Artificial intelligence-powered answer engine Perplexity has launched a feature in collaboration with Selfbook and Tripadvisor that enables users to book hotels natively on Perplexity.
Aravind Srinivas (co-founder and CEO) of Perplexity shared the news on LinkedIn. Srinivas included a video showcasing the new mode selection and a short, in-platform hotel booking process powered by Selfbook— a PhocusWire Hot 25 Travel Startup for 2023 that provides hotel booking and payment technology.
Srinivas said, “We will be introducing answer modes to Perplexity in order to make our core search product better for verticals such as travel, shopping places, images, video, jobs, and videos. The next stage is to be super precise so You don’t have press on these tabs.”
After selecting a “mode,” Perplexity allows users to make a natural-language query that surfaces relevant answers using Selfbook data and Tripadvisor reviews. The user can then choose to book to complete their process. Srinivas says that the feature is currently available on the web, and will soon be available on mobile.
He added that there will be additional benefits for Perplexity’s “Pro” users—such as discounted hotel bookings—with details to come in the near future. Khalid Meniri (co-founder and CEO, Selfbook) told PhocusWire in an interview before the launch of the partnership that Selfbook will provide infrastructure.
“At the core of our business, we are a Fintech company. But we really provide the single API application programming interface as the booking infrastructure,” said he.
While the last decades have been characterized by a search engine like Google sharing different results and requiring navigation to get to the booking stage, Meniri believes 2025 is the year of action … agentic action. Meniri said that while there will be more capabilities in future, it made sense to start with hotels, given the history of Selfbook.
“The most difficult thing to book is a space, because you need to pay for it over a period of time. Any of these variables can change if a certain number of people is involved.”
Meniri also touched upon other elements of traveling that could be incorporated in the future. “I think hotels are the most important part of the trip, but I also think flights and car rentals will be a close second,” he said. “But right now, hotels are the main focus.”
Tripadvisor announced its partnership with Perplexity in January to improve trip planning. The partnership incorporated Tripadvisor’s AI generated summaries, reviews, and over 300 000 experiences from Viator, combined with Perplexity’s chatbot-search.
Tripadvisor’s statement at the time stated: “The companies are committed to providing personalized and actionable advice to simplify and enrich trip planning.” Srinivas believes that the answer modes will take the engine to a new level.
“Going beyond a wall of texts and being good at structuring answers for verticals like images, videos and Cards with integrated commercial transactions are a necessary step to become a product that is used every day and competes with Google,” he said.
Agentic AI is a hot-button topic for 2025. OpenAI’s “Operator”, which can book travel, was launched in January. Amazon recently launched Alexa+, its own AI agent that can book travel elements such as rideshare.
