Expedia is getting a direct line into Meta's agent. Your hotel can't apply for one.
More than two million people downloaded Meta's AI agent in its first weeks. When they ask it for a hotel, Expedia will be the one it books inside the chat.
by Markus Busch
Meta's agent books travel now. On September 8, Meta launched Muse, an AI agent that runs errands instead of explaining them, from sending an email to buying a plane ticket. US travelers reach it in its own app or on WhatsApp, it's free to start, and by September 23 it had been downloaded more than two million times, CNN reported. On September 22, Expedia said it's joining, which means the agent will be able to book Expedia's hotels. No hotel company has been named alongside it.
How it books. When a guest asks for a room, the agent can go about it in one of two ways. A short list of companies is plugged straight into it, so it books with them inside the chat, and Meta says it built each of those hookups together with the company before writing the agent its own notes on how to use them. Everyone else, it visits the way a person would, opening their website in a browser, reading the page and clicking through. At launch, the short list covered email, calendars, restaurant tables, music and concert tickets. None of them was a hotel.
On a website, she has to step in. Flights show the difference. The agent has a flight booking partner plugged in and can also book on an airline's own site, but when PhocusWire asked why a traveler would go through the partner, it answered that this "is usually the smoother route." On the airline's site, it has to stop and ask her to take over each time a login or an approval comes up. For hotels, it went to the OTAs: asked on September 9 for a New York room, it read the rates off Expedia and Hotels.com.
Expedia moves inside the chat. The deal puts Expedia on the short list. The guest will give the agent her dates, her city and what she's looking for, choose a hotel and pay without leaving the chat, PhocusWire reports. Expedia takes the payment, and what reaches your front desk is an Expedia reservation.
Nobody is taking applications. Meta publishes no way for a hotel to ask for the same hookup, since Meta picked and built the list itself. There is a side door, though. A guest can connect the agent to a booking system on her own, as long as that system lets outside software make bookings on it. At your hotel, she would have to know you offer it, find it and type in a login, while the guest booking through Expedia won't have to know anything.
The catch. Expedia's hotels aren't bookable in Muse yet, and no date has been given. Expedia hasn't explained how the hookup will work, and nobody has tested in public what the agent does when the same room is listed on Expedia and on your own site.
What it means for your hotel. Put one question to whoever runs your booking engine this week: can another company's software book a room on it without a person clicking through, and does it get back the full price with taxes, the bed type and the cancellation terms? If the answer is yes, a guest's agent has a way in. If it's no, the agent has to book your room through your website, stopping to ask her to take over whenever a login or an approval comes up. The same room on Expedia gets booked start to finish inside the chat.
Two weeks ago, Meta's agent read Expedia's website the same way it read yours, and now Expedia has signed up to be booked in the chat.
Read also: Meta pays to look at a flight. Looking at your hotel is free.
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