Not that long ago, driving organic traffic was mostly about one thing: making sure your website was optimized for search (which mostly meant Google). We called it Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Get the keywords right, clean up the site, earn some links, and hope you showed up on page one.
AI has quietly rewritten those rules.
Today, travelers aren’t just searching, they’re asking. Tools like Google’s AI results, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Bing are answering questions directly. That shift has spawned a new batch of acronyms. You’ll hear GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), meaning whether your hotel shows up in an AI-generated response at all. You’ll hear AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), which is about how that response describes your hotel and whether it nudges someone toward booking.
These terms are very new and are still being defined and redefined as things evolve. The bottom line is simple: you want your hotel to show up in AI search, and you want it to show up in a positive, accurate way.
It’s no longer just about ranking well. It’s about whether the AI understands your property correctly or includes you at all. These systems pull from everything already out there: your website, OTAs, reviews, press coverage, online chatter, and so on. If your story is inconsistent, the AI fills in the blanks for you.
This is an emerging field, and anyone claiming to have a magic bullet is probably overselling it. What we do know right now is that these things help:
- Search for your hotel in AI tools and see how you’re described.
- Align descriptions, amenities, and positioning across your website and OTAs.
- Pay attention to reviews, press, and third-party content that shape perception.
- Create one clear version of your brand story and use it everywhere.
- Track AI-driven traffic separately. These guests tend to arrive closer to a decision.
And here’s the kicker: once you do show up and the searcher falls in love with your property, how will they actually book? Unless we’re very deliberate about what comes next, you can probably guess where that booking goes. And yes, that path has its own familiar three-letter acronym.
