Are guests starting to choose hotels through AI instead of Google?
I’ve been noticing something lately and wanted to ask people actually working in hotels.
More and more travelers seem to skip Google entirely and just ask AI:
“Where should I stay in [city]?”
“Best boutique hotel nearby?”
Out of curiosity, I tried this with a few different AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini).
What surprised me is that the results weren’t always the same as Google rankings or even review scores.
Some hotels kept showing up consistently.
Others — including well-rated ones — didn’t show up at all.
Which made me think:
Are we entering a phase where visibility isn’t just about SEO or OTA rankings anymore, but also about how AI “understands” and recommends your property?
For those of you managing or marketing hotels:
– Have you tested how your hotel appears in AI answers?
– Have you noticed any impact on bookings or discovery channels?
I ended up building a small tool just to check this across different AI platforms, mostly out of curiosity.
If anyone’s interested, I can run a few checks and share what I see — I’m genuinely curious how this looks across different properties.
