Hotel booking platform Selfbook has announced a partnership with PayPal to streamline the payment process for hotels, integrating AI to enhance the booking experience.
This collaboration aims to offer travellers, checking out with PayPal and Venmo, exclusive rates, improved savings, and higher conversion rates for Selfbook’s hotel customers.
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Selfbook CEO Khalid Meniri said: “Travel is one of the biggest purchases people make online. With PayPal, we’re uniting two things travellers care about most: trust and value.
“What was once a multi-step process will be a streamlined, AI-powered checkout—with exclusive rates and low friction.”
The partnership is set to enhance travel booking by incorporating agentic AI, which will utilise conversational AI to assist customers in booking and paying for hotels.
Both Selfbook and PayPal are collaborating with Perplexity to enable consumers to search, book and pay for hotel accommodations within a chat interface.
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By GlobalDataHotels offering PayPal and Venmo as checkout options often experience higher conversion rates.
The partnership will see the integration of PayPal, Venmo, and PayPal’s Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) solutions, providing consumers with more payment choices and flexibility.
PayPal president and CEO Alex Chriss said: “AI is fundamentally changing how consumers plan and pay for their vacations and getaways.
“Together with Selfbook, we’re embedding hotel booking in the new ways travellers are planning trips with agentic chats such as Perplexity. PayPal is thrilled to bring agentic commerce solutions to travel.”
This move marks a strategic move towards direct distribution to consumers via offers within the PayPal app.
Users with PayPal Offers can access exclusive rates from Selfbook’s hotel network without incurring commission fees.
This approach enables hotels to maintain control over their brand and pricing while tapping into PayPal’s consumers.
In August 2023, Selfbook entered an agreement with payment network Affirm to integrate the latter’s payment options into its hotel booking platform.
