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.
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.
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:
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:
|
Booking engine tested |
Final result |
|
D Edge |
Unsuccessful |
|
Guestline |
Successful |
|
Mews |
Successful |
|
Selfbook |
Successful |
|
SHR |
Successful (with delays) |
|
Simple Booking |
Unsuccessful |
|
Siteminder |
Successful |
|
Synxis |
Successful (with delays) |
|
Travelanium |
Unsuccessful |
|
Travelclick |
Successful |
|
Webhotelier |
Successful (with delays) |
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
In this case Manus admitted defeat quite quickly and opted to move onto Booking.com to complete the booking.
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:
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.
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.
In addition to testing Manus on booking engines, we wanted to check how it would approach tasks where it was provided with less direction from the start.
I provided Manus with the prompt “book me a hotel in San Diego from the 15th to 17th of September”. The agent proceeded to use a web search function to look for the “best booking sites for hotels”, which landed it on a Forbes article listing different OTA sites. Based on this, it went directly to Booking.com’s website, which it used to select a list of hotels and provide me with options. It then proceeded with the booking on the OTA site once I’d made my selection.
I also wanted to test a more information-related query, as opposed to specifically asking Manus to book something. I asked Manus: “can you recommend some hotels for me? I'm looking for a kid-friendly hotel in san diego that's close to the beach”.
When faced with this kind of question, Operator stayed in agent mode, searching the web to find recommendations. Manus, on the other hand, seemed to swap into generative AI mode, automatically creating a list of results. But those results came from listicles on editorial content sites including lajollamom.com and travelsbetween.com. This shows the importance of continuing to work on more editorial-led website content to support not only your SEO strategy, but your GEO strategy.
Once I had selected a hotel from the list, Manus automatically navigated to the direct booking site to complete the booking.
One of the things that was really interesting about Manus was how much it editorialized. When it failed to make a booking on a direct site it would justify moving onto an OTA, providing reasoning that we would argue wasn’t necessarily accurate. Here’s one example:
On the other hand, Manus would always go to the direct site first and consistently told me that booking directly on the hotel website is often the better choice when I questioned its booking methods.
So Manus appears to be fairly direct-booking friendly–to a point. But it still defaults to a massive OTA when it encounters any issues.
AI adoption is increasing–according to research by Phocuswright, 62% of millennials and younger travelers have used a generative AI platform for travel. Despite that, it still feels as though using an AI agent for something like booking a hotel might be some way off. A huge consideration is the limitation we mentioned earlier: AI can only really take you to the checkout page, so part of the process still requires a human touch..
But making sure that your booking engine is usable by AI agents is still hugely important, for many reasons, including:
If you’d like to improve customers’ journey on your website, attract more traffic, and win out over OTAs, we’ve got tools and direct booking experts who can help you do just that. Get in touch with our team to learn how.