Booking Holdings'-backed Lola, an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant for experiences and travel, will now allow users to search and book flights without leaving the Lola interface.
Booking capabilities are powered by Duffel, and travelers can access direct links to airlines and travel search platforms as well, Lola said in a release. Notably, Duffel also powers the flight-booking integration within Meta's Muse AI agent, which launched in September.
The New York-based startup, founded by Kayak co-founders Steve Hafner and Paul English, is also getting a $100 million investment commitment from Booking Holdings, mirroring Vayo, its West Coast, agentic counterpart. Both investments are "subject to continued advancement of the product and market commitments," Booking said.
In addition to flight-booking capabilities, travelers can now share their itineraries with other travelers and link their Google calendar and Gmail accounts.
With the Google integrations, Lola can pull flights, hotel, rental car and restaurant reservation confirmations "to learn personalized preferences, build itineraries and plan around what's on their calendar." Vayo has a similar capability, pulling reservations from users' inboxes and organizing confirmations into trip itineraries.
While Lola is free to use, the startup announced additional travel-related discounts for members of its paid Lola VIP tier. This includes "Lola VIP Drops," which gives users preferred rates for tickets to New York sports, festivals, shows and concerts via partners like ResX and SeatGeak. As of Thursday, Lola has discontinued its other paid tier, Lola Plus, with existing Plus members migrated to the VIP tier.
"The hardest part of a great night out is often the task of getting in," Hafner said. "Lola Drops gets our members easy access and special pricing on a curated selection of NYC restaurants
and events within a five day window with exciting new inventory daily."
Paid members get discounts on Hertz rentals and preferred pricing on tours and activities through Viator as well. Clear and Clear+ members get Lola VIP status for free.
During its third-quarter earnings call this week, Booking Holdings said Lola and Vayo allow it to test their potential use across established brands. CFO and EVP Ewout Steenbergen noted that Booking is seeing strong conversational engagement on Vayo, specifically.
Steve Hafner at The Phocuswright Conference
Hear more from Hafner at The Phocuswright Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Nov. 17-19.