powered queries are not neutral.

The hotels that appear most often are typically those whose data feeds were structured earliest and most rigorously, a dynamic that has historically favored online travel agencies and large intermediaries that invested in machine readable inventory long before individual hotels did.

At the same time, major hotel groups are racing to deploy their own agentic AI tools. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, for example, recently put around 250 AI agents into production across roughly 7 percent of its more than 8,300 properties to handle guest calls, modify bookings and generate upsell offers such as late checkout or room upgrades.

That kind of scaled deployment demonstrates how quickly AI is moving from pilot experiments to core infrastructure within the hospitality sector.

Agentic Hospitality’s Play: Infrastructure Over Interfaces

Agentic Hospitality’s launch earlier in 2025 marked a shift from treating AI as a layer on top of existing systems to deploying it as the backbone of hotel distribution.

The company’s platform combines several components: an AI ready content management system known as AgentSite, a travel operating system built on model context protocol, a conversion intelligence engine and adapters that translate hotel data into structured schema compatible with the needs of modern search and AI platforms.

Rather than positioning itself as a new booking channel, the company pitches its technology as a way for hotels to “build once and serve everywhere.”

In practice, that means enforcing standardized schemas for room types, amenities, policies and offers; routing data through an AI aware operating system; and using persistent memory to personalize responses across the guest journey from discovery to post stay reengagement.

The platform can connect to global distribution systems and online travel agencies where needed, but its strategic emphasis is on direct visibility and direct booking.

Agentic Hospitality points to pilot customers that have seen substantial growth in website bookings by adopting structured markup and schema enforcement, arguing that AI ready infrastructure is becoming the new foundation of profitable hotel commerce.

Reclaiming Visibility and Bargaining Power From Gatekeepers

For many hotel owners and operators, the draw of Agentic Hospitality’s approach is as much about leverage as it is about technology. Over the past decade, intermediaries such as major online travel agencies have consolidated demand, leaving individual properties paying significant commissions to remain visible.

In the era of AI driven discovery, there is a risk that this dependence could deepen if hotels do not control how they appear inside AI assistants and super apps.

Agentic Hospitality argues that hotels can avoid a repeat of the mobile era, when many properties lagged in mobile optimization and ceded ground to more agile intermediaries.

By investing now in AI native infrastructure, hotels can feed accurate, structured data directly into search engines and conversational platforms, improving their odds of being surfaced when travelers ask for recommendations in natural language.

Wiley’s mandate is to turn that argument into a concrete roadmap for owners and asset managers. That involves not only highlighting potential upside in direct revenue and lower distribution costs but also framing AI readiness as a defensive move.

If travelers can book an entire trip through an assistant that defaults to whichever suppliers have the cleanest data and deepest integrations, hotels that do not modernize could find themselves effectively invisible at the moment of decision.

A Competitive Landscape for Agentic AI in Travel

The rapid rise of agentic AI tools across travel is creating a more competitive landscape for companies like Agentic Hospitality. Online platforms are embedding smart messaging, automated replies and AI powered trip planners that can independently handle guest communication and booking workflows.

Travel technology providers are launching their own open source agent frameworks to let large language models talk directly to inventory and booking APIs.

Destination management organizations and tourism boards are also experimenting with AI agents that sit on official destination websites, aggregating offers from hotels, restaurants and experience providers while facilitating itinerary building and direct bookings.

In this evolving ecosystem, the question for hotels is not whether AI agents will mediate guest interactions, but which agents will control the data, the relationship and the economics.

Agentic Hospitality is betting that hotels will want an infrastructure partner that is aligned with their interests rather than those of a marketplace.

By focusing on standards, protocol level connectivity and direct control over pricing and content, the company is positioning itself as an ally for brands that want to participate fully in AI powered travel discovery without surrendering bargaining power.

What Wiley’s Appointment Signals for 2026 and Beyond

Wiley’s arrival at Agentic Hospitality ahead of 2026 suggests that the company is preparing for a more aggressive go to market phase.

His role will likely include expanding relationships with management companies, ownership groups and brand level executives who are under pressure to articulate clear AI strategies to their boards and investors.

Industry analysts expect 2026 to be a decisive year for AI investments in hospitality. Regulatory shifts, such as the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, are nudging global platforms to open up their ecosystems and support standardized APIs for lodging data.

At the same time, as more guests interact with AI assistants from planning through post stay feedback, hotels that lack structured, accessible data may see their share of voice erode even if their physical properties remain competitive.

Against that backdrop, Agentic Hospitality is framing its offerings not as optional experiments but as the new plumbing for digital commerce in hotels.

Wiley’s challenge will be to cut through hype and fear with grounded conversations about timelines, budgets and implementation risks, persuading cautious operators that AI native infrastructure can be deployed in phases without disrupting day to day operations.

FAQ

Q1: Who is David Wiley and what role is he taking at Agentic Hospitality?
David Wiley is a hospitality sales and technology veteran with more than 25 years of experience. He has been appointed vice president of sales at Agentic Hospitality, where he will lead customer engagement and growth as the company scales its AI native distribution platform for hotels.

Q2: What is Agentic Hospitality’s core mission in the hotel industry?
Agentic Hospitality aims to help hotels reclaim visibility, control and profitability as travel discovery moves to AI powered, natural language experiences. Its platform provides infrastructure that makes hotels machine readable, recommendable and bookable inside AI assistants and modern search environments.

Q3: How does AI travel discovery differ from traditional online search and booking?
AI travel discovery relies on conversational queries to assistants or chat interfaces rather than manual browsing across many sites. Guests can ask complex, context rich questions and receive synthesized recommendations, with some systems able to complete bookings directly within the same conversation.

Q4: Why is structured data so important for hotels in the age of AI?
AI agents depend on clean, structured, machine readable data to understand a hotel’s location, amenities, policies, pricing and availability. Hotels that lack standardized schemas or direct data feeds are less likely to appear prominently when AI systems generate recommendations or answer travel questions.

Q5: What components make up Agentic Hospitality’s technology platform?
The platform includes an AI aware content management system, a travel operating system built on model context protocol, a conversion intelligence engine and adapters that enforce schema standards and connect to booking engines and distribution partners, all running on cloud and generative AI infrastructure.

Q6: How might Agentic Hospitality help hotels reduce reliance on online travel agencies?
By improving a hotel’s direct visibility in AI powered discovery channels and enabling seamless direct booking flows, Agentic Hospitality seeks to shift more demand toward brand controlled channels, which can lower commission costs and strengthen direct relationships with guests.

Q7: What experience does David Wiley bring from his time at Disney and Microsoft?
At Disney, Wiley gained deep knowledge of hospitality operations, sales and marketing, managing complex business development efforts and guest focused initiatives. At Microsoft, he worked on enterprise scale technology transformations for travel and leisure clients, learning how large organizations modernize their digital infrastructure.

Q8: How are major hotel groups currently using agentic AI?
Large hotel companies are deploying AI agents to handle guest calls, modify reservations, answer questions and manage upsell opportunities across thousands of properties. These agents automate routine interactions, free up staff and provide more personalized recommendations based on guest data.

Q9: Is Agentic Hospitality building another booking site or marketplace?
The company positions itself primarily as an infrastructure provider rather than a consumer marketplace. Its focus is on making hotels visible and bookable across existing channels, particularly AI powered assistants and search, while allowing hotels to maintain control over pricing, content and brand standards.

Q10: What should hotel owners consider as they evaluate AI investments for 2026?
Owners should assess whether their property data is structured and up to date, how easily they can plug into AI assistants and search platforms, and which partners can provide infrastructure that will remain adaptable as regulations, distribution models and AI technologies continue to evolve.