Your Next Guest Is Asking ChatGPT Where to Stay. Is Your Hotel in the Answer?
Twenty years ago, Google wasn't a strategy. It was a website where tech people looked things up.
Then it became how every traveler in the world found hotels. The hotels that figured out SEO early held their positions for years. Not because they were the best hotels. Because they moved first and the algorithm learned to trust them. The ones that waited found themselves paying OTAs to reach guests who would have booked direct if they'd had the chance.
What's Actually Happening
Travelers are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity where to stay. Not as a novelty - as a first option. Two thirds of travelers have already used AI in some part of trip planning. One in three are using it to actually book. And unlike Google, which gives you a list of links to scroll through, AI gives you one answer. A recommendation. Like advice from a trusted friend who has read every review, visited every website and compared every option, in seconds.
There is no page two. There are no ads. There is just a recommendation.
And right now, for most hotels, that recommendation belongs to someone else.
Booking.com and Expedia were live in the ChatGPT app directory on day one. If your hotel doesn't have a direct presence in the AI ecosystem, those platforms will represent you, using descriptions you didn't write, assembled from sources you can't update, with no interest in telling your story well.
How AI Actually Decides What to Recommend
Before you can fix anything, it helps to understand how these systems think.
AI recommendation engines don't work like search engines. They don't rank pages by keywords. They build trust. Before recommending a hotel, an AI system needs to understand what it is, verify that it exists and confidently match it to what the traveler is asking for.
To do that, it cross-references your hotel across multiple sources simultaneously: your website, your Google Business Profile, your OTA listings, TripAdvisor, review platforms, travel blogs, local guides, social media. It's looking for consistency, credibility and clarity. When the information it finds is consistent and complete - it recommends with confidence. When it finds gaps, contradictions or thin content - it either recommends cautiously or doesn't recommend at all.
The good news is that most of what AI needs from you is not technical wizardry. It's the same good practice your marketing team should already be doing - just applied with AI visibility in mind.
Step by Step: How to Make It Happen
Step 1: Start by knowing where you stand.
Open ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity in incognito mode (important, so previous searches don't bias the result). Ask it to recommend hotels in your city for your specific positioning. "Best business hotels in Riyadh." "Luxury family resorts in Bali." Whatever your property is.
Does your hotel appear? If yes - what does it say? Is the information accurate? Is the description compelling or generic? If no - that gap is your to-do list.
This takes ten minutes and costs nothing. Do it today.
Step 2: Make your information consistent everywhere.
This is the single most important thing you can do. AI systems cross-verify your hotel across every platform it can find. If your hotel name is slightly different on Booking.com than on your Google Business Profile. If your address format differs between TripAdvisor and your website. If your room count or amenities list contradicts itself across platforms - the AI loses confidence and moves on.
Your hotel name, address, phone number, website, star rating, room types and key amenities must be identical everywhere. Google Business Profile. Booking.com. Expedia. TripAdvisor. Your own website. Every single platform.
Audit this across your entire digital footprint. Fix every inconsistency. This is not glamorous work. It is foundational.
Step 3: Rewrite your descriptions in human language.
AI systems process natural language. They match hotels to traveler queries that sound like real questions - not marketing copy.
A traveler doesn't ask ChatGPT for "a premium lifestyle property with elevated amenities and a curated guest journey." They ask for "a stylish hotel near the financial district with a good gym and easy airport access for a three night business trip."
Read your current hotel descriptions out loud. If they sound like a brochure from 2015 - rewrite them. Describe your hotel the way a knowledgeable friend would describe it. Specific. Honest. Clear about who it's right for and why.
"A 200-room business hotel two minutes walk from the DIFC, with a rooftop pool, 24-hour gym and a direct booking rate that beats any OTA" will get you recommended. "A world-class destination offering unparalleled luxury experiences" will not.
Step 4: Build an FAQ section on your website.
This is one of the highest impact changes you can make - and most hotels don't have it.
AI systems love FAQ content because it mirrors exactly how travelers ask questions. Write the questions your guests actually ask - not the questions your marketing team thinks they should ask.
"Is the hotel walking distance from the old town?""Do you allow late checkout for loyalty members?""Is the pool heated year round?""What's the best room type for a family with two young children?"
Answer each one directly and honestly. This content becomes instantly citable by AI when a traveler asks the same question. It also happens to be genuinely useful to guests. Win-win.
Step 5: Make reviews your priority.
AI systems treat your review profile as a trust signal. Volume, recency, rating and how you respond to feedback all feed into whether an AI feels confident recommending you.
A hotel with 2,000 recent reviews averaging 4.6 across Google, TripAdvisor and Booking.com - consistently managed, with thoughtful responses to both positive and negative feedback - reads as credible and safe to recommend.
A hotel with 400 reviews, a patchy response rate and a score that fluctuates between 3.8 and 4.2 depending on the platform reads as unreliable.
Build a systematic process for requesting reviews from satisfied guests. Respond to every review - especially the negative ones. Keep the language natural and specific, not templated. And make sure your scores are consistent across platforms - because AI will notice when they're not.
Step 6: Get mentioned on trusted third-party platforms.
AI systems don't just read your own website. They look for validation from sources they trust. Travel blogs. Local guides. Industry publications. YouTube reviews. Reddit discussions. The more your hotel appears in trusted third-party content - described consistently and positively - the more confident an AI becomes in recommending you.
This doesn't mean paying for coverage. It means being genuinely good enough that people write about you. It means engaging authentically in travel communities. It means making sure your hotel is listed and described accurately on every relevant platform - not just the big OTAs.
If a travel blogger writes about "the best rooftop bars in Bangkok" and your hotel's bar makes the list - that is more valuable for AI visibility than almost anything else you can do.
Step 7: Add schema markup to your website.
This is the most technical step on the list, but it's important enough to mention.
Schema markup is a small piece of code that tells AI systems and search engines exactly what your content means (not just what it says). For hotels, this includes your property type, location, amenities, price range, check-in and check-out times, and contact details - all structured in a format that machines can read instantly.
Most hotel websites don't have it properly configured. Most hotel marketing teams have never heard of it. Get your web developer or digital agency to implement Hotel schema and LocalBusiness schema on your website. It takes a few hours and makes your property dramatically more machine-readable.
Step 8: Test. Monitor. Adjust.
AI recommendations are not static. They update as new information becomes available: new reviews, new content, new mentions across the web. What you look like to ChatGPT today may be different in three months if you're actively building your digital presence.
Run your AI audit (the incognito ChatGPT test) once a month. Track whether you're appearing, what's being said, and whether the information is accurate. When something is wrong - fix it at the source. When you're not appearing - ask yourself what the hotel that is appearing is doing that you're not.
The Bigger Picture
Hotels spent the last two decades watching OTAs take over their distribution while paying 13-25% commission on every booking they should have owned. The ones who built direct booking strategies early - strong websites, loyalty programs, rate parity discipline - are in a much stronger position today.
AI discovery is the next version of that story. And it's moving faster.
The hotels that understand how AI recommends properties, build their digital presence accordingly and show up consistently in AI-powered searches will own a growing share of direct bookings over the next five years.
The ones that wait will find themselves paying whoever did move first (to reach guests who were already looking for them).
You know how this story ends. You've seen it before.
xoxo, Bored Hotelier 😉
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it possible to make AI recommend my hotel when travelers ask for suggestions? Yes, but not in the way most people imagine. You can't instruct an AI to recommend you. What you can do is build the kind of digital presence that AI systems trust enough to recommend confidently. Consistent information across every platform, strong review scores, clear descriptions that match how travelers actually search, third party mentions on trusted sources. AI recommends hotels it can verify. Your job is to be verifiable.
How do I get ChatGPT or Google AI to suggest my hotel? Start with the basics that most hotels neglect. Make sure your hotel information is identical everywhere it appears online - name, address, amenities, star rating. Rewrite your descriptions in plain conversational language rather than marketing copy. Build an FAQ section on your website that answers the questions travelers actually ask. Respond to every review. Get mentioned on travel blogs, local guides and third party platforms that AI systems treat as trusted sources. None of this is complicated. Most hotels just haven't done it systematically.
Can I pay to have AI platforms recommend my hotel? Not directly. Unlike Google Ads or OTA sponsored listings, there is currently no paid placement model inside ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity recommendations. What Booking.com and Expedia have done is integrate directly into the ChatGPT app ecosystem - meaning if your hotel isn't represented well on those platforms, those platforms will speak for you in AI conversations, using content you didn't write. The answer to this isn't paying AI - it's owning your own narrative well enough that AI has no reason to rely on someone else's version of it.
What is GEO and how is it different from SEO for hotels? GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) is the practice of optimising your hotel's digital presence specifically for AI-generated recommendations rather than traditional search rankings. SEO gets you onto Google's first page. GEO gets you into the answer when a traveler asks an AI where to stay. The principles overlap - quality content, consistent data, strong authority signals - but GEO prioritises natural language, FAQ-style content and third party validation over keywords and backlinks. Both matter. In 2026, hotels that only think about SEO are already behind.