Customer Spotlight: Forrest Hotel & Apartments
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How Forrest Hotel & Apartments is compounding its AI-driven visibility, and proving mid-market hotels can win discovery without top-of-market scale
Key results
AI-referred traffic grew 29.8% over the four week period, beating nearby competitors and more than doubling the pace of similar hotels across the network.
AI referral share is already almost 8x the proximity benchmark and 5x the network average, and still growing faster than both.
AI-referred visitors arrive with intent: AI's share of booking-engine searchers grew 15.1% and now exceeds its share of overall site traffic.
Average position in AI answers is #1.9, second only to the category leader.
The moment
A growing share of travelers now open an AI assistant before a search engine when they decide where to stay, and the answer they get back is short. A results page lists ten hotels and lets the traveler browse. An assistant names three or four and moves on. That compresses the shelf, and it changes what being findable means: not ranking somewhere on a page, but being one of the few properties a model will name at all.
The instinct is that the biggest brands will take those slots by default, because that is how paid search and OTA placement have always worked. But AI models are not sold placement. They assemble answers from what they can read and corroborate about a property, which leaves the question of who gets named more open than the industry assumes.
"Before Connect AI we simply weren't showing up enough, even for searches like 'accommodation near Parliament House' or Manuka. Travelers had to search very specifically, by our exact rating or our accommodation style, before we appeared at all. Now we come up for searches like 'Canberra accommodation' and 'Canberra hotels'."
The move
In a field that size, how AI assistants describe a hotel matters. With Connect AI, the Forrest Hotels & Apartments team can see how often ChatGPT and Gemini recommend the property, where it sits in the answer when they do, and which attributes the models associated with it. Lighthouse Direct benchmarking then connects that visibility to what happens on Forrest Hotels & Apartments' own website, measured against two reference points: the hotels immediately around it and comparable properties across Lighthouse's network.
The results
When an AI assistant does recommend Forrest Hotel & Apartments, it tends to place the property high in the answer. Across May to July 2026, Forrest's average position in AI answers was #1.9, second only to the category leader. Mention rate climbed each month on both platforms over the same window. Between May and July, Forrest Hotel & Apartments' mention rate grew 2.3x on Gemini and 2.4x on ChatGPT.
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Source: Connect AI, AI Visibility Insights
Forrest Hotel & Apartments' AI share of visitors is 4.8%, about 8x the nearby-hotel benchmark (0.6%) and 5x the network average (0.9%). It also grew faster than both during this period, which means Forrest's lead over both benchmarks continues to widen.
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Source: Lighthouse Direct benchmarking
The more telling number sits one stage further down the funnel. AI's share of Forrest Hotel & Apartments' booking-engine searchers, at 5.8%, runs higher than its share of overall website traffic, at 4.8%, and that share grew 15.1% over the same four weeks, up from 5.1%. Visitors who arrive from an AI assistant are more likely to go looking for a room, not less. The visibility is translating into measurable intent rather than passing sessions.
"Our direct bookings have increased, which has been such a battle in a market the OTAs dominate, and the best part is the loyalty we gain from direct bookers. The relationship is stronger on both sides."
Why it matters
For a single property competing against larger brands, the useful output is not one headline figure. It is a clear read on where to focus next. When AI assistants recommend Forrest Hotel & Apartments, they place it near the top of the answer, and the visitors they send are more likely to search for a room than the average website visitor. That is a solid base to build on.
The biggest opportunity now is getting named more often, and the mention rate has risen every month on both ChatGPT and Gemini. With the position and intent already in place, content and GEO investment has a clear place to start.