Hotel Tech-in is our regular feature that takes a closer look at emerging technology in the hospitality industry.
Hotels have always been concerned with driving direct bookings, but in the age of artificial intelligence, operators must be even more strategic about capturing guests.
As travelers increasingly turn to generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini for trip planning, it has become imperative that hoteliers know how they appear in these searches, so they don’t lose out on booking opportunities.
That’s why Vancouver-based software company Operto launched the GEO Consultant last month. The new generative engine optimization tool, which claims to be the hotel industry’s first free AI visibility tool, was designed to give hotels direct visibility into how they appear across generative AI platforms, according to the company.
Following its debut, Operto CEO Tim Major shared how hoteliers can use the GEO Consultant to strengthen their presence in AI-driven travel discovery and why AI visibility is becoming necessary for hotels’ success.
From SEO to GEO
When it comes to search visibility, GEO is the new three-letter acronym that hoteliers need to have in mind, Major explained. GEO ranks citations and mentions in AI-powered answers, whereas the more widely known SEO (search engine optimization) ranks websites in traditional search results.
GEO proficiency is exceedingly critical for hotels as more travelers use conversational AI to research and compare accommodations, Major shared. According to Operto data, 40% of travelers now use AI tools for trip planning and booking, while 70% of hotel bookings involve AI-driven recommendations.
Amid this shift, “hotels are already showing up in AI-generated travel recommendations,” though “most have no idea what’s being said about them or what’s driving those results,” Major said in a statement.
If hotels don’t obtain insights and structure their data for large language models, they will quickly fall behind competitors that are doing so, Major noted. If and when search traffic materially moves to LLMs, hotels that have not done so will miss out on direct booking opportunities, he said.
A new type of tool
Operto’s GEO Consultant gives hotels a way to “understand what’s driving their visibility, and take action with clear recommendations to improve how they’re represented,” Major said.
With GEO Consultant, hotels can run a visibility scan of their website that evaluates how they appear in AI-driven travel searches based on specific prompts that they want their property to be discovered for. For example, if a Miami hotel wants to be represented in a generative AI search for “a hotel with ocean access in Miami,” the visibility scan can judge how the hotel appears in that search query and identify gaps in direct bookings opportunities.
Before this tool, hotels relied on general marketing tools or specialist consulting services to help them gain AI visibility, Operto detailed in a release obtained by Hotel Dive. And while general GEO tools exist, “they are largely industry-agnostic and not designed specifically for hotel properties, limiting their ability to reflect how hotels are actually discovered across AI platforms,” per Operto.
The GEO Consultant, however, provides hotels with insights into how they compare against their direct hotel competitors. The tool also highlights whether visibility is driven by the hotel’s own website or third-party intermediaries such as online travel agencies.
Beyond evaluating a hotel’s presence in generative AI search, the system provides hotels with practical recommendations to improve their performance, according to Operto.
Operto’s Marketing Agent, another tool in the company’s Distribution AI suite, takes these visibility insights one step further, identifying when OTAs are “intercepting high-intent searches” and where direct bookings are being lost for independent hotels, according to the company’s website. Using this information, the agent can recommend and initiate targeted paid campaigns aimed at improving direct booking performance, with autonomy that Major likened to “magic.”
