Travelers’ habits when planning their stays are undergoing a radical transformation. Data published by Skift Research and McKinsey highlights an impressive acceleration: in just twelve months, the percentage of people who regularly use ChatGPT or similar assistants to plan a trip jumped from 13% to 30%.
These digital tools intervene precisely during the crucial phase when choosing which accommodations to consider. A further study by the same institutes—conducted on a sample of over one thousand American travelers and backed by the analysis of 211 real search and booking sessions—reveals that 71% of users enthusiastically rely on AI for initial inspiration, while 67% use it to narrow down the available options.
In practice, AI software is increasingly defining the final list of recommendations. Consequently, appearing among the answers of these systems represents the most urgent strategic challenge for hospitality operators: if a property is omitted from these automated lists, it risks remaining completely invisible to potential guests.
How to Adapt Your Hotel Portal to AI Standards
Most websites, despite offering a refined design and a pleasant navigation experience for humans, are almost incomprehensible to algorithms. They often feature overly generic text, logistical details scattered across multiple sections, and a lack of structured data capable of explaining to a virtual agent why that business is the ideal solution for a specific query.
To overcome this problem, website optimizations must operate on two distinct yet complementary fronts:
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Technical level: interventions on page source code, structured to facilitate indexing and interpretation by search engines and intelligent assistants.
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Content level: interventions on user-visible text, designed to immediately highlight the essential details driving the booking decision.
These two aspects must go hand in hand. Every optimization starts with an in-depth study of key site sections and an analysis of the real queries visitors ask AI when searching for information about a specific destination.
Another crucial aspect is tracking. In traditional analytics tools, visitors coming from platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity often end up grouped into generic categories, becoming indistinguishable. Without a dedicated measurement system, evaluating the effectiveness of changes or adapting the strategy to periodic algorithm updates becomes impossible.
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Final Considerations
Artificial intelligence tools have established themselves as one of the very first touchpoints when people search for ideas or narrow down options for their vacations. Successfully positioning oneself within the responses of ChatGPT and other virtual assistants has become essential: those left out of this circuit risk never even being considered.
Various online studies show that a website prepared for AI logic manages to intercept far more users, whether it is built AI-ready from scratch or optimized at a later stage.
The first step is to check how AI currently interprets your pages: understand which sections are used as sources, what information is missing, and what roadmap to follow for improvement.
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