How a Sóley booking works, and what happens when something goes wrong

For hotels connected through their own booking engine.

1. Before the booking

The guest is inside Claude (or another AI assistant) planning a trip. The assistant asks Sóley for accommodation that fits the guest's wishes: place, dates, party, budget, facilities. Sóley returns the hotels that fit. There is no paid ranking; nobody buys a higher place. The more and better information a hotel provides about itself and its rooms, the more often it matches what guests ask for.

2. Availability and price

Availability, prices and restrictions (for example minimum stay) come from the hotel's own booking engine. Sóley sells nothing from its own stock and holds no allotment; the hotel's engine says yes or no. The price the guest sees is the hotel's price.

Immediately before the guest is sent to payment, Sóley asks the engine once more; if the room has gone, or the engine cannot be reached at that moment, the booking is refused rather than taken.

3. Guest details

Before a booking is completed the assistant collects the guest's name, email address and phone number, reads them back to the guest, and Sóley checks that the email address and phone number are valid. A booking does not complete with invalid contact details.

4. Payment

The guest pays the hotel, through the hotel's own payment processing, exactly as for a booking on the hotel's website. Sóley never sees a card number and never holds funds. The hotel is the seller of record and issues the receipt.

If the payment is not completed within 30 minutes, the reservation lapses, the room returns to inventory, nothing is charged and no commission arises.

5. Confirmation

When the payment is confirmed, the booking is written into the hotel's booking engine as a paid, guaranteed reservation carrying Sóley's reference number. The hotel's engine sends its own confirmation to the guest, as for any direct booking. The guest also receives Sóley's reference and a summary of the booking from Sóley. The guest arrives with the hotel's confirmation.

6. Changes

A change of dates or party size is made by cancelling and rebooking. The guest can ask the assistant to do it or contact the hotel directly.

7. Cancellations and refunds

The hotel's cancellation terms apply, the same terms that apply to bookings on the hotel's website, and the guest sees them before booking. The guest can cancel through the assistant or with the hotel. Sóley passes the cancellation into the hotel's booking engine. Any refund the terms call for is made through the hotel's own payment processing. Sóley's commission is cancelled on a full refund and recomputed on what the hotel retains after a partial refund.

8. No-shows

If a guest does not arrive, the hotel's terms apply as for a website booking. Commission follows the money: on a prepaid booking the hotel keeps or refunds under its own terms and the commission follows what it keeps; a no-show the hotel does not charge carries no commission; a no-show fee the hotel does charge carries commission on that fee. The hotel can mark a no-show in Sóley for its records.

9. Guest questions and problems

The guest can message the hotel through the assistant, and the hotel answers from its Sóley inbox. The guest is also given the hotel's phone number and email address. Payment disputes (for example chargebacks) run through the hotel and its payment processor, as they do today.

10. Commission and invoicing

Ten percent of the amount the hotel collects for a booking made through Sóley, nothing else: no setup fee, no monthly fee, no minimum. Invoiced monthly, VAT added. A full refund carries no commission; a partial refund reduces it proportionally. The hotel receives a per-booking breakdown.

11. Data

Sóley stores only what the booking needs. Personal data is pseudonymised after the statutory retention period for accounting records (seven years); a guest can request erasure. A data-processing agreement is available for the pilot, and the list of sub-processors on request.

12. If Sóley stops

Nothing in the hotel's systems breaks. The bookings are in the hotel's engine; the channel simply goes quiet.