The competition for high-ranking links is evolving as brands ride shifting tides of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven traffic and discoverability.
According to Phocuswright Research, 56% of U.S. travelers are using AI for travel, with generative AI (gen AI) serving as a crucial discovery entry point. As the pivot to AI continues, travel companies are navigating what feels like a pile of search acronyms including search engine optimization (SEO), generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO).
Across panels at Phocuswright’s Travel Marketing AI Summit Tuesday, travel executives touched on approaches to optimizing for visibility in the age of AI.
Tactics vary—and that comes from the immaturity of the space, according to Mike Coletta, senior manager of research and innovation for Phocuswright.
“Just as it took years for people to figure out the discipline of SEO, the same will be true here,” he said after moderating a panel titled “S/G/A-EO: Travel visibility when AI decides.”
Despite the varying methods, there are overlapping threads across visibility strategies.
There are similarities between formats such as GEO, AEO and SEO, according to Rahul Todkar, vice president and head of data and AI for Tripadvisor. And the barebones of what it takes to earn visibility remain the same.
“Your trusted content, authenticity and trust really [are] at the forefront no matter what,” Todkar said. “That doesn't change.”
The core of the issue is understanding why people value your travel brand and then delivering on that expectation, according to C.A. Clark, vice president of AI for Miles Partnership.
“You have to understand what the expectation is,” Clark said. “First you have to deliver on it, and then you have to tell that story broadly and consistently.”
Visibility in an AI world
For today’s discovery environment—and tomorrow’s—factors such as data, unique information, discoverability and consistency matter.
Mario Gavira, CMO of Travelier, cautioned that technical SEO will always be there—and is a no-brainer to properly set up.
And that’s not the only longstanding guidance that still matters for visibility: Google’s E-E-A-T framework also applies to discoverability in GEO.
“Expertise, experience, authority and trust,” Gavira said. “Now, the expertise, I would argue, is overrated. Why? Because that has been common, advised by the LLMs in most of the cases. What still counts is experience. Experience is your first-party data.”
Data is at the crux of AI visibility, according to Todkar.
Your trusted content, authenticity and trust really [are] at the forefront no matter what.
Rahul Todkar, Tripadvisor
“Your structured content and data takes even more front-and-center stage, in my opinion, in this AI-first paradigm,” he said.
Travel companies should not waste their time creating content that LLMs can create themselves. Gavira said it’s “useless.”
“However, your first-party data that you have collected, which is close to your core business, your customer … your supply,” he said. “That is what has value.”
“Very concrete, unique data is what will make your brand unique and will make your brand,” Gavira said. “You have to find what is your first-party gold mine data that you can basically leverage and that will make you—in the eyes of the LLMs—unreplaceable.”
While data serves as the foundation, how the information is surfaced is a priority, too.
Janette Roush, senior vice president of innovation and chief AI officer for Brand USA, said discoverability matters most right now—which comes from how information is structured on a travel company’s website, informing how it is being surfaced as a trusted source.
And the goal is no longer just to drive visibility or traffic to links but to be part of what Todkar called an “answer set.”
"It's not about blue links anymore. It's how do you get links to answers," he said.
Keyword optimization is now accompanied by the need for context, personalization and interactivity of content and keywords.
“That interactivity becomes absolutely critical,” Todkar said.
Amid a rapidly changing landscape, Roush looked ahead: Portability of information matters for the future of AI visibility.
“So, how do you have it structured in a way that if people don't want to see that information on your website, they want to see it in their personal AI tool of preference?” Roush said. “How can they bring that information into the tool?”
Setting up properly for the various engines is important, she said, but so is looking ahead and not leaving things to chance for the future.
Travel brands should aim to become trusted sources of information across AI tools—and to take the risk out of generative queries.
Roush gave a tangible example:
“If I'm booking a Marriott Hotel … I don't want to just ask ChatGPT, ‘Which Marriott Hotel should I book?’ I want that data feed, whether it's an API or an MCP connection. I want my Claude Code set up to talk to Marriott directly. I don't want to leave—I don't want to go to the Bonvoy app. I want that to come to me with real information, trusted information, so I can make my booking right there without leaving the platform.”
The important thing is to be sensible about how data and content is structured and to plan for the future, she said.
Challenges in AI visibility
As simple as it is, the nature of surfacing the same information consistently to gain SEO, GEO and AEO traction isn’t necessarily an appealing answer to the AI visibility question.
“When we talk about AEO or GEO … that thing everybody wants, it’s like, just tell me what to do, right? Tell me what to put on the page that will make this work,” Clark said.
“And unfortunately or fortunately—depending on how you look at it—you have to go up a level and say, this is really about how people perceive what your travel brand is,” Clark said.
The more consistent a brand’s information and messaging is, the more likely they are to surface in AI results.
That’s a really difficult thing to do, he said.
“It's always [been] the job of any travel brand to do that,” Clark said. “It's just now becoming a lot more important to roll it up to that higher level, instead of trying to figure out how to game the system.”
And earning a place in the answer set through AEO or GEO—as opposed to ranking in search with traditional SEO—comes with complexities.
Deterministic answers aren’t the only necessary outcome, according to Todkar.
That poses a potential challenge.
“[A] lot of the responses are going to be probabilistic,” Todkar said. “How do you deal with that ambiguity?”