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Flyr spent about four years pushing airline pricing into hotels, and this week it handed its hotel unit to Duetto, one of the two rivals Skift had said it needed to beat. After HotStats, that is another RMS consolidation. For independents it means fewer vendors and more lock-in, so the useful question is less which system prices best and more what you can take with you when you leave. Madrid shows where the money actually leaks. According to an opinion piece on Hospitality Net, the Formula 1 debut drew 350,000 fans while hotels sat around 70% occupancy, because wholesale allotments, late cut-offs and rigid rate floors capped revenue before demand did. Mexico has the opposite problem. The FT reports Cancún, Tulum and Puerto Vallarta losing US visitors to sargassum and a strong peso, and no algorithm reprices seaweed away. Skift's Data + AI Summit Europe called this a "prove-it" phase: AI is changing distribution and operations, but nobody has shown it moves booking volume. Eurostars' survey of more than 2,000 travellers agrees. 71% use ChatGPT or Gemini to explore, but under 10% would hand AI most of the organisation. Demand is not the issue. Skyscanner finds 80% of Spanish travellers plan to travel as much or more in 2027. Booking.com's European Accommodation Barometer locates the gap in operations. 55% of independents feel confident against 72% of chains, and only 60% of sub-ten-staff properties feel ready for cyberattacks. I expect that gap to widen over the next year as consolidated vendors reprice renewals. If you are at TTG in Rimini this week, ask every RMS vendor for its roadmap, data portability terms and exit terms in writing. Event destinations, Monza included, should fix cut-offs before the next peak. Three things are worth watching. Google's Universal Commerce Protocol has no field for agents, commissions or groups, which means distribution economics are being written into schemas. Small Spanish agencies now receive clients carrying AI-built itineraries. Skift also reports, on thin detail, that war is raising the cost of Saudi tourism.