Frequently Asked Questions
Questions organized by audience. Click any question to expand the answer.
For Hotel Operators
ADAPT is an open alliance that builds free, open technology standards so AI assistants (like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's Gemini) can find your hotel and book rooms directly — without going through Booking.com or Expedia. This means you keep more revenue and own your guest's contact information.
ADAPT membership is free. There are no membership fees, licensing costs, or approval processes. The protocols themselves are open standards. Implementation costs depend on your setup — if you have a modern PMS, integration can be as simple as publishing a structured markdown file at your website. Full MCP server implementation may require developer support.
No. ADAPT protocols are designed to work alongside your existing PMS, whether that's Opera, Mews, Cloudbeds, or any other system. Think of it as adding a new distribution channel — like adding a new OTA connection, except this one connects you directly to AI agents without the commission.
Not immediately, and you don't have to choose one or the other. ADAPT gives you an additional distribution channel with better economics. Over time, as more travelers use AI agents to book, the share of direct bookings will grow — but you can maintain OTA listings in parallel.
Your booking engine requires guests to find your website first. ADAPT protocols make your hotel discoverable by AI agents — so when a traveler asks any AI assistant for hotel recommendations, your property can appear and be booked without the traveler ever needing to know your URL.
Everything. When a guest books through ADAPT protocols, you receive their full contact information — name, email, phone number, preferences — directly. Unlike OTA bookings where you often only receive a name and arrival date, direct bookings give you the complete guest relationship from day one.
Programmable commerce means that booking terms — cancellation policies, deposit requirements, rate conditions, commission splits — are encoded directly into the transaction and enforced automatically. Today, when an OTA pays you, it's a batch settlement 15–30 days later via virtual credit cards that require manual reconciliation. With programmable settlement, payment clears instantly when the booking is confirmed, refund conditions execute automatically if a guest cancels within the policy window, and there's no disputed charges or reconciliation. You get paid faster, on your terms, with no intermediary deciding the timeline.
ADAPT targets under 8% total distribution cost, compared to 15–25% charged by major OTAs. The exact cost depends on implementation — a self-hosted MCP server can be near-zero cost; managed solutions will charge a small fee for hosting and support.
For Technologists & Developers
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a standard developed by Anthropic (makers of Claude) that lets AI agents discover and interact with external tools and data sources. Think of it as a universal API that AI agents understand natively. For hotels, an MCP server exposes functions like search_availability(), getRates(), and createBooking() that any MCP-compatible AI agent can call.
MCP handles discovery and interaction — how an AI agent finds and talks to a hotel's system. Google's UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) standardizes how agents evaluate and purchase across different product categories. AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol) handles the payment layer. Together, they form a complete stack: MCP for discovery, UCP for commerce, AP2 for settlement.
It's the simplest possible way for a property to be AI-discoverable. You publish a structured markdown file at yourhotel.com/.well-known/hotel.md containing your rooms, rates, availability, and policies. Any AI agent can read it — no server, no API, no code required. Think of it as robots.txt but for hotel inventory.
ADAPT is developing reference implementations for MCP servers (Node.js/TypeScript), CLI tools, and REST API templates. These are open source and will be published as the alliance matures. For now, the building-os-landing site has working code examples for all four protocol layers.
Programmable settlement uses cryptographic networks to encode booking terms — rate, cancellation policy, deposit, commission — into self-executing transactions. When conditions are met (guest checks in, cancellation window passes), settlement executes automatically. No batch processing, no virtual credit cards, no reconciliation. The underlying infrastructure uses verifiable ledgers and digital signatures, but from the hotel's perspective, it's simply: instant payment, automatic refunds, no disputes.
ADAPT protocols use OAuth 2.0 for authenticated operations (booking, payment). Read-only operations (search, availability, rates) can be public. This mirrors how the web works — you can browse a hotel's rates without logging in, but you authenticate to make a reservation.
Yes — that's the point. ADAPT protocols are designed to be consumed by any AI agent framework. If you're building a travel-capable AI agent, you can discover ADAPT-compatible properties through MCP server registries, .well-known/hotel.md files, or REST API endpoints.
For Media & Analysts
No. ADAPT is an Unincorporated Non-Profit Association (UNA) — an open alliance of interested stakeholders. It has no shareholders, no venture funding, and no profit motive. It exists to develop and promote open protocols for direct accommodation distribution.
ADAPT is currently self-funded by its founder and operates with minimal overhead. The alliance's primary output is open standards and research, which require intellectual effort rather than capital. As the alliance grows, funding may come from grants, voluntary contributions, or sponsored implementations.
Previous attempts (like hotel chains' direct booking campaigns) tried to convince travelers to change their behavior — go to the hotel website instead of the OTA. ADAPT doesn't require travelers to change anything. AI agents do the work of finding and comparing hotels, and ADAPT protocols ensure properties are discoverable. The disruption happens at the infrastructure layer, not the consumer behavior layer.
AI agents are already booking hotels — Perplexity + Selfbook serve ~140K properties today. Google's AI Mode is in development with Marriott, IHG, Choice, and Wyndham. The shift from early adoption to mainstream will likely take 3–5 years, similar to the OTA adoption curve from 1996–2001. ADAPT's role is ensuring open protocols exist so this transition benefits properties, not just new intermediaries.
They already are — Booking.com and Expedia launched as ChatGPT app partners in October 2025. But this creates the same intermediary dynamic. ADAPT argues that hotels should also have direct access to AI agents, not be forced to route through OTAs. The protocols are open specifically so properties aren't dependent on any single gatekeeper.