Booking.com has announced the launch of its first customer-facing agentic AI innovations: Smart Messenger and Auto-Reply, designed to make partner-to-guest communication faster, streamlined, and more intuitive.
Building on the company’s expanding suite of GenAI-powered solutions, the new features are seamlessly integrated in the platform to elevate the booking experience on both sides of the leading online travel platform’s marketplace.
With intelligent response generation and automated workflows, Smart Messenger gathers relevant partner, property, and reservation information to autonomously take action – knowing when and what to suggest to support accommodation partners in their communication to guests. With Auto-Reply, the personalization is taken a level further, with partners able to define custom reply topics, allowing for instant responses to both common and unique guest questions relevant to their accommodation. The agent is continuously learning from past interactions and user feedback, adapting responses for accuracy and relevance.
Early experiments yielded a 73% increase in partner satisfaction compared to previous messaging tools, and the products are now live in the Extranet with Auto-Reply available globally and Smart Messenger for all partners based in the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia along with those who have selected EN as their preferred language setting.
With 78% of Canadian consumers saying they want to use AI in future travel planning (Global AI Sentiment Report), Booking.com is also making significant inroads in how it meets this demand. The company is embedding AI across key moments of the end-to-end booking journey – offering more contextual, intelligent support when and where it’s needed most.
Enabling The Right Choices: Travellers no longer need to sift through countless flight options to find the best deal. With AI-powered Flight Search Summaries, key trade-offs, like how the number of stops affects price and travel time, are instantly highlighted in a convenient, automated summary, streamlining the search process to make it easier to choose the right flight. The feature is available for users with English language settings, with additional markets and languages coming in 2026.
Conversational Trip Control: Booking.com has also introduced AI Voice Support, which provides voice-powered trip management for travellers. When connected, customers can ask questions in their own words (e.g. “I need to cancel my reservation”), and the tool pulls their booking details to provide further assistance. This reduces resolution and wait times, making it easier for travellers to manage their trip. If needed, the feature also connects to a human agent, streamlining support by providing the agent with all necessary information. AI Voice Support is currently available in English-speaking and German-speaking phone lines, with testing underway with Italian and Spanish phone lines.
Instant Support with GenAI: Acting as a first point of contact for travellers, the AI Trip Support tool offers 24/7 guidance on key customer service topics, making it easier to find information about a property and make any potential reservation changes quickly and independently. For example, a traveller with a car might ask, “Is parking available at the hotel?” The tool then gathers relevant information from the property to provide an answer in seconds so they can plan accordingly. For more complex questions, the tool facilitates a smooth handover to an informed customer service representative. AI Trip Support is live in the US, UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.
A Smoother Car Rental: To simplify the car rental experience – and the often lengthy terms and conditions that come with it – the AI Rental Helper helps instantly answer common customer questions about their rental booking. With topics including payment methods, pick up checklists, insurance information and more, the tool provides key information for a smooth and simple pick up and drop off. AI Rental Helper is available in all English language settings, with plans to expand to users in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch languages later this year.
“Bringing our first in-house Agentic AI solutions to market is an exciting milestone and, together with our latest GenAI innovations, we’re making strides on delivering new levels of personalization and a faster, more seamless platform,” said James Waters, Chief Business Officer at Booking.com. “As we continue to develop travel solutions powered by AI, our focus remains squarely on making it easier for our customers to experience the world and empowering our partners so they can focus on delivering those incredible experiences.”
These tools are part of how Booking.com’s AI features are evolving from a standalone AI Trip Planner to an embedded AI powered companion that travellers can access at the most relevant stages of their booking journey. This news also follows the recent announcement of Booking.com as one of the first apps launched in ChatGPT, which allows users to browse listed accommodations directly within ChatGPT, with seamless access to the Booking.com platform once they are ready to select and book their room.
