Neighborhood flyers, hotel billboards, and newspaper ads once guided dining and travel decisions, while crowdsourced guides like Zagat helped people choose where to eat. The Internet shifted discovery and booking to destination platforms, pushing travel agents aside and forcing hotels to build their own websites or risk falling behind. A new shift occurs as credit card companies vertically integrate access to hospitality ecosystems. These intermediaries increasingly influence consumer decisions by embedding into critical moments of selection and reservation. The result is a choice environment that can feel free while being deliberately designed to steer outcomes toward the integrated provider’s ecosystem.
"Imagine you opened the digital restaurant booking and management app Resy last week to book a table. Were you making a free choice? Or were you navigating an environment that someone else had very deliberately designed to achieve a specific outcome? The answer, increasingly, is both."
"All of that changed, of course, with the advent of the Internet. Booking destination platforms took over the jobs travel agents once did. Hotels had to create their own websites or be left behind. Other travel-related services tried to get on the platforms and build loyal followings of their own as well."
"And now, we have another inflection point in the evolution of the hospitality experience with the advent of credit card companies vertically integrating access to entire hospitality ecosystems. As the economy becomes increasingly digitally intermediated, these players have quietly managed to insert themselves into critical decision points and, without many people realizing it, heavily influence the decisions consumers make."
"American Express acquired Resy in 2019 and integrated it into its mobile app as a benefit for rewards cardholders. Five years later, Amex paid $400 million for another reservation platform, Tock. Chase"
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