While Generative AI has been a huge topic in hospitality for years now, a new type of AI is on the scene and becoming more relevant to hoteliers every day: Agentic AI.
NB: This is an article from Triptease
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These aren’t just research or content tools; they’re designed to be real virtual assistants that can navigate the web for you and tackle multi-step tasks in the way that a human would.
Back in April, we took a look at how Chat GPT’s AI Agent “Operator” approached booking a room on top booking engines. We were surprised by our findings: Operator managed to successfully navigate to the booking page for all the booking engines we tried.
This month, we’re testing out Manus AI, an agentic tool that’s come onto the scene this year. ChatGPT had a bit of a headstart, so it might take some time before Manus attracts really wide usage – but it’s known as one of the most sophisticated tools available.
How is Manus.ai different from Operator?
Operator navigates a web browser like a human would, navigating websites and filling out forms to execute tasks. While Manus does that as well – leveraging generative AI engines including Anthropic’s Claude and Alibaba’s Qwen rather than OpenAI’s GPT models–it has additional capabilities. Manus operates in a less structured environment than Operator, meaning that it’s (in theory) capable of handling more complex tasks. While Operator can automate routine work, Manus has been designed to break down complex tasks and develop its own logic to complete them, step by step.
How we tested Manus
The idea of this test is simple: to use an AI agent to complete a hotel booking on popular booking engines. We started out with a few questions in mind:
- Would Manus start out on hotels’ direct website–or go straight to OTAs?
- Would Manus be able to successfully complete the booking journey on each booking engine?
- What were some potential pitfalls and common issues the agent could come up against?
- What would happen in the case of less direct, higher-funnel queries?
Manus’ results on 11 top booking engines
We kicked off our testing with a list of 11 top booking engines, giving Manus the same prompt for each search:
“Please book me a room at [hotel name] from September 15th to 17th.”
Overall, Manus was successful on 8 of the 11 booking engines we tried. Not terrible, but not quite at the same level as Operator at handling diverse websites and different booking flows.
Here’s a quick rundown of the results:
