Can Manus.ai’s autonomous AI agent navigate your booking engine?

While Generative AI has been a huge topic in hospitality for years now, a new type of AI is on the scene and becoming more relevant to hoteliers every day: Agentic AI. These aren’t just research or content tools; they’re designed to be real virtual assistants that can navigate the web for you and tackle multi-step tasks in the way that a human would. 

Back in April, we took a look at how Chat GPT’s AI Agent “Operator” approached booking a room on top booking engines. We were surprised by our findings: Operator managed to successfully navigate to the booking page for all the booking engines we tried. 

This month, we’re testing out Manus AI, an agentic tool that’s come onto the scene this year. ChatGPT had a bit of a headstart, so it might take some time before Manus attracts really wide usage–but it’s known as one of the most sophisticated tools available. 

How is Manus.ai different from Operator? 

Operator navigates a web browser like a human would, navigating websites and filling out forms to execute tasks. While Manus does that as well–leveraging generative AI engines including Anthropic’s Claude and Alibaba’s Qwen rather than OpenAI’s GPT models–it has additional capabilities. Manus operates in a less structured environment than Operator, meaning that it’s (in theory) capable of handling more complex tasks. While Operator can automate routine work, Manus has been designed to break down complex tasks and develop its own logic to complete them, step by step. 

How we tested Manus

The idea of this test is simple: to use an AI agent to complete a hotel booking on popular booking engines. We started out with a few questions in mind: 

• Would Manus start out on hotels’ direct website–or go straight to OTAs? 
• Would Manus be able to successfully complete the booking journey on each booking engine? 
• What were some potential pitfalls and common issues the agent could come up against? 
• What would happen in the case of less direct, higher-funnel queries? 

Manus’ results on 11 top booking engines

We kicked off our testing with a list of 11 top booking engines, giving Manus the same prompt for each search:

“Please book me a room at [hotel name] from September 15th to 17th.” 

Overall, Manus was successful on 8 of the 11 booking engines we tried. Not terrible, but not quite at the same level as Operator at handling diverse websites and different booking flows.

Here’s a quick rundown of the results: 

What does each "final result" mean? 

Successful

Manus was able to navigate the booking engine without any further input from the user, and without coming up against any significant delays. 

Here’s an example of what a successful flow looked like: 

• • Search for [hotel name] information
  • Navigate to [hotel name] official website
  • Click on book hotel button
  • Click on check-in date field
  • Enter check-in date
  • Click on calendar button to open date picker
  • Click forward arrow to navigate to next month
  • Click forward arrow to navigate to September
  • Click on September 15th for check-in date
  • Click on September 17th for check-out date
  • Click Apply button to confirm the selected dates
  • Select the standard double room (room only) option
  • Click Continue Booking to proceed with the reservation. 
  • Manus would hand the booking back to the customer to input personal and payment details
    
     

It’s worth noting that “successful” does not mean that Manus actually completed the full booking process through to the confirmation page. Like Operator, Manus isn’t able to store personal details like credit card information or even addresses. So once guests make it to that page, they would either have to tell all that information to Manus each time, or take over the browser to enter those details themselves. 

That’s obviously a big limitation on the perceived benefits of this booking method, as the human needs to remain involved.

Successful (with a caveat)

The result means that Manus struggled in some way–whether that was an overly long time working out how to select a date, or trying to leave the direct booking engine but asking first. 

An example of what that flow might look like if the issue Manus had was with selecting date information: 

• • Search for [hotel name] information
  • Navigate to [hotel name] official website
  • Close the popup dialog
  • Click on the arriving date input field
  • Click right arrow to navigate to next month
  • Click on the arriving date input field again
  • Enter arrival date September 15, 2025
  • Navigate to September 2025
  • Enter departure date September 2025
  • Enter departure date September 17, 2025
  • Navigate to September 2025 to see selected dates
  • Click CHECK RATES button to search for availability
  • Click on check-in date to modify it 
  • Click next month to navigate to September
  • Click on September 15th for arrival date
  • Click on September 15th
  • Enter check-in date September 15,2025
  • Enter check-out date September 17th, 2025
  • Click UPDATE button to update the search dates
  • Click VIEW ROOMS to update the search dates
  • Click VIEW ROOMS for the discounted rate option
  • Scroll down to see more booking details 
  • Click BOOK NOW for Deluxe Executive King Non Smoking room
  • Click MODIFY button to change the reservation dates
  • Click EDIT DATES to modify the reservation dates
  • Click Next Month to navigate to September
  • Click Next Month to continue to September
  • Click Next Month to reach September 2025
  • Click on September 15th for check-in date
  • Click on September 15th to select correct check-in date
  • Click on September 17th for check-out date
  • Navigate booking process and assist with reservation
  • Close the calendar to proceed with booking
  • Scroll down to see the guest information form
  • Hand off to the human to enter personal details and pricing information. 

As you can see, in this flow Manus attempts to enter these details at multiple stages of the customer journey–and is finally successful. 

Other situations where the booking engine took a bit longer than anticipated, but still made it through in the end was in the case of property-specific limitations like minimum stays (interestingly, Manus was able to communicate these issues much more effectively than Operator) or just general browser errors, which didn’t appear to be booking engine specific but rather related to Manus itself. 

Unsuccessful

This result means that Manus was unable to complete the booking, moving off the direct website and onto an OTA to do so. 

Here’s an example of what that flow looked like in a case where Manus couldn’t get past a CAPTCHA. 

• • Search for [hotel name] 
  • Navigate to the official [hotel name] website
  • Browsing [hotel website]
  • Click on the check-in date to modify it
  • Click on check-in date field using coordinates
  • Click right arrow to navigate to next month
  • Click right arrow using coordinates to navigate to next month
  • Click on September 15th for check-in date
  • Click on check-out date to modify it to September 17th
  • Click on September 17th for check-out date
  • Click the BOOK NOW button to proceed with booking
  • Wait for the reservation page to load completely
  • Click the "Verify you are human" checkbox
  • Wait for the security check to complete and booking page to load
  • Navigate to Booking.com.

In this case Manus admitted defeat quite quickly and opted to move onto Booking.com to complete the booking. 

Overview

Similarly to Operator, Manus consistently tried the direct hotel website first without being specifically prompted to do so. And when it wasn’t able to complete the booking, it consistently went to Booking.com as its next potential booking channel. 

In the cases where Manus did not perform well, the issues seemed to come down to two primary factors: 

• Issues with the date selector 
• Inability to bypass a CAPTCHA step. 
  
  

Date selector issues

In any case where the date selector was slightly differently formatted, such as with SHR or Simple Booking, Manus found it difficult to choose the correct timeframe for the stay. In some cases, this only led to a delay as it attempted various angles to select the dates. But in the case of Simple Booking, the different format led Manus to give up and go the OTA route.

When date selectors followed a broader format with months visible side by side, Manus was typically able to complete the booking. Here’s an example of the Mews date selector, which Manus was able to navigate successfully. 

Compare that to the Simple Booking date selector, which was based on length of stay, and which Manus could not navigate successfully. 

Inability to bypass a CAPTCHA step

With D Edge and Travelanium, Manus came across CAPTCHAs. Interestingly, Operator was able to bypass these security measures where Manus could not. However, like Operator, Manus did show itself capable of navigating other pop ups like cookie banners.