Dispute Resolution Working Group
DR-WG · First Working Group of the AllianceWhen hotels book directly through AI agents — no OTA in the middle — who handles disputes? The guest says the room wasn't as described. The hotel says the guest caused damage. The cancellation policy is ambiguous. Today, Booking.com or Visa makes the call. In the direct-booking era, we need something better — because the current system is already broken.
The Airbnb precedent is instructive. Airbnb's resolution center systematically favors guests — and guests have learned to exploit this. Claims of cockroaches, feeling “unsafe,” or a property being “not as described” are difficult to verify and easy to fabricate. Savvy bad actors have turned this into a playbook: check in, file a complaint on day two with a few strategic photos, and receive a partial or full refund — while the host absorbs the loss and the cleaning fee. The platform has no incentive to fix this because the guest is the revenue engine. The host is replaceable. Ironically, it wasn't always this way. During Airbnb's growth stage, the platform systematically favored hosts — because it needed them. Supply was the bottleneck. But once critical mass was reached and hosts became abundant, the arbitration pendulum swung hard toward guests, alienating the very early adopters who were the foundational users that facilitated its growth. The long-term cost of this shift — a generation of burned hosts who now warn others against listing — was never factored into the equation.
OTA resolution centers have the same structural flaw. Booking.com and Expedia side with guests roughly 70–80% of the time regardless of merit, because retaining the guest protects future commission revenue. Credit card chargebacks are even worse — the burden of proof falls entirely on the hotel, and banks issue provisional credits to cardholders before any investigation begins.
ADAPT-DRP proposes a fundamentally different model — one that is fair to both sides and resistant to gaming.
The DR-WG is building the ADAPT Dispute Resolution Protocol (ADAPT-DRP) — an open standard for fair, fast, locally-expert dispute resolution with programmatic enforcement through programmable settlement. The protocol creates a new category of certified professionals: localized arbiters who understand the hospitality context of their market and whose decisions execute automatically through escrow.
Anti-Gaming Mechanism: Guest Bonding
To prevent Sybil attacks and serial dispute abuse, ADAPT-DRP introduces a guest trust deposit — a small, one-time bond posted by the traveler upon joining the network. This deposit is fully refundable and never touched unless a dispute is filed fraudulently. It establishes good intent the same way a security deposit establishes good intent for a rental — except this one is digital, instant, and managed by the protocol.
Guests who maintain a clean dispute history earn a Verified Guest badge — visible to properties and AI agents during booking. Properties can offer verified guests better rates, waived deposits, or priority booking. Third-party providers can offer guest bonding as a service — insuring the deposit for a small fee, creating a monetization layer for the guest side of the platform. A bonded guest is a trusted guest: their disputes carry more weight, their bookings close faster, and their access to premium inventory improves.
- Verified
- Clean history, deposit posted
- Bonded
- Third-party insured deposit
- New
- No history yet, deposit required