The ever-evolving nature of hotel booking patterns and customer behavior warrants a closer look as we head into the busier months for the U.S. hotel industry. The nature of how guests book rooms is driven by both the nature of their trip and the incentives and offerings made by the channels.
In addition to the traditional drivers of lodging demand, 2026 booking patterns and performance will be affected by both the World Cup and the ever-changing nature of U.S. government policies. While the demand created by the World Cup is likely to give some channels more of a lift than others, the changing nature of unpredictable government policies is much more difficult to analyze. With those overarching factors in mind, here is our forecast for channel performance in 2026.
Generally, annual changes in channel mix have followed a relatively consistent trend over the past few years. As a greater share of travelers use the internet to make their reservations (in 2025, over 55 percent of all U.S. hotel reservations were made online), there has been a predictable uptick in both brand.com and OTA bookings. Conversely, there have been declines in both voice reservations (calls to the 800 number) and property direct reservations. The top chart (facing page) highlights the demand share by channel for the last couple of years, while the bottom chart highlights the relative changes in each of the booking channels as a percentage of total bookings compared to 2019.
Brand.com will continue to be the recipient of overall cultural changes, and as such will continue to see its share of total reservations grow in 2026. The growth in this channel is also helped by the significant increase in loyalty member booking through the brands’ respective websites. Over the next several years, it is likely that brand.com will become the dominant booking channel, replacing direct.
While not growing quite as fast as brand.com over the past several years, OTA bookings have been the second-biggest winner in the race to garner the increasing share of online bookings. Expectations are that the 2026 FIFA World Cup will help accelerate the OTAs’ share of total bookings this year, as travelers to the United States historically have been much more likely to book their stay using an OTA. Also helping to propel OTA bookings is the fact that they are now beginning to power some of the bank/credit card portals that are in the beginning stages of their growth trend.
GDS booking shares have experienced sharp declines during COVID, as this channel has historically been used by corporations for their business travel. While companies have begun to allow more business travel, their growth has been off a lower base. With so much uncertainty about governmental decisions in 2026, it seems unlikely that this segment will see much growth this year.
We expect group travel to be flat with last year, as many companies have embraced wait-and-see strategies as it relates to group travel. In addition, groups traveling for social/weekend business and utilizing the lower end of the chain scale segments seem to be cautious about their plans for 2026.
For property direct and voice, which historically have been more dominant booking channels, the decline over the last decade will continue in the coming years. As mentioned, it seems that property direct bookings, which still hold the top spot as a percentage of total hotel bookings, will lose that distinction sometime before this decade is over.
