Sales & Marketing

Not true! The first rationale is that SEO now has significant overlap with AEO and GEO in terms of helping serve all the channels that will be important for AI travel search visibility. So, a focus on what drives SEO will inevitably aid in AI-driven hotel recommendations and, in the future, AI bookings.Next is the argument against SEO as a 'set it and forget it' exercise.

GEO builds on top of SEO, so SEO is not dead.I think that Search (Google) helps with Research and Planning, not necessarily Inspiration. I agree that Inspiration often lives in different areas, ie Social. I don't think people use OTAs for Inspiration, either.

I think that there may be some truth here, but I’d draw a different conclusion. First of all, maybe we have historically given SEO too much credit for branded organic traffic. If someone discovers a hotel through Instagram, Booking.com or a friend and then Googles the property name and books direct, SEO didn’t necessarily create that demand; it helped capture it.