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Hotel Revenue Marketing

The data

The TL;DR

Behind every AI recommendation is a digital footprint. We mapped 145 properties across six destinations to uncover the patterns hoteliers can actually influence.

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Contents

To better understand how AI platforms are recommending properties, a team of Cloudbeds analysts and SEO experts conducted original research.

The research

A first-of-its-kind global study on how AI chatbots recommend properties.

Three leading generative AI platforms were chosen for this research: ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Collectively, these platforms account for an estimated 98% of AI-driven website traffic. The team queried each platform to explore how they identify, evaluate, and recommend lodging options.

Next, a set of prompts was defined to conduct automated large-scale testing of hotel recommendations across platforms. Six diverse travel destinations were selected to ensure global relevance. Using Rankscale, the three AI engines were prompted to recommend the top properties in each of the six selected destinations, using three prompts per location (a generic and two specific ones). To ensure consistency and accuracy, each query was submitted 15 times across each platform, resulting in 810 total prompts.

Research recapped:

  • 3 AI engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini)
  • 6 destinations (Banff, London, Bangok, Barcelona, Cancun, and New Orleans)
  • 3 prompts per location (generic, specific, more detailed)
  • 810 total prompts (each query was submitted using Rankscale 15 times across each platform)
  • Final data set of 145 properties (only those that consistently ranked in the top five were selected)

3 engines. 810 prompts.

Get the full breakdown on how the report was structured.

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Key findings

Online travel agencies
OTAs are the most trusted source in AI search with 55.3% of all citations pointing to OTAs, reaffirming their authority. OTAs provide structured, real-time content that generative models use to build accurate responses.

Property website
Official property sites remain a key source of trusted, accurate information for AI-generated travel content. Hotel websites accounted for 13.6% of all citations, well above the global average of 9% across brands in other industries.

Reputation
All recommended properties had strong guest ratings and high review volumes across major platforms. The average sentiment score among top-ranking properties was 75 (on a scale of 100).

Brand vs. Independent
72.4% of recommended properties were affiliated with a hotel brand or group, suggesting brand presence is a key trust signal. On average, brands were 4.43 percentage points more visible than independents.

User-generated content
More than a quarter of sources were travel blogs (19.2%), video reviews (1.6%), and community forums like Reddit and Tripadvisor (6%), indicating the importance of user-generated content.

Uncover more key findings
Explore all the report’s findings to learn how your property can be recommended by AI engines.

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Citations favored by AI engines

  • Gemini preferred OTAs, drawing heavily from Booking.com
  • ChatGPT often referenced property websites
  • On Perplexity, Tripadvisor was the most cited source*
  • Reddit was only sourced by Gemini**
  • YouTube was cited exclusively by Gemini and Perplexity

*Tripadvisor was the most cited source, perhaps due to a recent partnership between the two companies

**Reddit was only sourced by Gemini, perhaps the result of a recent licensing agreement 

There’s more to see! Download the report for:

  • Full digital footprint
  • Average review scores
  • Top-cited domains
  • Brand vs. independent visibility score
  • Sentiment analysis

Get the full breakdown.

See what signals matter for AI visibility.

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