A Viral AI Bot Just Showed Travel What Frictionless Actually Means

Skift Take Instinct, a freshman AI assistant that has Silicon Valley buzzing, can book and rebook trips from a text thread. Key lesson for travel: Talking about frictionless booking isn't the same as delivering it. A startup founded by 23-year-old Noah Shinn has become the latest "it" thing in Silicon Valley by building a text message-based AI agent that can execute tasks with surprisingly little friction, including booking and rebooking travel. A post this week by Altimeter Capital founder Brad Gerstner shared one example: a screenshot showing Instinct booking a hotel room from a simple text message. He and friend Bill Gurley made a bet two years ago, he said on X.com, "as to when a consumer AI would be able to seamlessly book a hotel room. @noahrshinn & Instinct have made this a seamless reality." The agent, available on an invite-only basis, works via SMS and WhatsApp. "There are no new interfaces," Shinn said in an X post. " You can text or call it." According to TechCrunch, the bot has sparked excitement from the VC community. One post, shared by Jesse Middleton, a general partner at venture capital firm Flybridge Capital Partners and an ea