AI is increasingly impacting the travel industry’s search landscape. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity.ai and Claude.ai are all seeing significant growth in search traffic and searches specific to travel/holidays like recommending destinations, accommodation, providing options of things to do and suggesting itineraries.
Content remains key to optimising visibility and discoverability, even more so now with AI Overviews where having a breadth of accessible, deep, diverse content yields greater coverage. We saw travel related AI Overviews (AIO) grow 700% between September and October 2024.
AIO’s currently appear more commonly for destination guide content such as when to visit, what to do, things to see, weather and culinary experiences. Audleytravel.com are clearly investing in their strategy for tapping into this achieving 26% of total ranking AIO keywords amongst 10 benchmarked competitors.
‘Best’ is a key AIO keyword search term, so use it where you can! Having destination pages focused on key search terms like ‘best time to visit’ is a no brainer. This theme features in 65% of ranked AIO keyword searches for companies like AudleyTravel.com and 29% for Intrepid.
Another AIO ranking winner comes in the form of detailed FAQ pages which aim to answer practical questions or focus on elements such as key destinations, trip planning or cultural insights. Zicasso is a good example of this, currently yielding 14% of their AIO rankings from detailed FAQ pages.
Several travel companies have released AI enabled holiday planner tools including Booking.com, TUI and Marriott Bonvoy:
• Booking.com’s AI Trip Planner (2023) is powered by ChatGPT, to provide a conversational trip planning experience. Users can describe their needs, ask questions and refine their search while exploring destinations before creating itineraries and booking accommodations all through the tool.
• TUI integrated ChatGPT into its UK mobile app in 2023 to provide a more convenient experience. It answers users’ questions about holiday destinations and provides personalised recommendations on excursions, activities, and attractions.
• The holiday rental platform Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy, launched a Gen AI search tool in March 2024. Users can describe their ideal holiday for the platform to search its catalogue of 140,000 accommodations, to serve back a list tailored to the users requirements.
• The complexities of planning a trip have been mitigated with new AI powered apps such as Wanderlog. Powered by ChatGPT, users can seamlessly create detailed itineraries and manage booking all in one central place.
If you’d like to read more about current trends in the travel industry please read our Destination Disruption Report.
If you’re wondering how to harness the power of AI in search, or how to provide the functionality users are coming to expect in being able to self-serve on your website, then let’s talk.Â
If you’d like to find out more about how we’ve helped Jacada Travel to turn browsers into buyers fill their pipeline with high-quality leads and maximise the return on their ad spend, click here.