On 10 November 2026 OpenAI opened Businesses in ChatGPT in beta. Through a dashboard called Business Hub, a company can claim its profile inside ChatGPT, keep its details current and see how often ChatGPT mentions it. OpenAI says ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people each week. For hotel tech vendors it is a new listing for your own company and a new chore your hotel customers will ask about.

Below are seven steps for this month, using only what OpenAI has published about the beta so far.

An AI business profile is the record an AI assistant keeps about a company, which the company can now claim, verify and edit, and which comes with aggregated data on how often the assistant names it.

What the beta gives a vendor and what it gives a hotel

The two audiences you care about get different access. Most hotel tech companies sell software online, so they sit in a different bucket from the hotels they sell to. The table below is built from OpenAI's setup guide and the launch post.

Hospitality.today pointed out on 13 November that hotels are not named in OpenAI's eligibility rules, and that eligibility depends on industry and location. Treat hotel access as limited until OpenAI says otherwise.

The seven steps at a glance

1. Find your company in Business Hub and name an owner

2. Verify the claim and pass the identity check

3. Rewrite the profile in buyer language

4. Read the 28 day insights correctly

5. Decide whether to publish a Business Agent

6. Turn customer questions into a support offer

7. Update what sales says about AI visibility

Step 1: Find your company in Business Hub and name an owner

Sign in to ChatGPT with a work account, open Business Hub from the sidebar and search for your company by name. Decide now who owns the profile. OpenAI lets the admin who claimed the business add teammates and grant an agency access, so the owner should be someone who stays, usually the head of marketing, not an intern with a personal login.

Step 2: Verify the claim and pass the identity check

OpenAI offers four ways to verify a claim: business phone, business email, website domain or a Shopify store. For a software company the domain route is usually cleanest: you add a TXT record to your DNS, then return to ChatGPT and select Verify domain. Ask whoever owns DNS early.

Claiming is not the end. According to the guide, you must complete a separate identity check through Persona before you can publish changes, connect a product feed, view insights or create an agent. It may ask for a government ID, business registration details and proof you are authorised to represent the company. The blue verified badge appears only after that check is approved. VentureBeat reported the same two stage process and added, citing Digiday, that claiming a profile and publishing a Business Agent are free at launch, with OpenAI leaving open the possibility of charging later.

Step 3: Rewrite the profile in buyer language

Once verified you can update your website, description, product or service category, logo and optional details such as a cover photo. This is the same positioning work you would do for any listing: say who you serve, what you replace and what changes for the hotel. If your homepage line and your profile line disagree, fix the homepage first. The pillar guide on hotel tech GTM strategy covers why one consistent category claim matters across every surface a buyer sees.

OpenAI reviews changes before publishing them, and ChatGPT may also use other sources when it answers questions about your business. Your profile is one input, not the whole picture. Review sites, analyst lists and partner marketplaces still feed what an assistant says, which is why review site shortlists stay worth the effort.

Step 4: Read the 28 day insights correctly

Insights show aggregate activity over the past 28 days: mentions, website clicks and discovery topics, which are common themes in answers that mentioned or cited your business. For an online business like yours, a mention counts only when ChatGPT references your website. A buyer who sees your brand named without a link does not register.

• A blank metric is not a zero. OpenAI says it can mean activity has not reached the reporting threshold, data is still being collected or reporting is unavailable.

• You never see individual prompts. OpenAI states that businesses do not receive individual prompts or consumer conversations, including chats with their agents.

• Discovery topics are themes, not intent. OpenAI says they do not directly measure customer intent.

The practical use is as a baseline. If you already run the twenty point check in our AI answer visibility self-assessment, put the Business Hub numbers next to it each month and see whether they move together. Website clicks are the closest thing to a commercial signal; whether they become demos is a question for your own analytics.

Step 5: Decide whether to publish a Business Agent

This is the part most hotel tech vendors will miss. Business Agents are open to eligible ecommerce and online service businesses in the US with a website. A US based hotel software company may qualify, while its hotel customers do not. A Business Agent lets a ChatGPT user who sees your profile start a separate, labelled chat with an AI that answers from information you supply.

OpenAI's Business Agents Policy sets the rules:

• The agent must be clear that it is AI representing the business, not an independent adviser.

• Do not instruct it to invent offerings, prices, availability, reviews, guarantees or results.

• Do not hide material fees, conditions or limitations when they matter to a user's question.

• Do not configure it to pressure people, create false urgency or keep pushing after someone declines.

The fee rule matters for hotel tech in particular, where setup fees, per room charges and connectivity costs often surface late in a deal. If your pricing is not ready to be stated plainly, the agent will expose that. OpenAI also says the current agent cannot complete purchases or make bookings; it explains products and policies and links to your website. So point it at a demo page and a pricing page that already answer the obvious questions.

Step 6: Turn customer questions into a support offer

Your hotel customers will read about this and ask whether you can help. Be precise. For now, local businesses can claim only an existing US listing, each property is claimed separately, and OpenAI says central management across a parent company's brands and locations is not currently available. A group with forty US hotels faces forty claims and forty identity checks.

That is a service opportunity for booking engine, digital marketing and reputation vendors. Agency access exists, so a hotel can invite you to manage its claimed profile. Write a one page guide and add it to onboarding. Launch it with the feature launch checklist.

Step 7: Update what sales says about AI visibility

OpenAI is explicit: claiming a profile does not guarantee increased visibility or give direct control over ChatGPT's independent recommendations, and advertising does not influence those independent answers. Any slide that says your product will get a hotel recommended by ChatGPT now contradicts the platform's own help page. Replace it with what you can show: a claimed, verified profile, accurate information, and a monthly report of mentions and clicks the hotel can see for itself.

There is a paid layer too. Businesses can sponsor their Business Agent as the destination for ChatGPT Ads, though VentureBeat notes Sponsored Agents are in a limited test with selected advertisers. The Next Web reported that OpenAI's advertising passed a $1B annual run rate in August. Treat it as an experiment, not a channel, until you see clicks.

What to do this week

Claim your own profile, start the identity check, and rewrite the description before a competitor's AI summary defines your category for you. Then brief customer success on the hotel side rules so nobody overpromises. If you want an outside view of where your pipeline leaks between AI discovery, your site and the demo, book a free GTM leak audit and we will map it with you.

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