The travel and hospitality industry is undergoing a seismic shift. In our recent webinar, hosted in partnership with Katy Howell, CEO of Immediate Future, we explored how AI and social search are transforming how customers discover, plan, and book travel experiences.
If you missed the live session, you can catch up anytime.
1. Discovery Starts on Social
Today, 57% of leisure travellers begin their journey on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube before even opening a search engine. This isn’t just Gen Z: family planners, business travellers, and loyalty members are all influenced by peer-generated content. Social proof now outweighs glossy brochures, making it essential for travel brands to show up in feeds with authentic, engaging content.
2. AI is Changing Search Behaviour
AI Overviews now appear in 30% of Google travel queries, and 37% of travellers have used ChatGPT to plan trips, with 83% saying they’d do it again. Customers are asking conversational, multi-part questions like “3-day foodie trip in Bologna,” and expect instant, tailored answers. Travel brands must adapt their content to meet these new expectations.
3. The Funnel is Messy – and Mostly Invisible
Travellers bounce between Google, TikTok, and ChatGPT. Decisions are often made before they reach your website. Social and AI now act as the new “guidebooks”, so if your brand isn’t present in these spaces, you risk being invisible.
4. Agential AI is Booking Trips
Tools like ChatGPT and Copilot can now plan, compare, and even add entire holidays to a shopping cart. If your content isn’t accessible to AI agents, you won’t appear in their results – and you’ll miss out on bookings.
5. Quick Wins for Travel Brands
- Refresh high-performing posts with natural language queries.
- Activate your experts – concierges, pilots, sommeliers – to build trust.
- Write in 50-word blocks for AI-friendly summaries.
- Optimise technical SEO: schema, structured data, fast load times.
6. From SEO to GEO & AEO
Beyond traditional SEO, brands must embrace:
- Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO): Structuring content to answer conversational questions.
- Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO): Ensuring your content is cited in AI-generated results.
Think in topic clusters, not keywords: anticipate the next question.
7. The Opportunity
Only 1 in 4 travel brands optimise alt text, creating a wide-open opportunity. With players like Expedia investing in AI-first experiences (e.g. Roamy), the future is already here. Those who adapt now will gain visibility as AI and social converge.
Get in touch with our team at Remarkable to explore how we can help you optimise for social search, AI Overviews, and agential AI – ensuring your brand is discoverable, trusted, and bookable in this new era of travel.
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