In the current travel landscape, the “search” part of a guest’s journey has been replaced by a “conversation.” Travelers are no longer just typing “hotels in Miami” into a search bar. They are asking ChatGPT to “find a quiet boutique hotel in Miami with a rooftop pool and a great vegan breakfast.” This shift means your property is now competing for AI search visibility.

If an AI model cannot find, verify, and summarize your hotel’s unique features, you simply do not exist in the answer. This is the era of the “Invisible Boutique.” Even if you have a beautiful website, you may be hidden from the very tools guests are using to make decisions. Auditing your presence in these generative engines is no longer optional; it is a requirement for survival.

Moving from Keywords to Entities

Traditional SEO was about keywords. AI search is about entities. An entity is a “thing” or “concept” that an AI understands as a distinct fact. For a hotel, this includes your brand name, your specific neighborhood, and your verified amenities.

A fractional AI officer or a sophisticated marketing team audits your AI search visibility by checking how these entities are linked. If ChatGPT thinks your hotel is in one neighborhood but your Google Business Profile says another, the AI loses trust. It will likely omit you from a recommendation to avoid giving the user “hallucinated” or incorrect information. Consistency across the web is what builds the “confidence score” an AI needs to recommend you.

The Architecture of an AI-Ready Audit

To see what the machines see, you must perform a multi-platform audit. Start by prompting tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google SGE (Search Generative Experience) with high-intent questions. Do not just search for your name. Ask, “What are the top three boutique hotels for a business traveler near the financial district?”

Note which sources the AI cites. Often, it isn’t just pulling from your homepage. It is looking at Reddit threads, local news articles, and detailed review sites. If your hotel is missing from the summary, look at your structured data. AI-ready websites use specialized code to tell the machine exactly what the property offers. If your “pool” isn’t tagged as an “OutdoorPool” in your site’s code, the AI might miss it entirely when a guest asks for that specific feature.

Conversational Authority and “Answer Nodes”

AI models prefer content that is structured as a direct answer. During an audit, you should evaluate your blog posts and landing pages to see if they function as “answer nodes.” An answer node is a section of your site—usually under a clear H2 header—that provides a concise, factual response to a common traveler question.

Instead of writing a long, flowery paragraph about your “unrivaled hospitality,” use clear language. State your check-in times, your pet policy, and your distance from the airport in plain text or bulleted lists. These are the parts of your website that AI “scrapes” to build its summaries. The more “scapable” your high-value information is, the higher your AI search visibility will climb.

The Reputation Loop in AI Discovery

The final piece of an AI audit is your digital reputation. AI models are trained to prioritize “sentiment.” They don’t just count your stars; they read the text of your reviews to understand your “vibe.”

If guests consistently mention your “excellent espresso” or “noisy street,” the AI learns that these are part of your entity. During your audit, check if the AI mentions your hotel’s strengths accurately. If it doesn’t, you may need to encourage guests to mention specific amenities in their written reviews. This creates a data-rich environment that tells the AI exactly why it should recommend you over a corporate competitor.

AI Search Visibility: Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is AI search visibility different from traditional SEO? Yes. Traditional SEO focuses on ranking a link in a list. AI search visibility focuses on getting your hotel’s facts and brand mentioned within a generated summary. While good SEO helps, AI visibility requires more focus on structured data, conversational content, and consistent brand mentions across third-party sites like Reddit or local travel blogs.

2. How can I tell if ChatGPT knows my hotel exists? The simplest way is to ask it. Use a prompt like: “Give me a detailed description of [Your Hotel Name] in [City].” If the AI provides an accurate list of your amenities and location, your visibility is high. If it gives a vague answer or says it doesn’t know, you have a “visibility gap” that needs to be addressed through better site structure and digital PR.

3. Does Google SGE use the same information as ChatGPT? Not exactly. Google SGE (now called AI Overviews) relies heavily on its own Knowledge Graph and your Google Business Profile. ChatGPT and other models like Claude rely on a mix of their training data and real-time web browsing. To be visible across all of them, you must maintain a consistent “source of truth” regarding your hotel’s facts on every platform you control.

Eric Hoffman

Director of Business Development, The FS Agency
With 10+ years in marketing and SEO, Eric helps home service brands grow through visibility and performance-driven strategies.