AI Isn’t Making All Hotel Websites Obsolete – Just Most of Them

Chain hotel websites are at risk. Tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini can now summarize accommodation options instantly, bypassing brand.com sites in favor of fast, direct answers and eliminating the need for potential guests to click through a dozen links.

At first glance, when it comes to AI visibility, it sounds like a win for chain-branded hotels, which make up 72% of U.S. room inventory according to Statista. Templated brand.com sites have excellent structured content, which makes it easy for AI to scrape amenities, loyalty perks, and rates. Theoretically, this should increase their visibility in AI-driven search results.

However, search has evolved. Queries such as “boutique hotels in NYC” have turned into conversational questions like, “Tell me about the design-forward hotels in NYC that have arts programming and rooftop bars.”

Shallow content on brand.com sites can’t win that search. AI will surface the most original content, but that requires hotels to offer unique experiences to write about in the first place. And that creates a powerful opportunity for the 28% of U.S. hotels that are independent or boutique in scale.

Story-driven hotel websites—think brands like The Standard, essentially a blog with a ‘Book Now’ button—are most useful to AI platforms, and the travelers using them. Brands like The Standard are much more than a place to sleep, and they invest in continually producing fresh, new content to promote the experiences they offer: DJ lineups, tarot card readings, and an Italian restaurant pop-up with tomato basil martinis and one-pound meatballs.

Independent brands and boutique properties are better suited in an AI-first world because they offer the experiences—and content about those experiences—that help potential guests discover them and get inspired to book a stay. Demand-generating content examples include:

• A curated itinerary by the hotel’s chef with their shortlist of the cafes, restaurants, and bars a guest should try during a 48-hour trip
• A profile of the artist behind the hotel’s mural installation and their favorite cultural activities in the city
• A deep-dive into the seasonality of the destination and the varied reasons to plan a trip during the spring, summer, fall, and winter (e.g., après-ski menu in the winter, rooftop spritz cocktails in the summer)

This type of content gives AI the information it needs to recommend properties in context-specific results. And with queries becoming more conversational and niche than ever, it’s never been more critical to produce the type of content guests would expect to read in a mainstream publisher. (Curacity recently interviewed the editors at Afar, Travel + Leisure, Fathom, and A Hotel Life to gather their expert content recommendations for hotels and travel brands.)

AI isn’t signaling the death of hotel websites universally, but it has reshaped their utility. Chain-branded sites (or any site with shallow content) risk getting bypassed by AI summaries and seeing a significant decline in organic search traffic. Meanwhile, properties that publish distinctive content have the potential to enjoy more visibility than ever before.

In a landscape where more than seven out of ten hotel websites don’t meet traveler needs, the opportunity to expand visibility, capture share of voice, and win more bookings with a content-driven site has never been clearer.