"Find me a quiet hotel near the coast with a decent restaurant, for a two night break in October." "Which hotel in the Cotswolds actually allows dogs, not just says it does." Travellers are increasingly handing questions like this straight to ChatGPT or Gemini instead of opening five booking site tabs and comparing filters themselves. It's a genuine shift in how a hotel gets discovered, and it rewards a different set of signals than the ones most hospitality websites are built around.
What the question actually needs answered
A traveller asking an AI assistant for a hotel wants a specific match, not a directory listing. That means a model is hunting for concrete facts: room types and what's actually in them, what's genuinely nearby, whether pets or children are welcome, what's included in the rate, and what the property is realistically like to stay in, beyond a gallery of professionally lit photos with no supporting text.
Where hotels lose the most ground
- The site is a photo gallery with a booking widget bolted on. Beautiful imagery tells a human a lot and tells an AI crawler almost nothing. If room details, amenities, and policies live only inside an interactive booking engine, a model can't read any of it.
- Vague category language instead of specifics. "Boutique luxury retreat" says nothing a model can act on. Room count, bed configurations, whether there's a spa, a restaurant open to non-residents, parking, and accessibility all answer real buyer questions directly.
- Policies buried or missing entirely. Pet policy, cancellation terms, check in and check out times, and whether the property is child friendly are exactly the kind of practical questions travellers now ask AI first. If the answer isn't written in plain text somewhere on the site, the model has nothing to cite.
- Location context is assumed, not stated. "5 minutes from the beach" means nothing without knowing which beach. Naming nearby landmarks, towns, and attractions explicitly gives a model something concrete to match against a location based question.
What strengthens a hotel's position
A rooms and rates page written in plain text, not only inside a booking widget, does the most work here. State room types, typical rates or a rate range, what's included, and any minimum stay conditions. Add a clear amenities list covering dining, parking, spa or leisure facilities, and accessibility, and state pet and family policies explicitly rather than leaving them to a phone call.
A short FAQ carries real weight
Hospitality customers ask a narrow, predictable set of questions: is parking included, do you allow dogs, what time is check in, is breakfast included, is there a restaurant open to non-residents, how far is it from the nearest town or attraction. Answering these plainly on the site mirrors exactly how people phrase the question to an AI assistant, which makes the content unusually well matched to how the query actually arrives.
Where to start
Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity to recommend a hotel or place to stay in your area for a specific scenario, a weekend break, a dog friendly stay, a work trip. If your property doesn't come back, or comes back with outdated or generic detail, that's a diagnosable and fixable content gap, not a reflection of how good the actual stay is.