PayPal is getting into the hotel booking business, thanks to a new partnership with the booking technology company Selfbook, announced today. The plan will stick a hotel booking section right inside the PayPal app, letting millions of users find and pay for rooms from Selfbook's partner hotels.
If you have never heard of the company, Selfbook is a booking and payment platform that is usually integrated into a hotel's website to make the often-annoying reservation process a lot easier. Its tech helps hotels get more people booking right on their own site by offering payment options people actually use, like digital wallets. Now, instead of just living on individual hotel sites, Selfbook's network will be featured in PayPal's Offers tab. For hotels, this gives them a direct line to a huge audience of logged-in users.
PayPal also says that this partnership will help bring travel booking "into the age of agentic AI," with the help of Perplexity, the conversational AI-powered search engine. The idea is that you will be able to just chat with an AI about a trip, and when it is time to book, you can pay for your hotel right there in the conversation. Selfbook provides the plumbing to make the booking happen, while PayPal and Venmo will show up as the payment methods. According to the PayPal announcement:
For hotels, this partnership represents a powerful shift towards direct distribution to consumers through offers within the PayPal app. Through PayPal Offers, PayPal users can access exclusive rates from Selfbook's network of hotels, which do not incur commission fees—significantly enhancing their profitability.
To handle the money side of things, Selfbook is moving all of its direct card processing over to PayPal's Enterprise Payments platform. For travelers, this just means more choice at checkout. People booking at a hotel that uses Selfbook will see options to pay with PayPal or Venmo, along with "Buy Now, Pay Later" plans for splitting up the cost of a stay.
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