Most of the talk around AI in travel experiences recently has been on its impact on discovery — people using AI to find things to do and plan their trips. However, it’s quickly coming for the next step: booking.
For some, it’s already there. A new Google integration with Viator is making Viator’s catalogue of tour, activity and attraction products available for booking directly in the Gemini AI chat interface. It’s currently active for users in the U.S.
Direct bookings won’t be far behind if Satisfi Labs has anything to do with it. The company recently announced the launch of an AI ticketing agent for tour and attraction operators in partnership with booking and ticketing system provider Ventrata.
We connected with Dan Flores, Head of Tourism at Satisfi Labs, to find out how agentic AI booking is working in the wild for tours and attractions. Here’s what he had to say, followed by a broader look at what this means for the future of experiences.
How AI Ticketing Agents Work
With agentic AI ticketing, an AI agent can walk a visitor from their first question straight through to a completed ticket purchase, all inside the same chat window. The setup is different from a typical customer-service chatbot layered on top of a booking link, Flores explained.
“We’ve had a lot of ticketing integrations over the years, but the Ventrata one is the first of its kind where it uses the conversation to make essentially the API calls,” said Flores, explaining the agent can check live availability and, once a visitor is ready to buy, using the details already shared to fill out their booking details at checkout.
That’s meant to solve a familiar complaint, he said, where customers have to follow a booking link and manually enter their preferred dates and details after already having communicated those to a chatbot.
But do customers want to book experiences through an AI? Do they know? Do they care?
Ultimately, the goal is for the AI to disappear into the experience, said Flores: “booking through an AI agent on a direct attractions website, you shouldn’t know the difference. It should feel very natural. You’re booking it through the operator directly. AI’s enhancing the steps in the process.”
Satisfi Labs’ ticketing agent has been piloted with City Sightseeing New Orleans and One World Observatory, and Flores said more deployments are already on the way. The tool is also not intended to be exclusive to Ventrata: built to OCTO standards, Satisfi Labs expects to bring it to other OCTO-compliant ticketing platforms beyond Ventrata as it expands.
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Beyond AI: Why Connected Infrastructure Will Define the Winners
This launch is another example of why the future of experiences isn’t just about AI, it’s about connected infrastructure. We’ve spent a lot of time talking at Arival about AI transforming discovery, but booking is clearly the next frontier.
AI agents are only as good as the live availability, pricing and booking capabilities they can access, making modern APIs and open standards more important than ever. For the travel experiences industry, the competitive advantage won’t simply come from adding an AI chatbot, it will come from having the connected infrastructure that enables AI agents to transact confidently in real time. That raises the bar for every reservation platform.
Operators will increasingly expect systems that expose clean, reliable APIs capable of supporting AI-native customer journeys. In many ways, the reservation system is becoming the engine room while AI becomes the customer-facing interface. The conversation is therefore shifting away from “Who has the best AI?” towards “Who has the best connected ecosystem?”
The winners will be those that embrace interoperability and open connectivity, enabling AI agents to work seamlessly across platforms and distribution channels. As AI becomes another route to market, the value of standards such as OCTO will only continue to grow, ensuring the industry can innovate without creating a new generation of silos.
Ultimately, AI won’t replace reservation systems or distribution networks, but it will fundamentally change how travelers discover, evaluate and book experiences. For operators, the takeaway is simple: investing in a connected technology stack isn’t just about improving efficiency anymore, it’s about ensuring your business is ready to meet customers wherever AI takes them next.
Learn More About AI for Travel Experiences with Arival
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Header photo: Pexels / Vitaly Gariev
