AI Is Now Recommending Hotels. Is Yours One of Them?

For twenty years, hotel discovery meant one thing: search. A traveller opened Google, typed "best hotels in Ayia Napa," and scrolled through a page of results. You had options. You could invest in SEO. You could bid on ads. You could make sure your photos looked better than the competition's.

That model gave hotels a fighting chance. Even if you weren't the top result, you were on the page. The traveller could click, compare, and choose.

That is starting to change.

The new front door is a conversation

Today, a growing number of travellers are skipping Google entirely. They open ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Perplexity and ask a question:

"What's the best beachfront hotel in Protaras for a couple?"

"I need a family-friendly hotel in Paphos with a pool and half board."

"Where should I stay in Limassol for a business trip?"

The AI doesn't return ten links. It gives one answer — or maybe three. A curated recommendation that reads like advice from a trusted friend. No second page. No filter sidebar. No map with pins.

If your hotel is in that answer, it's on the shortlist. If it isn't, the traveller may not consider it.

This isn't a prediction. It's already happening. Two in three people surveyed by Booking.com in 2025 (67%) said they had already used AI for travel, almost all of them for planning or booking. About one in three travellers (34%) used AI to discover destinations, according to Adyen's 2025 Hospitality and Travel Report.

Which websites AI points to

Here's what matters for your own website.

When AI does mention your hotel, pay attention to which sources it cites. In our Cyprus research audit, AI answers cited OTA listings more often than the hotel's own website.

That means even when AI recommends your property, it's often pointing travellers to OTA listings rather than your official website. Your direct website stays underrepresented in how AI presents you.

We don't know exactly how each AI chooses its sources; those systems aren't public. What we can do is measure which websites appear in the answers.

Even hotels with strong direct-booking strategies can be underrepresented. In our Cyprus research, hotel websites were 3.4% of the source references recorded.

Most hotels don't know where they stand

If you're a hotel GM reading this, here's the uncomfortable truth: you probably have no idea how AI sees your property right now.

You don't know if ChatGPT recommends you when someone asks about your destination. You don't know if Gemini mentions your competitor instead. You don't know whether the citations point to your website or to your Booking.com listing. And you don't know how underrepresented your official website is in those AI source references.

You can't optimise what you can't measure.

This is not the same as checking your Google ranking. There is no simple search bar you can type your hotel name into and see where you stand in AI. The recommendations change based on how the question is asked, what persona the traveller represents, what intent they express, and which engine they use.

A couple looking for a romantic getaway gets different recommendations than a family looking for a beach holiday. A budget traveller gets different results than a luxury one. Your hotel might appear for one scenario and be completely absent from another.

Understanding your AI visibility requires running dozens of real queries across multiple engines and analysing the results systematically. That's exactly what we built Vektos to do.

What actually determines whether AI recommends you

AI assistants don't show a list of ten links the way Google does. They combine information from different sources into one answer.

In the AI answers we review, hotels that appear often share these traits. That doesn't prove cause, but they're worth checking:

Structured, machine-readable information. Hotels with clear schema markup (Hotel, FAQPage, Review data) on their websites give AI engines concrete facts to work with. Most hotel websites lack this entirely.

A strong direct web presence. If your website has thin content — a homepage, a gallery, and a booking widget — AI has very little to reference. Hotels with detailed room descriptions, location guides, FAQ pages, and specific amenity information surface more frequently.

An llms.txt file. This is a proposed standard: a simple text file at your website's root that summarises what your property offers for AI tools. Not every AI assistant uses it yet, so treat it as a low-cost extra, not a guarantee.

Consistency across sources. If your hotel name, room types, and amenities are described differently on your website, your Booking.com listing, and your TripAdvisor page, AI answers may describe your hotel inconsistently. Keeping these facts the same everywhere is a sensible first step.

Why it's worth checking now

If this feels familiar, it should. Hotels have seen new channels arrive before: first search, then OTAs. AI answers are the next one, and it's still early.

AI answers change over time. A dated measurement today gives you a baseline to compare against later.

Start with what you can measure

Before investing in any AI optimisation tool or paid placement, start with the basics: find out where you actually stand.

A Vektos Discovery report asks ChatGPT and Google Gemini a fixed set of traveller questions: 11 general questions about hotels in your area and 9 about your hotel. You get a clear picture of:

• Whether AI recommends your hotel — and in which of those questions it doesn't
• Which sources AI cites for your hotel — your official website, or OTAs and review sites
• What to check first — the management priorities in your report

It takes five minutes to order and the report is delivered within 24 hours. No integration needed. No changes to your website. Just clarity on a channel that's already shaping how travellers discover you.