Global travel-tech firm Dida Holdings officially launched Dida MCP on 9th July, a new AI-native booking gateway designed to let approved B2B partners integrate hotel search and booking capabilities directly into their own applications. The gateway taps into Dida's portfolio of more than two million hotel properties across over 100 countries, allowing partners to offer real-time, bookable inventory without forcing users to leave their environment.
Dida MCP addresses a growing trend where consumers increasingly plan and compare travel within AI assistants, superapps, banking apps, loyalty programmes, and connected devices. However, recommendations are only valuable if the hotel is live and bookable at the moment of confirmation. With this gateway, partners can enable their users to search, compare, and book hotels inside the partner's own interface, eliminating unnecessary handoffs and preserving the customer relationship.
Closing the Gap Between Advice and Booking
According to Daryl Lee, group CEO of Dida Holdings, the industry is focused on building AI that can talk about travel, but talking does not generate revenue. “You can build the smartest chatbot in the world, but you cannot prompt engineer live inventory. AI can recommend from what it knows. Booking requires what is live,” Lee said. He emphasized that Dida has spent 14 years handling the heavy lifting behind travel distribution—securing supply, managing rates and availability, connecting content, and handling bookings, payments, settlement, confirmation, and servicing.
Dida MCP essentially puts that infrastructure directly into the hands of approved B2B partners that own the customer relationship. “You bring the customer. We do the heavy lifting. The booking happens inside your own experience,” Lee added.
Until now, accessing Dida's hotel supply required bespoke API development, specialist travel knowledge, and significant engineering time. Dida MCP changes that starting point, allowing approved partners to connect in minutes, removing much of the traditional integration work. The company believes it is among the first B2B travel infrastructure providers to make global hotel search and booking accessible through an MCP-enabled gateway.
For travel agencies, OTAs, TMCs, wholesalers, and tour operators, Dida MCP creates a faster path to AI-native customer experiences. Their users can search, compare, and book hotels inside their own agent, app, or digital interface, with booking data flowing back in real time. For companies with large captive audiences—including banks, card programmes, loyalty platforms, telcos, e-commerce platforms, associations, superapps, and consumer device makers—it offers a faster entry into travel without building hotel supply, connectivity, payment, confirmation, and servicing infrastructure from scratch. Hotels and travel suppliers gain another route to qualified demand as discovery shifts into AI-led environments.
Lee stressed that Dida is not trying to own the traveller or replace partners. “Dida sits behind our partners and makes hotels bookable inside their own products. The brand is theirs. The customer is theirs. The data relationship is theirs. We process the information needed to search, confirm, and service the booking, subject to agreed permissions and partner terms. That is the whole point.”
Dida MCP uses OAuth-based authorisation, allowing approved partners and their agents to access Dida's hotel tools through controlled, permission-based access. The customer journey stays inside the partner's own product, while Dida supports the underlying travel transaction. The result is travel that feels native to the partner's brand, rather than a handoff to a separate booking site.
Initially, Dida MCP launches with global hotel supply, one of the largest and most complex parts of travel. Over time, Dida expects to extend the same approach to flights, ground transportation, and experiences, giving partners a single route to a growing range of travel products. This launch aligns with broader industry trends, such as GlobalData embedding Ava AI analyst into Microsoft 365 Copilot, highlighting how AI is reshaping enterprise tools. Similarly, as global rail renaissance reshapes travel, Dida's gateway could eventually integrate rail and other modes.
