Be bookable when travellers plan in ChatGPT and Claude.

What is changing

The next distribution channel is not another listing site.

A traveller used to start with Google, compare OTA listings, and click through filters. Increasingly the first question is asked in an AI assistant: where should I stay, what should I do, can you book it for me?

Booking.com and Expedia are already moving into that surface. If the OTA is the only booking rail the AI can use, the old commission model simply follows operators into the new channel.

Sóley is the operator-aligned rail instead: one trusted network that AI assistants can query, with direct booking underneath and the operator still in control.

The AI is becoming the discovery surface. The question is whether operators enter it directly, or through the same intermediaries as before.

At a glance

What changes for you.

Same booking. Different middle. Here is what moves to your side of the table.

On a representative 84,000 ISK accommodation booking you keep about 75,600 ISK through Sóley, against about 68,900 ISK through Booking.com at 18 percent. That is roughly 6,700 ISK more per booking, and it arrives when the guest books, not on a monthly invoice cycle.

You are inside the trip

You are part of the itinerary, not a listing beside it.

Plan five days in Iceland: a guesthouse near Vík, a glacier walk, a local dinner, and a car from Keflavík.

That is the kind of request travellers give to an AI assistant. Sóley lets the assistant check live availability across operators and assemble the trip one leg at a time.

Your inventory can become one of those legs. You still run your service, set your price, apply your rules, and receive payment as merchant of record for your leg.

The AI composes the trip. You deliver your part. Sóley connects the two without becoming the OTA in the middle.

The money

You keep more of every booking.

Sóley charges 10 percent on bookings that come through the network. No listing fees. No subscription. No visibility boosters. You pay only when Sóley delivers a booking.

That sits well below the 15 to 25 percent OTA range. Booking.com averages around 18 percent for Icelandic hotels and climbs to 24 percent on visibility programs; tours and activities through Guide to Iceland, Viator or GetYourGuide are estimated higher still. Even the bookings you think of as direct usually carry a cost, once a booking-engine fee or the ad spend to win the click is counted. Sóley is 10 percent, flat, across every channel it touches, and the difference is yours to keep or to pass to travelers as a lower price and still come out ahead.

The money also arrives sooner. OTAs pay on an invoice cycle that can run weeks or months after the guest has stayed, so you carry the working capital in the meantime. Through Sóley the funds reach your account at the time of booking.

The relationship

You own the customer.

Through an OTA you receive a booking reference, sometimes a masked email, and a commission invoice. The booking history, the preferences, the repeat behaviour all stay with the platform. The next time that traveler comes to Iceland, they book through the platform again.

Through Sóley the relationship is yours. You set the price. You hold your own content, your own policies, your own local knowledge. When a traveler asks the AI about you, the AI answers from your own words and your live availability, not from a templated listing optimised for the platform. The guest is your guest.

The payment

You stay merchant of record.

The traveler pays you directly, through your own card processor, the same way a booking on your own website works today. Sóley collects its 10 percent separately and never touches the card. Sóley does not hold traveler funds and is not a payment processor.

• No marketplace hold on your payouts. The funds settle into your own merchant account.
• Per leg on a multi-day trip. Each operator is merchant of record for its own leg, with its own cancellation rules.
• Sóley facilitates, it does not intermediate. It does not insert itself between you and your guest.

The conversation

You answer the 3am question.

A guest messages a small operator at 3am with a question about the property. The operator is asleep. By morning the guest has booked elsewhere. For small operators this is a daily reality, and OTAs cannot fix it because their model depends on keeping the messaging mediated.

Sóley brings you into the traveler's conversation. When a traveler asks something beyond what you have published, the AI answers from your content if it can. If it cannot, the question reaches you, and you answer from WhatsApp, the Sóley web interface or the Sóley app, then hand the thread back to the AI. The conversation can start in Claude or ChatGPT and stay one live thread the whole way through.

The 3am question that used to cost you the booking now stays open until it is answered.

No switching cost

It runs in parallel with what you already use.

Your existing calendars on Booking.com, Airbnb or Bókun stay live. Sóley reads your availability from them so it does not double-book, and publishes your Sóley bookings as a calendar feed those platforms can subscribe to. You do not migrate away from anything on day one, and you do not sign anything exclusive. Most operators run Sóley alongside their existing listings and decide for themselves which guests to send where.

Why Sóley, why now

Built on Icelandic trust.

Operators are checked against the Ferðamálastofa licensing registry, with Icelandic electronic-ID verification being rolled out. A traveler booking through Sóley is booking with a real, licensed Icelandic operator, so you are listed alongside other genuine operators, not buried in a free-for-all. And there is no pay-for-placement: no operator can buy its way up the list. What gets you in front of travelers is the quality of your operation, not how much commission you are willing to pay.

Travelers are starting to plan their trips by asking an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Claude, rather than scrolling listing sites. Sóley is how those assistants find you and book you directly. Joining now, while you are one of the first Icelandic operators on Sóley, means you are already there as more travelers plan this way.

Optional

The same rail works on your own website.

How to start

Four steps, high-touch, with our help.

1. 1Apply through the standard Sóley onboarding flow.
2. 2Once your operator profile is reviewed and live, your dashboard unlocks. List services, set prices, set your cancellation policy.
3. 3Add the widget to your own site if you want it. Optional.
4. 4Sóley invoices commission monthly in Icelandic VAT-compliant format with a bank-transfer reference.

Common questions

Straight answers.