What to do this week

Ask AI about yourself.
Open ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Type the prompts your ideal guest would use: "best boutique hotels in [your city]," "luxury hotels near [landmark] with spa," "where to stay for [event] in [destination]." Count how often you appear versus competitors.

Audit your third-party footprint.
Check your TripAdvisor profile, Google Business listing, and top OTA pages. Are descriptions current? Are reviews recent? Is your property information consistent across all of them?

Check what AI can read on your website.
Right-click your homepage, select "View Page Source," and search for your property name, your key amenities, your location. If that information isn't in the raw HTML, AI crawlers aren't seeing it.

Boost Background

A boutique hotel group in the Pacific Northwest came to us last quarter with a problem they couldn't diagnose. Organic traffic was stable, OTA bookings were steady, but direct inquiries had dropped 30% year over year. When we ran their property names through ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity using 40 prompts a traveler would actually ask, they appeared in exactly two answers. Their closest competitor, a property with a weaker website but a heavier presence on TripAdvisor and travel blogs, showed up in 19. That gap is the new reality of hotel discovery.

The shift is already measurable

The data on AI-driven travel planning has moved well past "emerging trend" territory. TakeUp's Rise of AI-Planned Travel in 2026 report found that 90% of travelers know they can use AI to plan trips. Among those who've tried it, 63% use AI for most or every trip, and 96% say they'll use it again. Phocuswright found that one-third of U.S. travelers already use AI tools to plan or experience trips, with 37% trusting recommendations enough to act on them directly.

The behavior is sticky. Once a traveler asks ChatGPT for hotel recommendations instead of scrolling through Google, they keep doing it. And the shift skews toward the guests premium hospitality cares about most. Simon-Kucher's Global Travel Trends 2026 study found 42% of travelers used AI for itinerary planning in 2025, with adoption highest among younger, higher-spending segments. Two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennials plan to increase travel budgets in 2026, and these same demographics use AI at rates approaching 60%. This isn't replacing Google overnight. But it's carving out a growing share of the discovery phase, which is the exact moment properties need to be visible.

What AI actually recommends (and why)

The question most hoteliers ask first is reasonable: what determines whether AI recommends my property? Cloudbeds published the hospitality industry's first major study on this in 2025, analyzing 145 properties across six international destinations with 810 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

The findings are striking. OTAs accounted for 55.3% of all sources cited in AI hotel recommendations, with Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor leading. Hotel websites accounted for just 13.6% of citations. Nearly all recommended properties had a broad digital footprint: 98% appeared on YouTube, 97% in travel blogs, and 95% had presence on Reddit.

Branded properties made up 72.4% of recommendations with a 4.4-point visibility lead over independents. Every property that consistently ranked in the top five maintained strong guest ratings with high review volume across platforms.

The pattern matches what we see across other verticals in our work: AI doesn't recommend the property with the best website. It recommends the property with the most consistent, widespread, and well-structured presence across the sources it trusts. Your website is one input. Your TripAdvisor profile, your OTA listings, your Google Business presence, your mentions in travel blogs and forums, all of these feed the answer.

Why this matters for premium properties

Here's the uncomfortable part for luxury and boutique brands. Many properties with the strongest guest experiences have the weakest AI visibility. They've invested in JavaScript-heavy websites that AI crawlers can't read. They've focused on direct relationships rather than third-party platforms. They've treated OTA listings as a cost center rather than a visibility asset.

Meanwhile, the properties showing up in AI answers are the ones with structured data across multiple platforms, active review profiles, and content matching how travelers phrase questions. The digital footprint is exactly what AI models need, even when the guest experience is mediocre.

That's the gap premium hospitality needs to close. Not by compromising the experience, but by ensuring the digital signals match the quality of the stay.