Generative engine optimisation: hotels against the OTAs

From OTAs to AI: The New Battle for Hotel Visibility
For more than two decades, Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) have dominated the digital battlefield. Hotels watched as Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, and their peers bought up Google Ads inventory, outbid them on meta-search engines, and even purchased their own brand keywords. In markets as diverse as New York, London, and Dubai, it became common for a hotel to be outranked by an OTA

But in 2025, the ground is shifting. AI search engines don’t simply serve ads; they deliver answers. And the answers they surface don’t come from whoever spends the most, but from whoever owns the most structured, trustworthy, hotel-controlled content.

As Andrew Warden, CMO of Semrush, notes: “In this new SEO landscape, authority doesn’t just rank—you become the answer.” This transformation gives rise to a new discipline: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing hotel content for AI-driven discovery engines—from ChatGPT to Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), from Microsoft’s Copilot to travel-focused assistants. Unlike traditional SEO, where keyword density and backlinks reigned supreme, GEO is about clarity, structure, and trustworthiness. Generative engines pull verified data from structured sources. They prefer content that answers questions directly, clearly, and consistently..

The GEO Playbook for Hotels
Steps for implementation:
1. Build Structured FAQs.
2. Create Direct vs OTA Benefit Tables.
3. Implement Schema Markup.
4. Refresh Content Regularly.
5. Own the Storytelling.

Implications for Owners & Asset Managers
For owners and asset managers, GEO represents a chance to regain control of the digital distribution funnel. Instead of spending millions on OTA commissions, hotels can drive direct bookings, increase RevPAR, and strengthen loyalty ecosystems. In boardroom terms, GEO isn’t just a marketing tactic; it’s an asset protection strategy.

The Future: AI Travel Discovery 2030
By 2030, most travel searches may never touch a browser. Instead, they’ll begin and end in AI assistants—spoken aloud in a living room, queried through augmented reality, or embedded in smart vehicles. The hotels that will dominate are not those that bid highest on Google, but those that own the answers.

Conclusion
For too long, OTAs have dominated the narrative—outspending hotels on visibility, outranking them for their own names, and extracting commissions from every guest journey. But the rise of Generative Engine Optimization marks a turning point.

In New York, London, Paris, New Delhi, Dubai, Singapore, Tokyo, and Hong Kong—and across Bali, Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Udaipur, Fiji, Bahamas, and Mexico—forward-thinking hotels are already structuring their content to become the answer.

The message is clear: In the age of AI, visibility is no longer bought—it’s built.