Is AI Quietly Stealing Your Bookings? What Tourism Businesses Need to Know About GEO
You spent time and money getting your SEO sorted. Your website ranks on Google. Job done, right?
Not quite. And this might be the most important shift in tourism marketing you hear about all year.
Here's the myth: "My website works fine. I don't need to optimise for AI."
Myth busted: Traditional SEO is no longer enough. Welcome to GEO - Generative Engine Optimisation.
What Is GEO and Why Should You Care?
GEO is the practice of optimising your content so that AI-powered search engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and others can easily understand, cite, and recommend you.
Think about how people search now. The behaviour has fundamentally changed:
"ChatGPT, what are the best family days out near Southampton?"
"Gemini, plan me a rainy day itinerary with kids in Hampshire."
"Perplexity, find me indoor attractions within 30 minutes of Winchester."
These aren't hypothetical queries. This is how your customers are already searching. And if your content isn't structured for AI to understand and reference, you simply won't appear in these results.
You're invisible. And you don't even know it.
This Isn't Coming. It's Already Here.
At Hampshire's Top Attractions, one of the consortium websites, we tracked over 1,150 AI Overviews in just six months. That's 1,150 times AI engines pulled our content to answer someone's question about days out in Hampshire.
Some of those wouldn't have resulted in a click-through. But they still put our member attractions in front of families at the exact moment they were making decisions about where to go. That visibility matters enormously, especially when your competitors aren't showing up at all.
We also built an AI chatbot specifically designed to answer visitor questions using well-structured, AI-friendly content about our member attractions. When someone asks "best indoor activities in Hampshire," it draws from optimised content and recommends the right attraction for that family's needs.
But here's the important bit: we didn't just build a chatbot. We structured all our content so that any AI engine, such as ChatGPT, Google's AI Overview, or Perplexity, can understand and cite it too. That's GEO in action.
Why This Matters for Tourism Specifically
Your ideal customers are already using AI to plan their days out:
Busy parents asking ChatGPT for toddler-friendly attractions nearby. Grandparents using AI to plan visits with grandchildren. Teachers researching school trip options. International tourists building UK itineraries before they even arrive.
If AI can't understand your content, it can't recommend you. And while your competitors are still thinking in 2020 SEO terms, AI is quietly directing those bookings elsewhere.
So What Makes Content AI-Friendly?
Here are practical steps you can take right now:
Be clear and structured. AI thrives on well-organised content with clear headings, logical hierarchy, and simple language. Dense, unbroken paragraphs? AI struggles to extract useful information from those.
Answer specific questions directly. Create content built around the queries your visitors actually ask: "Is this attraction good for toddlers?" "What's open on rainy days?" "How much does it cost for a family of four?" AI pulls heavily from question-and-answer formats.
Put key details upfront. Opening hours, prices, location, accessibility information, parking — don't bury this three clicks deep on your website. AI needs to find it quickly and clearly.
Write in natural language. AI is trained on conversational queries, not keyword-stuffed corporate speak. Write the way your visitors talk. If a parent would say "Is there somewhere to eat?" rather than "catering facilities available," match their language.
Keep everything current. AI prioritises fresh, recently updated content. That "News from 2022" page on your website? It's not helping. In fact, it might be actively hurting your credibility with AI systems that use recency as a quality signal.
Add context about the visitor experience. Don't just list what you have — describe the experience. Who is it perfect for? How does it feel to visit? What makes it special? AI needs this context to make personalised recommendations. A bare-bones listing of facilities won't cut it when the AI is trying to match a family's specific needs.
You Need Both SEO and GEO
AI search isn't replacing Google. It's creating an entirely new discovery channel alongside it. You need traditional SEO and GEO optimisation working together.
The good news? You don't need to tear your website apart and start from scratch. Most of the work is about restructuring and enriching what you already have.
The better news? The vast majority of tourism businesses haven't even heard of GEO yet. If you start optimising now, you're genuinely ahead of the curve.
How The Marketing Collective Can Help
We've been at the forefront of AI and tourism marketing building AI chatbots, tracking AI Overview performance, and optimising content for generative search engines across our consortium websites.
SEO Audit — We'll assess your current search performance across both traditional and AI-powered search, identifying where you're visible and where you're missing out.
Content Strategy — We'll help you restructure your content so it works for Google, AI search engines, and most importantly, the real humans making decisions about where to spend their weekend.
SEO Management — Ongoing optimisation that keeps pace with how search is evolving, not how it worked three years ago.
The Way People Search Has Changed. Has Your Content Kept Up?
If you want to talk about making your content more AI-friendly, or you're curious about how we've been applying GEO across our tourism consortiums, we'd love to chat.
This post is part of our Marketing Myths series. Want straight-talking marketing advice every Friday? Subscribe to our Friday Funk newsletter →