Whilst GEO is touted as the new “front door” to reach travellers, most have moved to a different house

Not a day goes by where some new piece of research or thought leader piece, hits my feed about AI search discovery (GEO/AEO). Even today’s headline in this newsletter covers that same subject. And of course it is important. When it was just Google or nothing, the job of the marketer was simpler: get found on Google.

Now of course there is ChatGPT, Claude and the Google tools all hoovering up search queries and delivering answers (but not clicks). Visits to websites are universally down as a result. It is definitely worth paying attention to.

However as Skift reported back as early as March 2025: Social media platforms are the most influential source of travel inspiration, surpassing official travel websites, review platforms, and traditional media. The most quoted number is 75% of traveller journeys either start or are inspired on social media.

The common misconception is that people are just fed this via the algorithm. The truth is that it is the search bar on social that is the lynchpin and the doorway businesses need to be standing behind. An intentional search by the traveller shifts the algorithm to feed them more of what they’ve searched for and continues to do so until they stop interacting with it. Think about your own behaviour (or more likely the woman in your life’s behaviour if you are not that woman, as they are the one’s doing most the planning).

The common path is search then save or share. There are dedicated apps on which travellers save their social media posts, for them to return to when the time is right to make final decisions. This intentional collecting of a consideration set happens over weeks or more likely months for bigger trips. It is contributed to by the whole travel party.

And like SEO or GEO, there are specific, intentional strategies brands can follow to show up in social search (hint: your brand account on Instagram will almost never show up, the platform makes its living from you paying to get your brand account into that space). It is by having other accounts talking about your business that you show up there.

And yet many (most) travel brands leave this 75% space to 1/3 of their marketing coordinators role. There is no greater area of unfulfilled opportunity in travel than this.

A considered strategy would be to have people who are trusted on the platform where your audience is searching for your targeted keywords, to post about you once a week. 52 chances to have your brand show up in those search results or subsequent algorithmic feeds where trips are being formulated, saved and collected. This is where you become part of the trip.

One influencer posting once about your brand is not a strategy, its a crap shoot.

Someone posting 3 times a week on the brand account is not a winning strategy, it is doing next to nothing for your brand (travellers may check your brand account just prior to booking to check you are legit - that is the purpose of brand accounts for most).

Videreo is the place to find the creators to get you into the search results on social for your keywords.

Contact me to learn how we can make this happen for you.

This content is provided by the newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

What Marriott’s AI strategy can tell us about where AI in hotels could/should be heading

A fascinating post this week from Chris Hyland hypothesised that it is at the AI plumbing layers that we need to be paying attention to.

“Marriott International says it's building a model-agnostic chassis that keeps guest data off any outside model. OpenRouter just raised $113M to ship this plumbing to every enterprise.”

Hyland’s theory is based on the classic “follow the money” which is generally a good strategy. “It's interesting who funded the round: Snowflake and Databricks both put money in, the same two platforms hotel tech is splitting between, Cloudbeds on one and Mews on the other. The rivals everyone is forced to choose between just co-invested in the layer that sits above both.”

According to Hyland “If your AI strategy doesn't route different models for different complexity levels, you are building a dependency that won't scale. An AI plan without an inference strategy underneath it is brittle by design.”

He uses Marriott as the justification for this claim on the direction of where things are heading.

Most crucially Hyland calls out the current reality as he sees it:

“Most are buying AI the way they buy any other software, signing agents and contracts, standing up copilots, treating it like a tool they switch on. They are not building a system that knows their company and gets smarter the longer it runs. An inference strategy is part of how you get there, but only the base layer. The thing that matters sits on top of it and learns.”

We are now past the point of whether AI is here to stay and whether it can bring a short term tactical bump. It’s time to start thinking about the strategy first and the execution second. Transformation is rarely just bolted on to legacy.

Google offers GEO info from the source

This week Google announced “the launch of new Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console, including dedicated reports for Search and Discover, to help you understand your site's visibility within generative AI features on Search.

This is not GEO by simulation or digital twin or some other type of guesswork. This is definitively where your brand shows up in answers and citations.

With few clicks actually ending up on your website because the answer is mainly already supplied, this is kind of a big deal to tell if you are showing up at all.

Googles says: “To help you understand how pages from your site are shown, our new reports show the following information:

• Impressions: How often URLs from your site appeared in generative AI features in Search and Discover.

• Pages: Check which URLs appeared within AI features.

• Countries: Understand your visibility on a country basis.

• Devices: Identify the devices people are using when seeing your website (available for Search results).

• Dates: Monitor your performance over time with hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly granularity.”

The roll out is gradual, not many are actually seeing anything, but its coming to everyone so keep an eye out.

It is also confounding to me that OpenAI have not jumped in here. Offer (for $100 a month) a citation dashboard and they would lock in pretty much every company in the world that wants to know what their citation currency is.

You don’t want to become Bing here…

What gets measured, gets managed and everyone will now be orientating back to Google.

Sonder founder returns with an……… AI Trip planner

Sonder founder Francis Davidson returned to travel this week with the announcement of his new travel related venture Odessia.

According to Davidson Odessia, the Goddess of Travel - “She plans and books entire trips in one conversation.”

The brand launched with a high spec video and announcement of partnership with OpenAI.

Early reports in the comments from those who got to try it out (there is an initial waitlist - but you can jump ahead by sharing it with some friends - even though you haven’t been able to see it yourself yet….) were: “Funny that they literally claim "booking trips in one conversation" or something similar yet from the Goddess herself "What you can’t do is One-click checkout for the entire trip. Pay Odessia directly for all hotels, flights, cars, and excursions. Have me finalize bookings or enter payment details on your behalf. Book rental cars directly inside Odessia right now. You’ll need to go into each saved item and complete checkout/booking with the provider." She went on to say "Odessia is not a full-service travel advisor / travel agent who can package the trip, take payment, ticket/book everything, and be accountable if something breaks." ....ok so we have inspiration and affiliate. Is this a problem that needed solving?”

I get it. This is the big “problem” to be solved. This is the moonshot to be the next Booking or Expedia. Davidson is from travel and knows about complexity and plumbing. He certainly has a track record of getting investors onboard.

However when you enter Odessia, you go through a “quiz” to help “personalise your experience”. It is very similar to the UTrip quiz of 2012. You do it once and that locks your personality in for every trip forever - even though every trip is different depending on its purpose, travel companions, how much you’ve changed and many other things.

I wish them luck but this seems like old thinking + AI and AI isn’t enough.

Most real people are curating each trip over weeks and months (and sometimes years). They are (personally) getting updated information regularly (mainly from social) and adding that to their consideration set. It is where they are collating this list that is the fragmented and messy bit.

They may well be doing this across different trips with different objectives. Others they are travelling with are contributing by sending things over IG DM’s or dropping them into a shared WhatsApp group. This trip specific consideration set is the unique data to attach AI to IMHO if solvng for personalised travel is the goal.

Who is doing that?

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