Getting Less Website Traffic? Are You Prepared for the Seismic Search Shift in Travel?

The travel and hospitality sector is facing a dramatic rewrite of the traditional SEO playbook. As generative AI and LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Grok capture user attention, traditional search traffic is evaporating, and the implications for hotels, airlines, and food and beverage brands are seismic. 

We predicted a number of these changes in our Travel Trends piece earlier this year. In this article James Gray, VP Digital Marketing, unpacks some of the startling statistics as a result of the more recent changes in search behaviour and technology; and explores what this shift means for brands from hotels to airlines and restaurants to cafes.  

The Decline in Organic Traffic Is Real 

We have seen alarming stats flying around recently, like reports from SEMrush: 18–64% traffic drops on sites where AI Overviews now dominate key search results.  

In the US and Europe, zero-click searches, where users get answers from search engines or AI tools without ever clicking through, are now reportedly upwards of 58–60%!  

What does this mean? Every hotel, airline, or restaurant relying on informational queries like “best hotels in Rome” or “top European airlines 2025” risks losing up to two-thirds of its organic clicks.

What the Data from Trustworthy Sources Tells Us 

• Google Search Console is underreporting ~50% of queries, especially conversational and long-tail ones, precisely where AI search excels.
   

• A GSC bug even wiped “Discover” traffic metrics to zero as of June 5, 2025 – a red flag that analytics may be masking deeper shifts. 

These systemic blind spots mean many brands are flying blind, just as the search ground shifts beneath them. 

Greying Content: Ranking Decay & the “Old Page” Phenomenon 

There’s also some interesting stats when we look at ranking longevity: the average #1 page is now 5 years old, up from just 2 years old in 2017. Brand-new content rarely breaks in, only 1.74% of new pages hit the top 10 within a year – a startling statistic for brands churning out content at scale in the hope of fast movement up the SERPs.   

For travel brands constantly pumping out fresh deals and itineraries, this trend is pretty problematic. The answer to meeting these shifting needs in content and search user behaviour isn’t necessarily just “create loads of new human-centric content” which seems to be the rhetoric in the general SEO community.  

What It Means for Travel & Hospitality Brands 

1. Hotels & Online Travel Agencies (OTAs):
   As more users get quick-fire snapshot answers via AI Overviews or SGE (Search Generative Experience), the need to click through diminishes. OTAs like Expedia or Tripadvisor may fare better as they already dominate AI-generated snippets. But for the individual brands and smaller hotels? They risk fading from visibility entirely.
2. Food & Beverage Establishments:
   Asking “best vegan brunch in North London” might surface a local list inside AI results, complete with top picks. Users see it, and they don’t click. Businesses appear, but struggle to capture that click, or the conversion after. Even worse when you consider most online experiences for booking tables at restaurants are sub-optimal, jumping out to third party platforms like Open-Table where conversion, the impact on CRO and visibility of performance diminishes further.
3. Airlines & Booking Sites:
   Ask “cheapest flights to Barcelona this summer” and AI may answer directly or steer users through ChatGPT to book. But traditional airline sites lose that eyeball, and potentially the cross-sell on ancillaries unless they adapt. Unless an AI agent or chat platform is prompted to include things like car hire, hotels, transfers etc, it probably won’t even mention it. 

The Silver Lining in Conversion Shifts 

There’s a twist: whilst top-of-funnel informational traffic shrinks, deeper funnel queries still drive real, high-intent (often transactional) visits. We saw this in our webinar with Lalit Gupta from Google, where he highlighted the shift in travel search behaviours, one of significantly longer queries. This could lead to higher on-site conversion rates. Although, these should be taken with a pinch of salt, and not skew marketers’ perspectives on conversion success.  

• Homepages are getting sharper: Recent research shows homepage traffic rose 10.7% across 50 sites, driven by AI Overviews and LLM referrals, suggesting brands that get AI-aware can still convert when users do click. 

• The “AI traffic” that does surface tends to produce longer sessions (+8%), more pages per visit (+12%), and lower bounce rates (–23%), hinting at a more relevant user engagement.  

In essence: fewer visits overall, but a higher concentration of intent. For travel brands, this could mean smaller, more loyal audiences, but ones with much stronger conversion potential. 

Strategic Shifts: What Travel Brands Must Do 

What Travel Brands Should Do Now 

1. Run an AI citation audit for visibility inside AI Overviews/SGE.
2. Boost homepage relevance, clearly explain your offer in AI-consumable formats, structured data, FAQs, schema markup.
3. Update and repurpose seasonal content (e.g., “Top 10 Summer Mountain Escapes 2026”) quarterly.
4. Design for AI referral pathways: integrate FAQ, structured data, video, and strong product info upfront.
5. Track LLM referrals alongside organic search in analytics for a full picture.
6. Invest in brand strength & EEAT through trusted reviews, media presence (Digital PR), and partnerships.  

The Remarkable team of digital marketing specialists are on hand with a range of solutions to help you audit your visibility and optimisation for future of search.  

Are you ready for this seismic shift?  

Travel brands that cling to legacy SEO tactics may find themselves caught in a dwindling click funnel. The most successful companies will be those who adapt: optimising content for AI, focusing on high-conversion site portals, and injecting brand value where it still counts. 

The travel industry is already feeling the seismic shift. The question is: are you ready to make the most of it?

Remarkable are one of the world’s leading digital experience agencies. As a double Platinum Sitecore and Optimizely partner, we offer technology solutions to help brands build experiences that convert.