AI travel agents are reshaping how people book trips and tables
Invite-only AI agent platform Instinct is approaching $1 billion in annual transactions, with travel bookings accounting for more than half of all activity on the service. Founder Noah Shinn shared the figures in a recent podcast interview with investor Patrick O'Shaughnessy, though he did not explain how the annualized rate was calculated.
The platform is growing 10% day over day, Shinn said, with transaction volume increasing at a similar pace. The company recently raised $1 billion in Series C funding at a $10 billion valuation from Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Coatue. The 14-member startup competes with Meta's Muse and Khosla-backed Wajo in the personal agent space.
Why travel dominates agent usage
Shinn argued that traditional travel booking interfaces exist mainly to unify fragmented inventory. "People who are not on Instinct use travel agencies (or sites) to book hotels or flights. What's the benefit of that interface? They properly unify different hotel chains, airlines, and services, and present them in a nice way for users, who have the option to check out immediately," Shinn said.
He contrasted that with agent-based booking, where a user can say, "Hey, I need to be in New York tonight; it's urgent." The agent handles the search and booking work behind the scenes. For hospitality professionals, this signals a shift in how customers may expect to interact with booking systems - through conversational requests rather than form-based searches.
Restaurant reservations draw criticism
Shinn also discussed restaurant reservations, saying most systems are first-come-first-served and don't account for special occasions. He described an agent that could check restaurant sites every five seconds and notify users about available slots. He hinted that Instinct wants to reinvent reservations and give users preferential treatment.
"If you take restaurant reservations from scratch, from the user's end, they want the reservation for a significant life event that they might have. And on the restaurant end, they just want interesting people. They want special occasions. They want to cater to those rather than, maybe, the local [person] who keeps, you know, taking up a table once a night [sic], and there's no sort of special event there," Shinn said.
Observers pushed back quickly. Critics noted that agents can lie about anniversaries and special occasions just to secure a table. Others pointed out that local regulars often bring more consistent business to a restaurant than one-time special occasion diners.
Why this matters for hospitality and events professionals
If agent-driven booking scales the way Shinn claims, restaurants and venues will face a new layer between themselves and their guests. Reservation systems built on first-come-first-served logic may need to handle automated requests that check availability every few seconds. Teams evaluating AI for Hospitality Courses or broader AI Agent Courses should consider how conversational booking tools change front-desk workflows, no-show patterns, and the data available about who is actually requesting a table.
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