According to Accenture’s 2025 Consumer Pulse report, generative AI has gone mainstream, 72% of consumers use it regularly, and nearly 1 in 5 now rank it among their top sources for purchase recommendations, right behind physical stores. What started as a helpful tool is now acting more like a trusted guide, influencing decisions across shopping, goal-setting, and yes, travel planning.
For hotels and tourism brands, that’s a visibility problem. If AI platforms or agents can’t find you, or worse, misrepresent you, you’re out of the discovery loop entirely. Accenture recommends optimizing for “AI discoverability”: fresh content, consistent updates, and credible third-party signals like reviews and mentions.
This stat stood out to me, 94% of GenAI users say they’d use it for personal decision-making, from goal setting to travel advice (and I am definitley part of that 94%).
In other words, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is no longer enough. It’s time to think in terms of GEO, Generative Engine Optimization (BTW- There is no “agreed upon” acronym for this yet there is also AEO, AIO, LLMO and more!).
