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Do slow hotel homepages put off AI agents?

Updated By Akkrev

Three hotels in our pilot took 26 to 30 seconds to load their homepage for our agent. All still worked, but speed affects how far an agent gets.

Hotel homepages are often built to impress: full-screen video, large photo carousels, animations. For a guest on fast broadband that’s fine. For an AI agent, every second counts against a budget.

What the pilot showed

In our pilot of 28 independent UK hotels, speed was one of six scores. Among hotels where we timed page loads, three homepages took between about 26 and 30 seconds to load for our scripted agent. One followed a bot check. The three slowest loads we timed were all hotel homepages, not booking engines.

All three still reached prices. Speed didn’t cause a failure on its own. But slow pages scored lower, and on a real agent with a tighter limit, slowness could be the difference between a booking and a “sorry, I couldn’t load that site”.

Our times include tool overhead, so they’re best compared between hotels. See the method.

Why speed matters more for agents

A person waits for a page because they want to see it. An agent is working through a task with limits:

  • Time limits. Products cap how long a task can run.
  • Step limits. Each page load, click and read is a step.
  • Cost. Every second of a cloud browser costs the agent provider money. Slow sites are expensive to use.
  • Comparison. An agent comparing five hotels may move on from the slowest rather than wait.

Agents may also load pages from data centres a long way from your web server, adding delay.

What usually makes hotel homepages slow

  • Autoplay video in the header.
  • Large, uncompressed photos, often several in a carousel.
  • Many third-party scripts: chat widgets, review badges, tracking, heatmaps.
  • A booking widget that loads its whole engine on the homepage.
  • Pop-ups and cookie tools that load before the page is usable.

We’re not suggesting stripping the site of character. Many hotels sell on atmosphere. The question is whether the agent’s path to booking is quick, even if the page around it is rich.

Google measures page experience through Core Web Vitals. Slow sites are less pleasant for guests on mobile and may do worse in search. Speed for agents and speed for people usually point the same way.

What this means for AI recommendations

Slow pages can time out for AI crawlers too. If AI can’t load your site, it relies on OTA listings to describe you.

How to check

Run your homepage through a free page speed test and note the time until the page is usable. Then time how long it takes to get from your homepage to a price for a specific date, clicking as quickly as you can. If it’s more than half a minute, an agent may struggle too. Our free agent check records load times along the way.

Questions

How slow were the slowest hotels?

Among hotels where we timed loads, three homepages took between about 26 and 30 seconds, including tool overhead. Times are best compared between hotels rather than read as absolute speeds.

Do agents have time limits?

Many do, in practice. Products limit how long a task can run and how many steps it takes. A slow page uses up that budget before the agent reaches prices.

Is the homepage or the booking engine usually slower?

In our pilot, the slowest loads we timed were hotel homepages rather than booking engines. Heavy video, images and scripts were the usual suspects.

Does a slow booking engine matter as much as a slow homepage?

Both add to the total time. In our pilot, the slowest loads we timed were homepages, but a slow engine can still use up an agent's budget.

Will faster agents make this irrelevant?

Agents are getting quicker, but they'll still have limits, and comparing many hotels quickly will always favour fast sites.

Sources

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