Thanks to GenAI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini, building a travel itinerary is easier than ever. Rather than spending hours on research, a potential traveler can type in a few prompts, say, planning an Italian vacation focused on the best restaurants in a specific region, and seconds later, receive a complete itinerary. Is it perfect? No, but it provides a unique informed place to start. GenAI certainly saves time, which is why 80% of consumers using airline, hotel, and travel platforms are leveraging AI tools.
In their quest for efficiency, travelers are bypassing some of the traditional touchpoints in the marketing funnel. As travelers embrace GenAI, hoteliers must create connections that ensure their property stays on guests’ radars—especially as the holidays fast-approach. Here’s how.
The ever-changing funnel
The LLMs fueling AI search results use a combination of guest review information, OTA data, travel blogs, editorial reviews, and more, pushing paid ads further down the page—and raising questions about the future of search. Meanwhile, display ads within AI tools are still in their infancy: Perplexity launched its ad business just six months ago, Google is currently experimenting with Gemini ads, and currently has none—at least for now.
Given AI’s emphasis on user-generated content—Google’s LLMs factor in SEM and metasearch rates and availability, as well as post-stay guest reviews—a hotel’s current customer relationships will influence how and where the property displays in search results. A great review starts with a personalized, memorable stay, and in an AI-driven world, delivering that experience is more important than ever.
Leverage one-to-one marketing
Building great guest relationships starts with one-to-one marketing. While email is one of the oldest digital marketing channels, it’s also one of the best ways for hotels to directly engage with potential guests to build relationships, often bypassing AI-generated itineraries entirely. Yet many hoteliers miss out on key opportunities to engage by sending generic messages because they feel like they have to, neglecting to measure campaign impact, or treating email as a box-ticking exercise.
But in today’s world, 90% of consumers expect brands to understand and anticipate their needs, so an impersonal email won’t move the needle. The reality is email is incredibly impactful, but it must be done right: At Sojern, we recently launched our fully managed email marketing service as part of our Commission offering, and early benchmarks show a 30–57% uplift in revenue when layered on top of other high-performing commission channels.
Two critical components of successful email campaigns are first-party data and dynamic personalization. These enable marketers to truly understand guest wants and needs, so they can deliver relevant, timely offers that not only drive bookings and revenue, but also build relationships, resulting in the kind of glowing reviews that boost AI search visibility.
Use AI to elevate the experience
AI isn’t just for travelers. Hoteliers can use it to better interact with potential guests from the very moment they start dreaming of their next trip, all the way through to their time on-property and post-stay. An AI-powered marketing platform built for hospitality not only drives performance, but simplifies the process of deploying campaigns. For example, Sojern’s platform manages more than 30,000 campaigns daily and targets over 350 million monthly unique active travelers, using AI to continually adjust and improve campaigns—without human support. Using machine learning, the platform executes around 1 billion predictions daily, analyzing massive datasets to anticipate traveler behavior and their booking likelihood, boosting campaign efficiency, impact, and ROI.
Beyond deploying campaigns, hoteliers can use GenAI to enhance guest interaction or even generate responses to guest reviews. An AI-enabled concierge can automate guest inquiries, giving them the answers they need quickly while freeing up on-property staff to deliver exceptional, personalized experiences. With GenAI, hoteliers can monitor and respond to guest feedback in real time, responding to reviews or even escalating issues before they turn into negative ones.
While GenAI is certainly reshaping the marketing funnel, hoteliers who focus on building authentic connections will continue to stand out. By combining the precision of one-to-one marketing with the scale and speed of AI, hoteliers can create the kind of experiences that win bookings now and build loyalty long after the holiday season ends.
About Sojern
Sojern is the leading marketing platform built for hospitality, designed to boost growth and profitability for the travel industry. The Sojern marketing platform is a set of easy-to-use software and services that delivers unrivaled traveler insight, intelligent audiences, multichannel activation and optimization, and a connected guest experience—all in one place. More than 10,000 travel marketers rely on our platform annually to find, attract, convert and engage travelers. Founded in 2007, Sojern is headquartered in San Francisco, California with teams in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific.
