Hello!
I have done some installations at hotels and they are really rigorous when we are talking about how aesthetic can look the AP installation for obvious reasons, So what we had done is what you are thinking, passing an UTP cable from the switch to the place that we want to put the AP and let the cable just pokes as you said and we just install the mounting bracket, avoiding in this way the use of the gang box because it looks bad aesthetically talking. So in this way basically there is just 1 object that the client or host can see not 2, and in this way the cable is "invisible" for the people too.
My recommendation is to use a good cable and an UTP jack female connector as you will use if you have to put a gang box, so you have to add a short UTP cable; in this way if the UTP cable fails you just have to change a small part and not the entire cable that goes from the switch to the AP, because that can be expensive and inefficient.
Regards,