Is your hotel visible in ChatGPT search? A quick guide to help you compete with OTAs for AI planned trips

Hotels have found themselves locked in a cycle of dependency on OTAs. Relying on them for exposure and getting heads in beds, yet constantly fighting to reclaim their direct booking margins.

You’ve battled for visibility on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), often forced to bid on your own brand name just to compete with OTA giants who effectively sell your own product for a commission.

The desire to break this reliance and own the guest relationship has been the industry's holy grail, yet the tools to achieve it have rarely been powerful enough to level the playing field.

But this may be changing as we move from the era of web search to the era of zero-click answers generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Travelers are increasingly bypassing the traditional list of search results entirely. Instead of opening ten different tabs to compare the best hotels and manually filtering through prices and amenities, they are opening ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude and asking detailed questions like: "I’m planning a weekend trip to London for my anniversary. I need a boutique hotel in Shoreditch under £300 a night that has a great rooftop bar. What do you recommend?"

This could represent a chance to press the reset button for hotel distribution. In this new environment, the OTAs don’t have the same stranglehold, yet.

ChatGPT has already partnered with Booking.com and Expedia. Now is the moment to position your property at the forefront of AI discovery, before you lose ground.

However, showing up in these AI responses requires a slightly different approach than traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started, so you can compete in an AI-driven marketplace and ensure your property is the answer potential guests are looking for.

Phase 1: Rethinking your hotel website strategy

The first phase is about re-evaluating what you say about your hotel and where you say it. AI models do not just read keywords; they ingest data, look for consensus, and try to solve the query with the most reputable answers.

Step 1: Abandon volume for intent and specificity

Old-school SEO taught us to chase high-volume keywords like "Hotel in Chicago." In the AI search era, this is a trap.

AI models don’t like generic information. If your hotel website is filled with standard descriptions like luxury amenities, friendly service, or central location, you risk blending into the background noise.

The AI will summarize this generic content into a single, forgettable sentence.

To compete, you must target specific, high-intent, longer-form questions that highlight specific characteristics of your hotel.

Content volume on the internet is increasing, but differentiation is decreasing. You must pivot to "long-tail" and highly personalized queries.

Unlike traditional search engines that offer pages of links, Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT synthesize vast amounts of information to provide only the absolute best answers for a specialized prompt – often surfacing just a handful of results.

There is no page two and three like Google; competition is fierce, so your content must be authoritative enough to make the cut.

The shift: Stop optimizing for the traditional SEO term "Chicago hotel" and start optimizing for phrases like "what is the best hotel in Chicago for a business retreat near the loop district?"

Why it works: Users are learning to prompt with high specificity. If your website answers a specific prompt precisely, you become the referenced answer rather than just another search result.

Another quick tip is to ensure you have a thorough and up to date FAQs section on your site. LLM’s love the structure of this information and synthesise it easily into their responses when crawling the internet.

Step 2: Mine your guests for real questions

You cannot guess what travelers want; you have to know. Traditional keyword tools often lag behind the conversational way people speak to AI. To find the prompt patterns that real humans use, you should start by looking at your own qualitative data.

The action: Stop relying solely on Google Keyword Planner. Review your call notes, website chat, concierge logs, and front-desk questions. What are guests actually asking when they are looking to book?

The insight: Are they asking "do you have a pool?" or are they asking "is the pool heated in October?" Creating web content that answers these more specific, sometimes messy, natural-language questions is how you align with the way LLMs operate.

Step 3: Prioritize higher-intent queries

AI users are often further down the purchase funnel than traditional searchers. They aren't just browsing; they know what they want and are now looking for the best options.

In your website content planning, you should prioritize topics that address the specific trip intent of the user.

The strategy: Focus on queries that are close to the booking decision stage. Travelers asking "best hotels for business conferences of 300 people and more, in central Mexico City" are looking for a very clear solution to their problem.

The execution: Ensure your website content explicitly details your capabilities in relation to guest problems. Instead of a generic "weddings" page, write detailed guides on "Intimate winter weddings in Montreal for under 50 guests."

This level of specificity helps the AI categorize you as the solution to a defined user prompt.

Step 4: Become the primary source of information

AI models prioritize unique value and originality. If your website content simply repeats information that is already available on Expedia or TripAdvisor, the AI has no reason to cite your brand.com website.

You need to provide novel information – new facts or perspectives that exist nowhere else.

The tactic: Publish user stories or expert-led guides that exist only on your site. Do you have a sommelier? Have them write a guide to the local wine region. Does your property have a history? Dig into the archives to explain it. Are you a leading hotel in your area for conferences? Detail past events and how you provided value to those clients.

The result: When you become the primary source of unique information, you increase the likelihood of being cited by the AI as the authority on that topic

Step 5: Build a hub and spoke website architecture

AI agents need context to understand your authority. A single page often isn't enough to convince an LLM that you are a truly authoritative source. You should try to build topical authority through a hub and spoke model.

The structure: Create a central "Hub" page (e.g., "Wellness at our hotel") and link it to detailed spoke pages (e.g., "The local organic sourcing guide" and "in-room meditation amenities").

The benefit: This interlinked structure helps AI understand the depth of your offering and the relationship between different concepts, making it more likely to retrieve your content for relevant queries.

Phase 2: Building your brand with an off-page strategy

The most critical shift you must understand is that AI models determine truth not just by reading your website, but by looking for consensus across the internet.

If you say you are the "best romantic hotel in Morocco," but no third-party sources agree, unfortunately ChatGPT won't believe you. You need to create brand gravity, a gravitational pull of mentions across the web.

Step 6: Audit your off-page footprint

You need to know where you are mentioned today. AI models ingest data from trusted third-party sources to form their answers. You need to find the specific URLs that AI models are citing for your destination.

The audit: Go to ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini and run prompts like "Best hotels in Strasbourg" or "Where should I stay in Mumbai for a luxury experience with fine dining?"

The gap analysis: Look at the citations. Who is being cited? Are they travel blogs? Major news outlets? Niche forums? If your competitors are mentioned in these sources and you are not, you have a brand mention gap. You can build a prioritized list of media outlets and websites that actually influence the algorithm.

Your goal is to close the gap.

The action: Mobilize your PR resources to target these specific publications, whether in-house team or an agency. Shift your strategy from generic press blasts to targeted pitches aimed at the news outlets and blogs you identified.

Reach out to influential travel bloggers and offer experiential stays or exclusive access in exchange for a review or feature. Your goal is to systematically insert your brand into the exact sources the AI already trusts.

Step 7: Target key listicles

AI models love lists. "Best of” lists form the backbone of many AI recommendations because they structure data in a way that is easy for LLMs to digest.

The strategy: Identify the "Top X" lists for your region that are cited by AI.

The action: Reach out to these publishers. But remember, begging for mentions doesn't work. You need to offer a press trip if it’s a news outlet, or perhaps an update to their content, fresh photos, and a unique angle they missed. If you are missing from a list that is constantly cited by ChatGPT, getting added to it is a top priority.

Step 8: Engage authentically in online communities

A surprising shift with the development of AI search is the rising importance of user-generated content platforms like Reddit. AI models frequently treat Reddit threads as high-authority sources for authentic answers.

The reality: Sub-Reddit communities are guarded and hostile to overt marketing.

The approach: Monitor threads about your destination but do not spam. Treat it as a listening tool first. If you engage, do so authentically. If someone asks for a hotel recommendation, provide helpful context about the neighborhood or specific amenities without being salesy.

Being invisible on Reddit is a risk; being hated on Reddit is a disaster for your hotel.

Step 9: Leverage video for visibility

Video content, particularly from YouTube, is a growing citation source for AI models. Google and other engines often transcribe video content to find answers.

The opportunity: You don't always have to build your own channel. Partner with travel vloggers and influencers who already have an audience, or leverage user generated content from social media

The mechanic: When an AI agent scans for "best hotels in Miami," it might pull information from a popular "Miami Travel Guide" video on YouTube. If your hotel is featured there, you gain visibility in the AI answer.

Step 10: Manage your reviews

Reviews are the social proof engine for LLMs. High volumes of specific, positive sentiment in reviews, regarding the hotel guest experience teach AI what your hotel is "good for".

The connection: AI reads guest reviews to understand sentiment and cross-check the accuracy of the information you provide.

The action: Encourage guests to use specific keywords in reviews. "Great stay" is weak data. "Best hotel for remote work with fast Wi-Fi" is strong data that helps the AI map your hotel to specific user queries. Ensure your TripAdvisor and Google profiles (among others) are complete and active.

Phase 3: Establishing the technical bridge

All the content and brand equity in the world won’t matter if the AI cannot see your rates and availability. This is the final, technical hurdle that separates a brochure from a booking engine.

Step 11: Ensure data accessibility for AI agents 

Current AI agents struggle to access real-time, structured data (rates, inventory, live availability). Without this, they can recommend you, but they cannot facilitate booking.

The problem: An AI might know your hotel is "romantic," but if it can't see that you have a "River view suite" available next Friday for $350, it cannot push the user toward a transaction.

The solution: You need a data layer that translates your internal data into a format AI agents can read and act upon. This brings us to the technological solution required to close the loop.

How Lighthouse Connect AI fits into this plan

Preparing for AI-powered distribution requires more than just good content; it requires a technological layer that can translate your hotel’s complex, real-time information into formats that AI systems can process and act upon.

Lighthouse Connect AI serves as the bridge between your direct channel and the exploding ecosystem of AI travel planners.

It seamlessly connects your hotel data to major AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini, ensuring that you aren't just visible in a text summary, but are actually directly bookable as a commercial entity.

Here is why this technology is the missing piece of your AI puzzle:

Structured for AI understanding: Through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), Connect AI structures your live rates, real-time availability, and rich contextual content (like amenities and location details).

This allows AI agents to easily retrieve and compare your data against competitors instantly, rather than guessing or using outdated cached data.

Direct bookability: It transforms AI from a passive research tool into an active conversion channel. Connect AI allows agents to present up-to-the-minute offers and facilitates direct bookings from within the AI experience.

Crucially, this keeps the transaction commission-free, driving revenue directly to you rather than an intermediary.

Scale and accuracy: Lighthouse monitors over 300,000 properties and 1.7 billion daily price changes. Connect AI ensures your property is represented with the highest possible data fidelity.

In an environment where AI hallucinations or errors are a risk, having a verified, accurate data stream is a massive competitive advantage.

Get your hotel AI ready today and beat the competition

To ensure you show up in ChatGPT and rival OTAs, you don’t need to invent a new language or overhaul your entire marketing identity. You just need clean, structured, and connected data, along with a trusted brand. 

When an LLM scans the digital horizon for a property that fits a traveler's specific needs, it needs to be able to find, understand, and price your hotel instantly.

Hoteliers who treat data connectivity and brand equity with the same rigor as their revenue strategy will be the ones to become visible – and bookable – as this new layer of distribution solidifies. 

Don't cede this new marketplace to OTAs.

Use the strategies from this guide and get set up with Connect AI today to ensure your brand.com offer is the clear choice for both LLMs and their users.