AI Agents Can Now Book Hotels and Pay With Crypto | Markets Outlook

Juan Otero (0:00)

But eventually, we will not have a product offering that allows any Asian anywhere in the world to access any trip, whether it's hotels, flights, activities or car rentals. Seemlessly, it's just like users do nowadays.

Jennifer Sanasie (0:22)

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Jennifer Sanasie (1:25)

Juan Otero, welcome to Markets Outlook.

Juan Otero (1:29)

Thank you for having me.

Jennifer Sanasie (1:30)

Thanks for being here. Now, we are talking all about the Binance ecosystem, BNB Chain today. Travala is working with Binance Pay and BNB Chain to help AI agents not only find you a hotel, but pay for it. Talk to me about this recent news. Just lay a quick foundation for us.

Juan Otero (1:51)

It's a great product. We just launched the Travala AI travel agent that basically allows you to talk to an agent like you talk to a human, to book a hotel anywhere in the world. We support over 230 countries with over 2.2 million hotels.

You don't need an account, you don't need credit cards, and you don't need to download any apps. You basically talk to an agent, tell them where you're going, and it finds a hotel for you, and you basically just pay for it with a crypto wallet. Nice and simple.

Jennifer Sanasie (2:26)

Now, you're enabling that to go one step further and allow an AI agent to pay for the transaction. Is that correct?

Juan Otero (2:35)

Yes. We work with the machine payment protocol from BNB Chain, which allows users to sign a gas dis-transaction, and then we process the actual payment through Binance Pay.

We basically provide the hotel inventory, and we work with BNB Chain through the machine payment protocol and then with Binance Chain for the settlement. Users can just pay from their crypto wallets with USDT on BNB Chain, for example.

Jennifer Sanasie (3:10)

Why was BNB Chain and Binance Pay the right partner for this?

Juan Otero (3:16)

So we launched back in June our Travala travel MCP with Base, which was more towards developers and builders in the industry. So you could actually build an AI agent paying with USDC on Base and shop into our travel MCP. Now, we wanted to create a consumer base app, and for that we chose BNB Chain. Obviously, we've been working with Binance for a long time, and it just made more sense for us to have this consumer build with them.

The machine payment protocol, obviously, with SDKs is a great technology for us, allows users to make payments and don't have to pay any transaction fees. So when they authorize their wallet, for example, through their permit to protocol, and then it's all settled through Binance Pay, which has this payment grade infrastructure.

Jennifer Sanasie (4:17)

Walk me through the traveler's experience.

I go to travala.com, I go to Bookahotel. What am I experiencing as I interact with agents to get this transaction done?

Juan Otero (4:30)

It's pretty amazing. It's literally like talking to a person that does all the work for you. You basically say, hey, I want to book a hotel in Singapore for two people. You can ask any sort of questions. I want it near this location or I want to make sure that the room has X amenities and the agent is going to give you all the hotel options. Then you choose the hotel that you want and it gives you the options of the rooms that you can book. Then once you select the room, you basically connect your wallet and the agent does all the work for you.

A key important part of the world is that, while you're doing so, you're never exposing your private keys.

The agent does all the work for you. You keep your keys. It's something that we say internally to make sure that it is not only gasless, it's also very, very secure for consumers to use. But it's literally like having a conversation with another human that that's all the work for you to find you the best hotel in any destination around the world.