Your next guest is asking an AI which operator to book.

How travelers find you is changing.

The first place a traveler plans an Iceland trip is no longer only Google or Booking.com. Increasingly it is ChatGPT or Claude. The traveler describes the trip in plain language and the AI helps build it.

In October 2025, Booking.com and Expedia launched inside ChatGPT. By early 2026, hotel chains had built their own direct connections so a traveler could book a room through an AI assistant with no OTA in between. In March 2026, ChatGPT stepped back from being the checkout itself: travelers research in the AI, then book with someone they trust. The AI is the discovery surface now. The booking goes elsewhere.

So a new distribution layer is forming, and it is open. The only question for every Icelandic operator is who connects you to travelers inside it.

If the only options are the OTAs rebuilt into AI assistants, the 15 to 25 percent commission follows you into the new channel. If there is an operator-aligned alternative, it does not. Sóley is that alternative.

What changes for you.

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

Part of the whole itinerary, not a search result next to it.

"Five days in Iceland mid-July, two adults, south coast and Snæfellsnes, an ice-cave day, car rental from Keflavík."

A traveler describes a trip like that to an AI assistant. The AI composes the itinerary across operators, asks Sóley for live availability, and assembles the legs into a single basket. Your inventory is one of the legs the AI can compose into the plan. This runs today in our proof of concept.

Single-leg AI discovery is becoming common. Composing a multi-day, multi-operator trip and booking it as one transaction is the hard part, and it is the part OTAs have avoided for two decades because the integration cost across operators is too high. That is the gap Sóley is built for. Being inside it as an early Icelandic operator is genuinely different from joining late.

The AI composes the trip. You run your part. Sóley never sits on the money or the guest.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bookings on your own website too.

• The same rate whether the booking came through the directory, the AI chat, or the widget.
• No monthly fee. No setup fee. No per-impression charge.
• No payment-processing fee from Sóley. You pay your own processor's standard rate; Sóley invoices its commission separately.

Four steps, high-touch, with our help.

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

Straight answers.