With regular search being replaced by AI summaries and conversational search, how should hotels manage their content?
13 experts shared their view
The old paradigm of search is being turned on its head, first slowly and then all at once. Anyone who has grown used to the fluid and contextual answers of large language models now struggles to return to the rigid three or four word keyword searches that feel like rolling dice.
So where does that leave hotels? Should they focus more on content about nearby restaurants, monuments, and activities? The raw data already exists, so will maintaining a blog even make a difference? Or is it more about guest reviews feeding the algorithms?
Will online travel agencies take over once again as they did with metasearch? Or does it not matter because, in the end, people will continue to book in the same way?
And who should we trust? A flood of so-called experts are now publishing advice on search engine optimisation for artificial intelligence. Most of it is hastily generated with large language models and has not been tested in practice. How can hoteliers separate real insights from the noise?
This is ongoing learning, as LLMs continue to learn. But GEO is built on top of SEO. It has to get its knowledge from somewhere. It means UCG (ie reviews) is more important, specific content is more important and understanding your target market is more important. You can be all thing to all customers offering generic amenities located close to everything. Transition from keywords to conversational content.
I work with many hoteliers and when it comes to the topic of online discovery, the first question I ask is: have you tried to search for your property, or lodging in your area, on different AI tools lately? It's quite surprising how so few have done it. Go ahead, try it: do a search on ChatGPT, CoPilot, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude.
Now comes the harder part: what to make of the results. Does your property appear in the results? If so, was it through a direct hit or via a blog article or OTA listing? Before we adopt a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) approach, we musn't forget the founding principles of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that remain, in many ways, still valid.
Sure, we don't query with 3-4 keywords and context now matters more than ever. But having an authoritative website - or as Google calls it E-E-A-T - is of the utmost importance. This includes online reviews and influencer content... but haven't we been saying this for years now, already?
So how should hotels manage their content is this evolving world? By identifying gaps in the strategy and ensuring they appear whenever clients search online, including on social media.
The speed of change is extraordinary! This rapid shift to AI summaries and conversational search marks a critical turning point for hotel content. Simple keyword-stuffing is ending; AI thrives on deep context and relationships, not raw data.
Hotels must craft a rich, interconnected digital narrative portraying the guest experience – the true 'feeling, vibe, and story.' This curated context is more valuable. Properties lacking genuine points of difference and a strong, aligned reputation will struggle immensely.
Crucially, this content must be immediately actionable. The seamless connection between descriptive information and a live, purchasable product via robust commerce engines defines competitive edge. Why talk about an experience if you can't instantly buy it?
Authenticity is paramount. Genuine guest reviews, for instance, become invaluable, feeding algorithms with real human sentiment in a synthesized digital landscape. My emphasis on transparency prioritizes demonstrably real content.
Regarding the 'flood of so-called experts' in AI, remember we are all learning. Discerning real insights means trusting deep, practical industry and tech expertise, not buzzwords. The future isn't about feeding AI more data; it's providing nuanced, trustworthy information that allows unique character to shine through and be immediately actionable for purchase. Isn't that the way it should be?
The rumors about the inevitable end of the "traditional" search engines like Google at the hands of AI Search are highly exaggerated. According to SEMrush, based on last 12 months data, people interact with search engines 34 TIMES more often than with AI search.
So there is no dilemma at all: since traditional search engines still rule, hoteliers should not be embracing AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization) at the expense of SEO, but investing diligently in both.
Each AI platform has its own indexing rules. The main emerging factor is that your property website will no longer be "the ultimate bearer of truth" about your hotel. SEO company VertoDigital"s data shows that only 25% of AI answers are pulled from website content, in this case the hotel website content.
The AI Search bots will seek other sources of information about your hotel: citations about the hotel in social media, online publications, YouTube, travel-related sites, blogs, customer reviews, travel guides, OTAs, etc. In the future, from a "handshake" between the property"s own AI Agent with travelers" Personal AI Agents.
The most immediate priority is to optimize the property website for AIO and invest in content marketing to "earn recognition" of your property.
Related article by Max Starkov
Search algorithms have always been evolving, with the goalposts of SEO constantly moving. What is now in the mix are experts trying to get ahead by making predictions about the impact of AI, with many, including myself, using professional experience to prepare potential strategies. Testing and success will indeed be key, which is why it's all the more important for the industry to have in-person conversations and share experiences to build trust.
Anyone can publish their predictions, but it's the proof in the pudding we should care about.
What is evident - hotels need a full marketing mix that incorporates their direct owned channels, social channels, UGC and guest reviews, and through reputable and credible partner digital channels with effective PR.
The shift to AI summaries and conversational search requires a more strategic and nuanced content approach. Hotels must now produce high-quality, structured content that answers guest questions in natural language while ensuring that content appears across diverse, trustworthy sources.
Unique experiences and insider tips remain essential, but they are no longer enough. Because GenAI draws from a wide range of inputs to craft narrative search responses, hoteliers must diversify the media outlets and platforms where their brand appears. User-generated content, such as consumer reviews, social posts, and influencer mentions, now plays a vital role in shaping how AI presents a brand. Investing in PR, experiential marketing, and cross-channel visibility helps feed GenAI with richer, more authentic signals.
Finally, while AI tools can help monitor brand representation in search outputs, they should support, but not replace, human oversight. The hospitality experience is, at its core, human. Trust, emotion, and nuance are what differentiate one brand from another. In today's fast-evolving AI landscape, hotels must constantly test, refine, and adopt new content strategies to remain competitive and relevant.
While no one, not even the engineers at OpenAI and similar companies, truly understands what makes the black-boxes that are LLMs prioritize one piece of content over another, emerging evidence suggest that "there is nothing new under the sun".
Like Google before them, LLMs want to provide users with the highest quality answers possible. Helping them to do so, by creating high quality, topical, relevant, and well structured content, is clearly the way to go. As at the beginning of SEO, black-hat tricks and techniques may pay off in the short-term, but will ultimately end up being a liability as these tools become increasingly sophisticated.
Instead of trying to game the system, as with all content marketing, focus clearly on the customer and their information needs. Only by doing this can you optimize your presence on conversational search in the long run.
Hotels need to rethink their content strategy. It's no longer good enough just to rank but to be referenced, quoted, and recommended by AI systems. A few points to consider include;
- Optimize for AI Discovery, Not Just SEO
- Create Content that Matches Conversational Queries
- Write for SGE (Search Generative Experience)
SGE (Search Generative Experience) is Google's experimental AI-powered search feature that generates summarised answers to search queries using AI, instead of just showing a list of links. For hotels, this changes how potential guests discover, compare, and choose accommodation.
Search is changing fast. Guests aren’t typing 3-4 keywords anymore to build their travel experience. Instead, they’re asking,
What’s the best hotel near Fenway Park with a great spa and late checkout?Long, conversational queries. And generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s A.I. Overviews are answering them in full sentences, not just links.For hotels, this means content must shift too. It’s not about keyword stuffing, it’s about being clear, structured, and conversational. Write the way your guests speak. Answer the real questions they’re asking.
Move beyond blogging for traffic. Use your blog to showcase the unique value and significance of your hotel. What makes your property different from competitors? What do your guests love most?
Guest reviews are still just as important as ever. They provide social proof; they build brand presence and feed the algorithms.
In this new search landscape, your content is no longer just a marketing tool. It’s how machines and people alike decide if you’re worth discovering. Hotels that embrace this shift won’t fall behind but instead, they’ll stand out.
The shift to conversational search means less rigid keyword targeting. The greater focus is on becoming the go-to source for nuanced, AI-driven answers that work naturally with conversational queries.
To the question of whether content even matters? Yes. But rather than generic content, hotels can create hyper-contextual local content and unique, brand-centric narratives that only they can provide, giving AI authentic and semantically rich content to work with. The same applies to guest reviews; encouraging detailed feedback and highlighting them on both hotel sites and third-party platforms helps shape how AI search highlights a brand in their summaries. UGC demonstrates social proof, inherently trusted by guests and prioritised by AI.
Moving forward, I still believe OTAs will remain strong in conversational search, adapting with AI. It"s not a threat, given that hoteliers approach OTAs as a powerful discovery platform.
What hotels can do instead of blindly trusting "AI SEO" experts is to prioritise authenticity, relevance, and provide real value to guests. It is imperative to focus on structured narratives and machine-readable context in your content strategy. AI-powered search amplifies such content, positioning hotels as local experts and building emotional connections that help convert interest into action.
As conversational AI changes how search works, the digital landscape is becoming crowded with questionable advice. The most effective strategy for hoteliers is to focus on their most valuable asset: their own first-party data.
The priority is to structure this information so that AI systems can reliably use it. This goes beyond rates and availability to include the full spectrum of hotel knowledge: guest reviews, detailed amenity descriptions, sustainability policies, and local partnerships. These elements should be managed not as separate website content, but as a unified, structured dataset. This direct control is the best way to prevent AI hallucinations and ensure a hotel's unique character is accurately conveyed.
Maintaining this control is critical as OTAs and other partners also evolve into data providers for AI engines. A hotel's most resilient strategy is to become the definitive source of truth for its property. Ultimately, the ability to attract guests and drive direct bookings will belong to hotels that can effectively manage and syndicate their first-party data: accuracy and control are the new foundations of digital marketing.
I explore these practical strategies in greater detail in this Hospitality Net article.
AI can already summarize the basic content that hotels post on their websites, such as amenities and location. That information no longer drives traffic. It gets scraped and summarized before a traveler ever clicks. As search becomes conversational, travelers ask nuanced, contextual questions. Where should I stay for a quiet anniversary weekend in Napa? beats Napa hotels with spa. To stay visible, hotels must shift from SEO pages to original storytelling that answers real traveler intent. Think local insights, vivid experiences, and unique perspectives: content so unique to your property and the experience you offer. In an AI-first world, hotels that tell compelling stories with target guest personas (not algorithms) in mind have the best chance to appear in conversational AI searches.
That's a good one, Martin.
This shift rewires the architecture of digital meaning itself.
In this context, if we're not feeding it structured, traceable, machine-readable truth, then we're not feeding it at all. We become ghosts in the shell, if you'll allow the anime reference.
Large language models already ingest contextual signals from hundreds of canonical sources, often more structured and current than anything on any hotel's official website. So the real question is not how much we produce, but how well we encode the content. This is a matter of schema fidelity, content atomization, and API fluency. Tools like the Model Context Protocol or composable CMSs may well become the WordPress of the new semantic web.
Reviews will indeed play a role, but problem is they exist almost entirely outside the purview of brand.com. These are externalized signals that hotels can influence only indirectly. You cannot structure them, you cannot version them, and you certainly cannot control how a generative agent digests them.
So yes, it's time to retire the SEO mindset and move toward GEO, once and for all. That means structured narratives, semantic coherence, live synchronization, and above all, control over the version of your entity that the machine indexes as "you." Because if we don't control the script, the algorithm will. And that opens up another layer of the conversation, which I (try to) explore further here: https://www.hospitalitynet.org/opinion/4126921.html
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