Agoda takes its AI booking assistant to 21 markets as trust data lands

From September test to 21 markets

The assistant combines conversational planning with Agoda's live inventory of more than six million accommodation options, flights, tours and attractions. The company's app also carries over 130,000 flight routes and more than 300,000 activities. A trip planner canvas holds upcoming bookings, saved places and plans still being considered in a single view. Agoda says beta users are more likely to book a "connected trip" that bundles hotels, flights, attraction tickets and tours. The feature ran as a limited test in September 2026. It came before the wider rollout.

Agoda calls it a new booking experience, the first in its 20-plus year history, and Singapore and India are among the 21 markets. It runs inside the mobile app.

The trust numbers behind the launch

WTM London released the WTM Global Travel Report 2026 with Tourism Economics. It found that 54% of travellers aged 18 to 34 trust AI to complete a booking. Among those aged 55 and older the figure is 18%, a gap of 36 percentage points. Across all ages, 36% said they would trust AI to finish a booking. Some 58% would use it to search and compare prices, and 53% to generate recommendations. Use of AI chatbots to plan international trips more than doubled, from 10% in 2024 to 24% in 2026. Travellers under 35 were almost five times as likely as those aged 55 and older to have used AI for inspiration or itinerary building.

Booking Holdings offers the counterweight. Referrals from AI platforms accounted for less than 1% of its room nights.

Tourism Economics cautioned that the metric undercounts the technology. A traveller who researches in an assistant and then books directly, or through a search engine, never appears as an AI referral, the report said.

MakeMyTrip's counter-argument

MakeMyTrip's Myra assistant now handles over 90,000 daily conversations. It assists more than 3,000 bookings a day, up from 25,000 conversations a day a year earlier. Customers who use Myra book 1.7 times as often as those who do not. In Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities the multiple is 2.1, and those cities account for 55% of Myra's conversations. Myra also resolves over 53% of post-booking flight and hotel queries without a human.

Chief executive Rajesh Magow drew the line on the company's Q2 FY27 earnings call. "A general assistant can recommend. A travel platform is accountable for delivery," he said. MakeMyTrip gave no figure for bookings completed fully inside Myra. Customers, Magow said, are happy to use the agent for assistance when they need it.

MakeMyTrip also put numbers on the softer side of AI. Plain-language searches make up 10% of hotel searches and convert 24% better than filter-based search, the company said.

Who supplies the intelligence

OpenAI models power the assistant's core conversational intelligence. Gemini with Google Maps Grounding supplies restaurant and point-of-interest data, including ratings, photos, opening hours and locations. The assistant includes web search, so it can return current information alongside Agoda's live inventory.

Omri Morgenshtern is Agoda's chief executive. He said travel planning is fragmented. The goal is to remove repetitive work so travellers decide with more confidence.

What is still unmeasured

Agoda's launch materials gave no booking or conversion figures for the assistant. Tourism Economics found that 87% of tourism organisations were using AI, according to the same report.

Whether conversational agents sell trips or only shape them stays open. The early evidence points to assistance, not autonomy.