“AEO” is the newest acronym being sold to hotel owners, and it’s often wrapped in more mystery than it deserves. This guide explains what it means in plain terms, how AI tools actually pick hotels to mention, and which parts you can control.
How do travellers shortlist hotels now?
Many still search on Google or scroll an OTA. But some now ask an AI tool first: “quiet hotel with a pool for a family weekend near Pune”, “boutique hotel in Udaipur under ₹10,000 with a lake view”. The AI tool replies with a short list of named hotels and a line or two about each.
What happens next is familiar. The traveller checks reviews, looks at photos, and books, sometimes on your website, often on an OTA. The difference is the first step. If your hotel isn’t on that short list, the traveller may never hear your name.
How do AI tools decide which hotels to mention?
AI tools that search the web put their answers together from sources they find and read. The main ones each describe this in their own documentation:
- ChatGPT search surfaces websites in its answers, using OpenAI’s search crawler, OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says sites that block that crawler won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers.[2]
- Gemini can ground its answers in Google Search, connecting the model to real-time web content and citing sources.[3]
- Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on pages that are indexed in Google Search, often running several related searches to build a response.[1]
- Perplexity uses its own crawler to surface and link websites in its results.[4]
- Claude can draw on the web too: Anthropic says its Claude-SearchBot crawler works to improve the relevance and accuracy of search results for Claude’s users.[7]
When these AI tools look up hotels, the sources available to them include your website, your Google Business Profile, review sites, OTA listings, travel articles and videos. A hotel is easier to recommend when those sources clearly answer the traveller’s question and agree with each other.
How is AEO different from SEO?
AEO builds on SEO rather than replacing it. Google says there are no additional requirements or special optimisations needed to appear in its AI features, and that SEO fundamentals continue to matter: allowing crawling, internal links, a good page experience, important content in text, and structured data that matches the visible page.[1]
What changes is where the emphasis falls:
| SEO | AEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank on a page of links | Be named in the answer |
| Typical search | Short keywords: “hotel in Rishikesh” | Full questions: “quiet hotel in Rishikesh near the river for a yoga retreat” |
| What it rewards | Relevant, well-built pages | Clear facts that directly answer the question |
| Consistency across sites | Helps | Matters more, because the answer combines several sources |
| Reviews | Help local results | Part of what the AI tool reads about you |
| How you measure | Rank tracking | Asking real questions and recording who’s named |
In practice, most AEO work is doing the SEO basics thoroughly, making your facts clear and consistent everywhere, and earning genuine reviews.
What can hotels control, and what can’t they?
You control what’s written about your hotel in the places you own or manage. You don’t control how any AI tool weighs those sources.
| You control | You don’t control |
|---|---|
| Your website’s facts, speed and structured data | Which sources an AI tool trusts most |
| Whether crawlers can read your site | How it words or orders its answer |
| Your Google Business Profile | Answers changing from one run to the next |
| Consistency across OTAs and directories | Personalisation from a traveller’s own history |
| How you ask for and reply to reviews | What other people write about you |
That’s why nobody can honestly guarantee a recommendation. What you can do is remove every reason for an AI tool to skip you. Our 15-point AI visibility checklist lists what to fix, in order.
What AEO myths should you ignore?
Because AEO is new, a lot of what’s sold under the name is guesswork. Three claims to treat with caution:
- “You need special AI files or markup.” Google says you don’t need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup to appear in its AI features.[1] Files such as llms.txt may help some tools read your site, but they’re not a shortcut to being recommended.
- “Put keywords in your hotel’s name.” Google’s guidelines say your Business Profile name should reflect your real-world name, as used on your signboard and website.[6] Stuffing it with “best”, “luxury” or “lake view” breaks those rules.
- “We can get you ranked first in ChatGPT.” There’s no fixed ranking to be first in, and nobody controls what an AI tool says. Be wary of anyone who promises a position.
How can you check your own visibility?
Write five to ten questions a real traveller would ask about hotels like yours, ask them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude in a fresh session, and note whether your hotel is named and who is named instead. Repeat every month. The step-by-step method, with a tracking table, is in how to check if your hotel shows up in AI search.
Where does HostOS fit?
HostOS’s AI Visibility Optimization service does this work for hotels and resorts: we make your hotel’s details clear and consistent across your website, Google, review sites and listings, then re-run an AI visibility audit every month to see where you appear and who appears instead. If you’d like to see where you stand first, book a free AI visibility audit. It’s based on Google’s Gemini with Google Search grounding, and asks each question several times because answers vary.
For data on how Indian travellers use these tools, read how AI is changing the way Indians plan trips, and for a destination example, how to get a Udaipur hotel recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini.