AI hotel answers mostly point to booking portals, study finds

CiteLens analyzed 481 AI hotel answers in Turkey and found that 98% cited booking portals instead of hotel websites, with Booking.com appearing in 74% of responses. The findings suggest hotels may be losing visibility in AI search even when they perform well in traditional SEO.

Why it matters: - Hotels that rely on their own websites to win direct traffic may be invisible in AI-generated answers. - The study suggests AI assistants are steering travelers toward booking portals, which can shape discovery, comparisons and bookings. - CiteLens says the gap is not something traditional SEO alone can fix.

What happened: - CiteLens analyzed 510 commercial hotel queries across 30 Turkish destinations and 17 hotel types. - The queries ran through Google's AI Mode. - The analysis produced 481 AI answers. - In 98% of those answers, AI cited a booking portal such as Booking.com, Agoda or Expedia. - Booking.com appeared in 74% of the answers.

The details: - Individual hotel websites rarely surfaced directly in the AI answers. - Hotel presence, ratings and photos on third-party portals were the signals feeding the recommendation. - CiteLens said its open Research Lab produced the study. - The company said its full findings, methodology and downloadable data are openly available. - CiteLens operates from Edirne, Turkey, with regional offices in Istanbul and Dubai. - CiteLens also tracks how often ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity cite a company versus its competitors. - The company says its platform identifies source pages where rivals appear and a brand is missing, then recommends steps to close the gap.

Between the lines: - The findings point to a broader shift in how AI systems decide what to cite. - CiteLens said 60% of the domains an AI Overview cites for a query are not in Google's organic top 10. - The company also said 74% of AI answers cite YouTube, underscoring the weight AI puts on user-generated content and third-party sources. - Those patterns have helped drive interest in Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, a discipline focused on improving brand visibility inside AI answers. - Alper Tekin, CiteLens founder, said: "For hotels, AI visibility no longer runs through your own website — it runs through the platforms the AI trusts." - Tekin also said: "You can have perfect SEO and still be invisible in AI answers." - Tekin said: "The AI answer layer is becoming the front door to every brand."

What's next: - CiteLens says companies will need to measure their presence in AI answers, not just in search rankings. - The company is positioning GEO as a way for brands to identify where they are missing from AI citations and improve that visibility. - Brands that adapt early may gain an advantage as AI-generated answers become a bigger part of search and discovery.

The bottom line: - For hotels, AI recommendation visibility is shifting away from owned websites and toward the platforms AI systems already trust.