Michael Ryan hears "SEO is dead" every second day. His reply: 80% of AI search visibility is the same craft it's been for 20 years

In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel podcast, I speak with Michael Ryan, founder of Ink Digital, a UK search agency working mostly with travel brands. Michael spent 15 years in search - including leading SEO in-house at Ocean Holidays across Ocean Florida, Ocean Beds and Winged Boots - before starting Ink in 2020. They have grown to 20 people practising what they preach: Ink ranks #1 for "travel SEO agency" in the UK.

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The booking journey has changed more in the last 24 months than in the previous 20 years. Travellers still start on Google, but they shortlist on TikTok and watch hour-long YouTube comparisons before they book - and AI overviews increasingly answer the question before anyone clicks. Clicks are falling for everyone. So what actually drives bookings now?

We dig into:

• 🔍 Why "SEO is dead" keeps being wrong - 80% of what gets a brand visible in AI search is the same craft SEOs have practised for 20 years, plus a genuinely new 20%

• 📉 Clicks are down everywhere - why impressions may be the stat travel marketers should defend in the boardroom

• 🗺️ What a real booking journey looks like now: Michael's own Santorini trip ran Google to TikTok to a one-hour YouTube hotel comparison

• 🧱 "Consensus stacking" - the case studies, reviews and ROI proof that make ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity cite you as the answer

• 🎯 61 of Ink's last 100 inbound leads asked about AI search before traditional SEO - and most had not done the basics first

• 🧭 Brand mention gap analysis: where are your competitors being cited while you are invisible?

• ✂️ Why you should pick the 4-5 destinations that make you the most money and win them in a sprint before scaling

• 🏨 How a luxury brand can win with 10 clicks when one booking is worth £25-30k

• 🤖 The AI visibility tools promising exact rankings for every prompt are "fibbing" - and the GA4-for-AI-search product OpenAI never built

• 📝 AI can write your content now - the only test that matters is whether it is useful

• ✅ The one thing a CEO should ask their marketing team tomorrow morning

One of the most interesting ideas from this conversation is how commercial the answer turns out to be. Michael's first question to any travel brand is not about keywords or schema. It is: which destinations make you the highest margin, bring customers back, and carry your strongest partner relationships?

Everything after that - SEO, AI search, social, digital PR, paid - is channels working in harmony towards that number. The brands struggling right now are not losing to AI. They are losing because nobody connected the marketing plan to the money.

If AI search feels like a black box, the fix probably is not a new tool. It is knowing exactly what makes you money - and making sure the machines can see the proof.

Find Michael at ink-digital.co.uk or connect with him on LinkedIn - he also writes The Travel Search Brief, a weekly LinkedIn newsletter on travel marketing, SEO and AI search.

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