“AI is flipping the sales and marketing playbook on its head, and hospitality needs to pay attention. Traditional SEO is declining, and with the rise of zero-click search, your content might be seen but never visited. Add in AI-driven search engines like ChatGPT and Google’s SGE, and now your guests are getting booking advice without ever touching your website.
The ripple effect?
Legacy channels like paid media, tradeshows, and even email campaigns aren’t delivering the ROI they once promised. AI curates personalised, on-demand recommendations that bypass the funnel altogether. In this new landscape, the brands that win will be the ones that rethink, not just refresh, their entire strategy.
Here’s a quick example:
A traveller asks ChatGPT for “a boutique hotel in Santa Fe with an artsy vibe and great margaritas.” If your hotel isn’t feeding the right signals to AI models, you’re invisible. No ad, billboard, or tradeshow booth will change that.
Hospitality marketers must pivot to a world where brand visibility happens before a click, in the context of AI conversations, predictive content, and dynamic personalisation. The old rules are fading. It’s time to stop optimising for search engines – and start optimising for everywhere.
As for budget allocation, I’m not certain, but…
Shift from “more impressions” to “smarter impressions” – and from chasing clicks to earning trust in the AI-powered decision journey.”
