Bookings from AI assistants

People are starting to ask AI assistants to plan trips: "find me a dog-friendly campsite near the Lake District for the last weekend in May, two adults, and book it." For an assistant to do that, the campsite's availability has to be readable by software, and the booking has to be something the assistant can start. Campiamo does both for every campsite that is listed on our directory or has its website hosted with us, on every plan.

There is nothing to install or configure. The overview page explains it for people who are not yet customers; this article is the detail. If your campsite is on the directory, or your Campiamo website is switched on, it is available to assistants.

What the assistant can do

An assistant connected to Campiamo can:

• Search Campiamo campsites by place, country, facilities and, with dates, live availability
• Read your listing: description, photos, pitch types and prices, extras, your booking questions, check-in times, open season, deposit terms and approved reviews
• Check availability and price a stay for a party, exactly as your booking page would
• Start a booking for the guest

It cannot see anything your public listing or website does not already show, and it cannot see other guests, your calendar or your dashboard.

Your own rules travel with it. Adults-only pitches, dog limits, minimum stays, capacity, seasonal prices, extras and discount or voucher codes all apply exactly as on your booking page, and the assistant is told why an option is unavailable ("minimum stay 3 nights", "no dogs") so it can explain rather than guess. If you ask custom booking questions, the assistant receives them and has to answer the required ones from the guest before a booking can start.

How a booking works

The assistant does not make the booking itself, and it can only start one where you take payment online. When the guest has agreed the dates, pitch and price, the assistant asks Campiamo to start a booking. Campiamo runs the same checks as your booking page (capacity, minimum stay, availability, your booking questions) and hands back a secure checkout link. The guest opens that link and pays you in the usual way, through your own Stripe or PayPal account. Nothing is reserved until they pay, and the link expires after 24 hours.

From then on it is an ordinary booking: it appears in your dashboard, the guest gets your confirmation email, and any balance is due on your usual terms. Bookings that arrived this way are marked AI assistant in your bookings list and in the new-booking email, so you can see what the channel brings you.

A few guardrails sit behind this. An assistant can only start a handful of bookings a minute from one connection, every request it makes is logged, and nothing it does can create a booking without the guest's own payment. There is no way for it to change or cancel a booking.

If you do not take payments online, assistants can still find you, check your availability and quote your prices, but they cannot start the booking: there would be no moment where the guest themselves commits. The assistant sends the guest to your booking page instead, and they book in the usual way. Connect Stripe or PayPal under Settings → Payments and assistant bookings switch on by themselves.

Campiamo takes no commission on these bookings and never holds the money. The guest pays you directly.

Where guests will find it

Being honest about where this stands today:

• Campiamo is listed in the official MCP Registry, the shared catalogue that assistant makers and directory sites read. That is what makes Campiamo discoverable to developers and to the tools that aggregate connectors.
• Inside ChatGPT and Claude, a guest still has to connect Campiamo once, using the address in the next section. Both companies run their own reviewed directories of connectors that appear in the app without setup; getting Campiamo into those is the next step, and it happens on our side, not yours.
• Assistants that browse the web already find you. Your directory listing and hosted website are written so an assistant can read them, and our site tells assistants where the booking connector lives. Those assistants send the guest to your booking page rather than booking themselves.

None of this changes what you do: connect payments, be listed or keep your website on, and your campsite is ready for whichever route the guest's assistant takes.

Try it yourself

The easiest way to see what a guest's assistant sees is to connect one to Campiamo and ask it about your own campsite. There is no search page of ours; the assistant does the searching.

Claude

1. In Claude, open Settings → Connectors and choose Add custom connector.
2. Name it Campiamo and paste this address, leaving authentication off:

https://campiamo.com/mcp

3. Start a new chat with the Campiamo connector enabled.

ChatGPT

Open Settings → Apps & Connectors, turn on Developer mode under Advanced, then Create a connector with the same address and no authentication. Connectors need a paid ChatGPT plan.

Then ask in plain words

• "Find me a campsite in Devon for two adults from 15 to 17 October."
• "What does Your Campsite charge for an electric pitch that weekend, and what is the deposit?"
• "Are dogs allowed at Your Campsite, and what is free in the last week of October for two adults and two children?"
• "Book the electric pitch at Your Campsite for those dates. My name is …, my email is …"

The assistant searches, checks live availability, quotes the price and, for a booking, hands the guest a checkout link. Nothing is held until that link is paid, so you can test right up to the payment step without creating a booking. If your campsite takes payment on arrival, the assistant will point the guest to your booking page instead of starting the booking itself.

Turning it off

Assistants see your campsite for the same reason the public does: because it is on the directory, or because your Campiamo website is live. Switch the Campsite Directory toggle off on your dashboard to leave the directory, and disable your hosted website under Website if you use one; with both off, assistants no longer find you. Sites that only use the booking widget on their own website are not exposed to assistants.

For the technically curious

Campiamo publishes a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server at campiamo.com/mcp, the open standard that ChatGPT, Claude and other assistants use to talk to outside services. It is registered in the official MCP Registry as com.campiamo/campsites, speaks both the current revision of the protocol and the earlier handshake-based one, needs no API key, and offers five tools: search, campsite details, availability, quote and start booking. There is also a plain JSON feed of the directory at campiamo.com/campsites.json and a description for crawlers at campiamo.com/llms.txt. The standard is young and still changing; we keep our side up to date so you never have to think about it.