How to Show Up in AI Search Results for Hotels: 5 Practical Steps

Behaviours around search and discovery are changing. In the past, someone might have said that they "Googled" something, whereas now it's much more common to hear that they "asked ChatGPT" or that they saw something on TikTok. Even your standard search tools like Google are prioritising their AI overviews over standard search results. This trend is especially important to hoteliers. 

According to the Skift US Travel Tracker Survey, featured in McKinsey and Skift Research's report on AI in travel, 30% of US travellers used ChatGPT or similar tools extensively to plan trips in 2025, up from 13% the year before. 

Hotel marketers must make sure that AI can find and understand them. To show up in AI search results, hotels need clear, consistent information across the web, pages that answer guest questions directly, strong review signals, and structured data that helps AI tools understand their content. 

In this blog, we'll explain what AI search results mean for independent hoteliers, what five practical steps any small team can take now, and most importantly: what to do once AI has found you.

What are AI search results, and what does AEO actually mean for hotel marketers?

ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are all examples of AI search tools that a traveller might use to pose a query (e.g. quiet country house hotel near Edinburgh with a good spa) and get a summarised, direct recommendation instead of pages of links. This is what's known as zero-click marketing: much of AI's influence on a guest's decision happens before they ever visit a website, which makes that influence hard to measure directly. Expect organic traffic to decline — that's normal, not a failure. The trade-off is that the guests who do click through to your website arrive with far higher intent to book. 

✍️ Try this exercise! Search for hotels in your local area and see if you show up in the AI search results. Then ask what AI knows about your hotel. Are the answers correct or outdated? Do you even show up at all? Where is it pulling its information from? Check this across a couple of different search engines. Use incognito mode so that the results aren't influenced by your search history.

Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is how you structure your website and online presence so those AI tools can more easily find, understand, and recommend your hotel. You may also see it called Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). Previously, a traditional Google or Booking.com search would give a potential guest fifty results to sift through. Now, AI search results give them five, sometimes one. Either your hotel makes it onto that shortlist, or you're entirely forgotten.

AEO doesn't replace SEO or Google's Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) framework. Instead it integrates with them. The key difference is control. SEO happens on pages you own: you can improve your site's quality, speed, and content directly. AEO is largely earned on external ground: reviews, directories, listings, and third-party mentions where you have limited control. That makes AEO less a technical checklist and more a brand exercise - how trustworthy, consistent, and well-described is your hotel everywhere it appears? Many of the same advantages that you already have (distinctive character, genuine local knowledge, and reviews full of the personal details) will apply here.

Why is my hotel not showing up in AI search results?

Large chains dominate AI search results. Not because AI prefers them, but because their information is easier to trust. Their property details are identical across hundreds of sources. Their websites are structured and complete. AI models recommend hotels they can validate, and if your hotel has a fragmented, inconsistent, or thin digital footprint, it won't make the cut.

Right now, most hotels aren't there. An analysis of 131,000 properties across 30 countries by HotelWorld AI found that only around 16% of global hotel supply is visible in results from ChatGPT, Google's AI and Perplexity. Chain-affiliated hotels are far more likely to be surfaced, with just seven parent chains accounting for the top 25 most visible brands.

AI recommendations matter now more than ever! A 2026 analysis by NYU's Tisch Center of Hospitality and Boston Consulting Group describes hotel discovery as shifting "from search and scroll to ask and book", with hotels now competing for a place on the traveller's AI-generated shortlist. The same analysis found that 37% of travellers already use AI tools embedded in online travel sites to plan and book trips. The shortlist is already deciding real bookings, and earning a place on it comes down to a stronger digital footprint and better-connected data. Exactly the things most independents haven't yet prioritised.

These are things you can easily fix. And unlike the last twenty years of search, where big paid-media budgets decided who appeared first, the signals AI currently relies on are free: clear information, consistency, genuine reviews, helpful content. This is a rare moment where the playing field tilts towards hotels that are simply well-run and well-described.

It won't stay that way forever. Which brings us to Marriott...

What Marriott's Google deal teaches independent hotels

(This section reflects developments as of July 2026.)

On its Q4 2025 earnings call this February, Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano announced a partnership with Google to build what he called a "priority search experience". The plan: guests will be able to discover and book a Marriott hotel entirely inside Google's AI Mode, without ever visiting Marriott.com. The booking will be processed through Marriott, outside any OTA commission. On paper, it counts as direct. 

But as Markus Busch argued in an opinion piece on Hospitality Net, Marriott had to give up a lot to get there. Marriott is backing this bet with a $1 billion-plus investment programme in 2026, with a large share earmarked for digital and technology transformation, but the discovery still happens on a platform Marriott doesn't own and can't change. The data from the moment of decision (what the guest searched, what they compared, why they chose) stays with Google. And that "priority" placement? Everywhere else in Google's travel business, priority positions are auctioned and paid for. And that future is arriving quickly: Google began testing ads inside AI Mode in late 2025, announced a full suite of AI-powered ad formats in May 2026, and has already opened its AI ad products to travel brands, making hotel ads eligible to appear inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. Today's partnership terms may just become tomorrow's rate card. 

Here's the encouraging part for hoteliers without a billion-dollar budget: the independent hotel's version of this play is actually cleaner. You don't need to negotiate a seat inside Google's interface. You need AI tools to find you, describe you accurately, and send the guest to your website, where the booking, the guest's details, and the entire relationship belong to you.

So: how can hotels get found in AI search results?

Five simple steps for hotels to show up in AI search results

💬1. Answer the questions your guests are asking 

AI tools are answer engines. They look for content that directly answers a question. So the single highest-value page you can build is an honest, thorough FAQ answering the questions real guests ask you: Is parking free? Can we check in early? Are dogs welcome? How far is the train station? These are the same questions an AI chatbot for hotels fields around the clock, so the answers you write once will do double duty across your FAQ page and any live chat tool.

You don't need to guess what those questions are. They're already sitting in your inbox, your front desk team's memory, and your post-stay feedback surveys. If you're collecting guest feedback systematically, you're already holding a list of exactly what future guests will ask an AI. Write plain, specific answers.

🌟2. Make your property facts consistent everywhere

Your name, address, room count, amenities and descriptions should match across your website, Google Business Profile, online directories and OTA listings. AI models cross-check sources before they recommend. Every contradiction, whether it's a spa listed on one site but not another or two different phone numbers, makes you harder to verify and easier to skip. An hour spent auditing your listings is one of the highest-return tasks in modern hotel marketing.

💞 3. Treat reviews as your AI reputation

AI recommendations lean heavily on review content, and not just the star rating. The specific, human details in reviews ("ask for the corner room overlooking the loch", "the breakfast is worth the stay alone") are precisely what AI tools quote when explaining why they're recommending you. Encourage reviews consistently. An automated post-stay email doubles your chances versus hoping guests remember. And respond to them, because responses are another signal that the property is attentive and real.

The Feedback and Reputation module, powered by GuestRevu, transforms reputation management into a growth engine. Easily understand and interpret your guest feedback data so you can use your insights to make operational decisions that improve your guest experience, online ratings, and revenue. See how For-Sight and GuestRevu work together to elevate guest experience, reputation, and repeat business.

✍️ 4. Write your pages like answers, not adverts

Look at each key page of your website and ask: does this open with a clear, direct answer to what the visitor came for? Your spa page should say what the spa offers, who can use it, and what it costs, in the first paragraph, not after four sentences of scene-setting. Use headings phrased as questions where natural, keep the language plain, and be specific: distances, times, prices. These make it easier for you to be quoted.

👩‍💻 5. Ask your web team about schema markup

This is the most technical item on our list. Ask whoever manages your website: "Do our pages use schema markup, specifically Hotel and FAQ structured data?" Schema is a behind-the-scenes label that tells search engines and AI tools exactly what your content is. Your web developer will know what it means, and implementing it is routine work. For most hotel teams, this is the most important technical step to ask about first. 

Visibility gets you the first stay. Your data earns every one after it.

Being discoverable in AI search results is how a new guest finds you. But discovery, whether it's an OTA ranking, a Google result, or a ChatGPT recommendation, is always rented ground, as Marriott has just demonstrated at considerable expense. The hotels that turn this moment into lasting advantage are the ones that treat AI visibility as step one of three:

Step one: Get found by your ideal guests!

We've already given you the guide to getting found in AI search results, but your existing tactics and channels such as social media, advertising, and SEO remain just as important. 

💬Answer the questions your guests are asking

🌟Make your property facts consistent everywhere

💞Treat reviews as your AI reputation

✍️ Write your pages like answers, not adverts

👩‍💻  Ask your web team about schema markup 

Step two: convert bookings on the ground you already own!

Make sure the journey from AI recommendation ends on your website with a fast and direct booking path. Every direct booking keeps the commission in your pocket and, more importantly, puts the guest's details in your hands, not an OTA platform's. That first-party data (who the guest is, what they booked, what they told you) is the most valuable asset in hotel marketing, and we've written before about why it's a game-changer for your hotel business.

Step three: make sure you never need to be discovered by that guest again.

This is the most important step in your strategy! With the guest's email address, preferences, and stay history in your own system, you don't need to rely on an ever-changing algorithm to get the second, third, or even fourth stay! Automated pre-arrival campaigns welcome and upsell before arrival, post-stay follow-ups and win-back campaigns bring guests back, and a well-chosen loyalty programme rewards them for returning. These strategies run on channels you already control. And because it's built on real guest data, you can be genuinely personal: our guides to guest segmentation and what email personalisation looks like in practice show exactly how small teams do this without adding to their workload.

This strategy is working for For-Sight customers!

When Bridgewood Manor focused on data-driven guest engagement and targeted campaigns, direct bookings rose by 52%. And Feversham Arms Hotel & Verbena Spa generated a 3,045% return from a single four-email campaign, a result built entirely on guest data the hotel already owned. 

These results didn't rely on a massive marketing team or budget. They just used the insights from their guest data to create smart campaigns! That's exactly what For-Sight was built for: bringing the guest data scattered across your PMS, booking engine and other systems into one place, so a small team can Know Your Guests, Craft Delightful Experiences, and Earn Repeat Visits, automatically and at scale. And you're not left to figure it out alone. Our Customer Success team works alongside hotel teams every day to turn that data into campaigns that pay for themselves.

If you want to show up in AI search results, start by making your hotel easier for AI tools to verify, quote, and trust, then make sure every new visitor lands on a direct booking journey you own. The AI era will keep changing who controls discovery. The guest relationship is the one asset no platform can take from you, as long as you're the one holding it.

Want to see what your guest data could be doing for your direct bookings? Schedule a call with our team and we'll show you how hotels like yours turn first stays into lasting relationships.