Artificial intelligence is quickly changing how businesses interact with software, but one of the biggest opportunities is only beginning to emerge: giving AI secure access to the systems and data that actually run your business.
That is exactly what WaveRez is doing with our new Model Context Protocol (MCP) connection for Claude and ChatGPT.
WaveRez operators can now connect their reservation system to leading AI assistants and ask questions about their business using normal, conversational language. Instead of searching through reports, exporting spreadsheets, or manually comparing numbers, an operator can ask a question like, “How is this month pacing compared to the same month last year?” Claude or ChatGPT can then use authorized WaveRez data to help answer the question.
This represents a major shift in how operators can interact with their reservation software. Rather than learning where every report lives or how to configure every filter, you can simply tell the AI what you want to understand.
What is MCP, and why does it matter?
MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is a standard that allows AI applications to securely connect with external systems and data sources. In simple terms, it provides a bridge between an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT and software like WaveRez.
Without that connection, an AI assistant has very little knowledge about what is happening inside your business. You can manually upload a spreadsheet or paste information into a conversation, but the AI does not have a direct connection to your reservation system.
With WaveRez’s MCP connection, the AI can access the WaveRez information you authorize and use that information as context when answering your questions. This makes the conversation dramatically more useful because the AI is no longer answering generic questions about running a tour or rental business. It can help you analyze what is actually happening inside your operation.
Your reservation data becomes conversational
Reservation systems have traditionally been built around reports and dashboards. Those tools are still important, but they require someone to know what report to run and what information to look for.
Operators usually think differently. You might notice that business feels slower this week and wonder how it compares to last year. You might want to know whether your OTA business is growing faster than your direct bookings. You might be curious about which departure times consistently have unused capacity.
Those are business questions, not reporting questions.
With WaveRez connected to Claude or ChatGPT, you can begin with the question instead of the report. For example, an operator might ask:
Questions you can ask:
- “How is September pacing compared to September last year?”
- “Which activities have grown the most this season?”
- “Which trips have the most available capacity this weekend?”
- “Compare direct bookings with OTA bookings over the last 90 days.”
- “Are customers booking further in advance than they did last year?”
- “Which products generate the most revenue from add-ons?”
- “What days of the week have the lowest average utilization?”
The real power comes from what happens next. Once the AI provides an answer, you can continue the conversation. If it tells you that weekday revenue is down, you can ask which products are responsible. If one product is underperforming, you can ask whether the issue is fewer bookings, smaller groups, lower prices, or a change in booking source.
That type of follow-up analysis is much harder to accomplish with a traditional dashboard.
From reporting to actual decision-making
Imagine opening Claude or ChatGPT in the morning and asking how the business is pacing for the month. The AI tells you revenue is up 8% year over year, but then points out that most of the growth is coming from weekends while Tuesday and Wednesday departures are running below last year’s utilization.
Your next question might be whether that decline is happening across the entire business or is concentrated in a particular activity. From there, you could ask which departure times are most affected and whether booking lead times have changed.
Within a few minutes, you have moved from a broad business question to a much deeper understanding of what is happening operationally.
That is where we believe the combination of WaveRez and AI becomes particularly exciting. The goal is not simply to produce another dashboard. It is to dramatically reduce the amount of time between having a question about your business and getting an answer you can act on.
Built with operator control in mind
Connecting an AI assistant to a reservation system also raises an important question: what can the AI actually do?
WaveRez’s current MCP implementation is intentionally read-only. Claude and ChatGPT can use authorized WaveRez information to help answer questions and analyze the business, but the MCP connection cannot create reservations, cancel bookings, issue refunds, or make changes to your WaveRez account.
What the connection can and cannot do:
- Can: read the WaveRez information you authorize and use it as context to answer your questions.
- Cannot: create reservations, cancel bookings, issue refunds, or change anything in your WaveRez account.
That gives operators the ability to experiment with conversational analytics without worrying that an AI request will accidentally modify a reservation or operational setting.
It also makes the connection especially useful for owners, managers, revenue teams, marketing teams, and anyone who regularly needs answers from reservation data but does not necessarily want to spend time navigating multiple reports.
Why this is especially powerful for tour, rental, and charter operators
Tour and rental businesses generate an enormous amount of operational data. Every reservation tells you something about demand, pricing, capacity, distribution, customer behavior, lead times, product performance, and seasonality.
The challenge has never been a lack of data. The challenge is making that information easy to understand and use.
WaveRez was built specifically for businesses such as boat rentals, jet ski rentals, charter operators, sightseeing tours, watersports companies, and other experience providers. Because WaveRez sits at the center of the booking process, it contains much of the information an operator needs to understand how the business is performing.
Connecting that system to AI creates a new interface for accessing that intelligence.
Instead of asking, “Where is the report that shows this?”, the question becomes, “What do I want to know?”
That may sound like a small difference, but we believe it represents a fundamental change in how business software will be used.
This is bigger than adding an AI button
There is a lot of AI being added to software right now. In many cases, that means adding a chatbot, a writing assistant, or a feature that summarizes information on a page.
Those tools can be useful, but MCP creates a much larger opportunity because it allows AI to connect with the underlying systems that businesses already depend on.
For WaveRez, we see this as the beginning of a new way for operators to interact with their reservation data. Today, the connection is focused on securely retrieving and analyzing information. Over time, standards like MCP open the door to increasingly sophisticated workflows in which AI assistants can help operators understand what is happening across their businesses and make better decisions much faster.
The important part is that the AI is no longer operating separately from your reservation system. It has context.
And context is what makes AI significantly more useful.
Connect WaveRez to Claude or ChatGPT
Getting started is straightforward. WaveRez operators can follow our help article for step-by-step instructions on establishing the connection and authenticating their WaveRez account.
Once the connection is active, there are no complicated commands to learn. Start with a question you already ask yourself about your business and see where the conversation takes you.
Ask how this month compares with last year. Ask which trips are filling fastest. Ask where capacity is being left unsold. Ask how booking behavior is changing.
Then ask why.
A new way to experience WaveRez
We believe reservation software should do more than store bookings and produce reports. It should help operators understand their businesses.
The WaveRez MCP connection is a major step in that direction.
Your reservation data already contains valuable insights about your customers, products, pricing, capacity, and sales. Claude and ChatGPT now provide an entirely new way to access and explore that information.
Want to see it in action? Schedule a demo and we’ll walk you through it.
About the Author
Greg Fisher
