From SEO to GEO: The new playbook for hotel visibility

As AI reshapes how travelers search and book, hotels need to make their content legible to large language models to stay discoverable

For more than two decades, hotel marketers have fought to climb the Google ladder — fine-tuning keywords, optimizing metadata, and chasing backlinks in the never-ending game of search engine optimization (SEO). But a quiet shift is now underway: travelers are starting their booking journeys not with Google, but with generative AI.

When guests ask ChatGPT, “Where should I stay in Rome for three nights near the Colosseum?” they don’t scroll through pages of search results — they get a curated, conversational answer. The question for hotels is simple and urgent: how does your property make it into that answer?

Enter GEO: generative engine optimization

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is emerging as the next frontier for hotel visibility. Just as SEO helped hotels rise through Google rankings, GEO will determine which hotels large language models (LLMs) recommend when travelers turn to AI assistants for trip planning.

“The GEO customer isn’t browsing — they’re deciding,” says John Jimenez, VP of ecommerce and revenue at Noble Investment Group. “By the time they reach your site, they’ve already done their research inside the AI model. They’re further along in the booking journey — and hotels need to treat them that way.”

Unlike SEO, where search engines index keywords, GEO depends on how well your hotel’s digital content can be understood by machines. LLMs don’t just read text — they interpret it, summarize it, and reason about it. To appear in that process, your content must be structured, clear, and machine-readable.

Making your hotel “AI-readable”

AI readability goes beyond a sleek website. It’s about giving large language models the right data to understand what your hotel offers — and who it’s for.

That means:

• Using structured data markup (like schema.org) to label information such as amenities, location, and rates.
• Writing descriptions in natural, context-rich language that helps AI understand the meaning behind your offering, not just the words.
• Keeping information consistent across channels — discrepancies confuse both humans and machines.
• Ensuring fast site performance and clean architecture so crawlers (and AI bots) can access your content without friction.

In short: the new audience for your website isn’t just travelers — it’s also the algorithms advising them.

The traveler has already changed

According to Booking.com, 89% of consumers want to use AI in travel planning, and 24% already trust AI assistants more than travel bloggers. These digital concierges are learning fast — pulling from websites, reviews, and public data to craft personalized recommendations.

This creates a new kind of traveler journey: instead of comparing hotels manually, guests rely on AI to curate options. Your visibility in that moment depends on how clearly your content “talks” to the model. If your site is opaque or poorly structured, you may simply not exist in the AI’s view of the world.

Preparing your data, not just your design

“Ready or not, it’s here,” says Lisa Targonski, director of commercial services at Elder Research. “People on your staff are using AI, even if you think they aren’t. The real challenge is making sure the data we feed these systems is solid and trustworthy.”

For hotels, that means integrating AI-readiness into every layer of digital marketing and distribution:

• Feed clean data into your systems — from PMS to CRM to website. AI agents can’t fix messy inputs.
• Collaborate with your partners — channel managers, GDS providers, and OTAs — to ensure consistent data sharing.
• Experiment with AI tools internally — from writing assistant chatbots to revenue forecasting models — to understand how they “see” your property.

This isn’t just about future guests. It’s about preparing your business for the AI agents that will represent them.

The new playbook

Think of GEO as the next iteration of digital hospitality: you’re not only designing for humans but also for the intelligent systems that help them choose.

The winners of this new era won’t be those with the flashiest websites, but those whose information is clean, structured, and transparent — ready to be read and re-told by AI.

Because in the age of generative search, hotels won’t just be discovered — they’ll be described. And how well you prepare your digital story today will determine whether you appear in tomorrow’s AI-driven travel recommendations.