Priceline Adds Agentic Capabilities to Penny, Its Claude-Powered AI Travel Assistant

Priceline updated Penny, its AI-powered travel assistant, with agentic capabilities to help customers go from an idea to booking travel, the company said on a Wednesday, as reported by Hotel Dive on June 5, 2026. Penny is powered by Anthropic's Claude and runs on Priceline's proprietary AI stack and data. Customers can purchase flights without leaving the Priceline platform. After the update, Penny can take complex questions about travel, evaluate real-time pricing and availability, and provide tradeoffs between options. It aids with destination planning, searching and selecting flights, hotels and car rentals, and customer support for existing reservations, operating over 10 specialized agents as a coordinated system. Cobus Kok, VP of AI experiences at Priceline, said travelers can describe what they want in natural language and let Penny help them narrow the choices instead of opening multiple tabs, changing filters and comparing hotel options on their own. When a customer asks a question, Penny provides Penny's Picks, its top recommendations, which weigh the traveler's stated preferences, overall value and the context of the conversation so far. Penny's Take, currently in beta for hotels, then provides a candid take on a single property and why it may be the best fit. Priceline plans on expanding Penny's Take across the platform over time. Penny can also combine what a traveler has done before with what they say matters for the trip, while giving travelers visibility and control over the data Penny can access. Kok said in an email to CX Dive: "Many AI tools focus on the inspiration stage. Penny is designed to go further. It can help a traveler think through the trip, compare choices and move toward a booking in the same experience." Early tests show that customers who engage with Penny show stronger engagement, higher conversion and reduced customer support contacts, according to Priceline. Priceline also estimates that travelers who used Penny saved an average of nearly 10 minutes per trip compared with those who called customer support.