The way travellers discover hotels and holidays is undergoing a profound transformation, with AI-powered search platforms rapidly reshaping how consumers research, compare and ultimately book trips.
For travel brands, hotel groups and online travel agents, the implications are significant: relying solely on visibility through traditional search engines or dominant booking platforms is no longer enough.
New analysis comparing the sources prioritised by leading AI platforms including ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Gemini and Perplexity reveals striking differences in the travel websites each system trusts when responding to holiday and accommodation-related queries.
ChatGPT heavily references Booking.com, Hotels.com, Tripadvisor, Reddit and The Hotel Guru. Google AI Overview leans strongly towards Tripadvisor, Expedia, YouTube, Rick Steves and Instagram-related content. Gemini prioritises Booking.com, Michelin, Native Places, Hotels.com and Premier Inn, while Perplexity favours Tripadvisor, Hotels.com, Expedia and YouTube.
The findings highlight a growing reality for the travel sector: there is no longer a single gateway to online visibility.
A hotel chain performing strongly on Google may still have weak representation across conversational AI systems. Equally, brands with strong discussion visibility on forums, review platforms or creator-led channels may gain disproportionate prominence in AI-generated recommendations.
For travel companies, this fragmentation creates a major strategic challenge.
Consumers are increasingly planning trips through a mix of AI assistants, social media, review platforms, video content and booking engines rather than following a linear search journey. A traveller asking “best boutique hotels in Santorini” may receive entirely different recommendations depending on whether they use ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overview or Perplexity.
One platform may prioritise review sites, another editorial travel guides, another social media content, and another booking marketplaces.
This shift is accelerating as travellers increasingly seek conversational recommendations instead of manually browsing pages of search results. Consumers are now asking AI tools questions such as “Where should I stay in Rome for a luxury weekend?” or “Best family-friendly resorts in Tenerife with private pools.”
The AI systems then synthesise answers from the sources they trust most.
If a travel brand is absent from those trusted ecosystems, it risks disappearing from the consideration stage altogether.
The implications are particularly serious for hotels and travel operators that continue to rely heavily on conventional SEO strategies or paid advertising while underestimating the growing influence of AI-powered discovery.
Crucially, AI systems evaluate authority differently from traditional search engines. They draw on signals including brand mentions, sentiment, review consistency, discussion frequency, structured content and cross-platform relevance.
That means visibility is no longer just about ranking highly on Google. It is about being discoverable across the wider AI ecosystem influencing consumer decisions.
Trendos is the only global platform dedicated specifically to AI searchability and competitive intelligence, enabling brands to understand how they are represented across AI-driven search environments and where competitors are outperforming them.
For travel companies, this intelligence is becoming increasingly valuable as customer journeys become harder to track through conventional analytics alone. Consumers may now shortlist hotels, compare destinations and evaluate brands entirely through AI-generated recommendations before ever visiting a company website.
Gintare Rimolaityte, COO at Trendos, said: “Travel discovery is becoming fragmented across multiple AI systems, and every platform surface information differently depending on which sources it trusts. Brands that focus only on Google or major booking platforms are missing how consumers increasingly research and validate travel decisions. If companies are not visible across these wider AI ecosystems, they risk becoming invisible during the most influential stage of the customer journey.”
Trendos argues that the stakes are especially high in travel because purchasing decisions are heavily influenced by reputation, peer recommendations and discoverability during inspiration-led searches.
As AI increasingly becomes the gateway between consumers and online information, travel brands that fail to monitor and optimise their AI visibility may find themselves losing market share long before customers ever reach a booking page.
In the race for traveller attention, visibility across the full AI ecosystem is rapidly becoming as important as the destination itself.
