Think about how you planned your last vacation five years ago: dozens of open tabs, comparisons on Booking, reviews skimmed in a hurry. Now think about how more and more of your guests do it today: they open ChatGPT or Gemini and type something like:

"Two families with kids going to the mountains in August. Recommend a quiet guesthouse with a good breakfast and parking, under €80 a night."

The AI answers with two or three concrete recommendations, with names and arguments. The conversation is over. There is no "page 2" where you get another chance. Either you're in the answer, or you're nowhere.

This guide explains what GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — is, and what you can concretely do so that AI assistants recommend your property.

What GEO is and why it matters right now

GEO is the discipline of optimizing your online presence so that AI models know you, trust you and recommend you. It is the direct relative of SEO, with one essential difference: AI doesn't show ten blue links — it formulates an answer. There are far fewer seats, and the winners take almost everything.

There is a pattern that repeats at every major platform shift: those who adapt first harvest years of advantage. It happened with SEO in the early 2000s, it happened with optimized OTA profiles, and it is happening now with GEO. The window in which your competition still isn't doing anything about it is open — but it won't stay that way.

Where the AI "learns" about your property

To recommend you, an AI assistant first has to find you and understand you. Its main sources are:

  • Your website — if it's clearly structured, the AI extracts amenities, room types, policies and indicative prices from it.
  • Reviews — Google, Booking, Airbnb, TripAdvisor. AI reads them at scale and summarizes them: "guests praise the breakfast and the quiet".
  • Mentions in other publications — travel blogs, local guides, press. Every credible mention is a vote of confidence.
  • Structured data — the technical information (schema.org) in your site, which machines read directly, without interpretation.

The 2-minute test Open ChatGPT and ask: "Recommend a place to stay in [your town] for a couple, with [your specialty]". Do you appear in the answer? Do your competitors? Repeat with Gemini. This is your starting point — and the first thing to check in any audit.

The 6 GEO actions with the biggest impact

1. Put the essential information in text, not just in pictures

AI reads text. If your amenities exist only in a scanned PDF, in an image with your schedule, or nowhere at all, they don't exist for the AI. Everything that sets you apart — heated pool, pets welcome, free parking, breakfast with local produce — must be written clearly, in HTML, on your website.

2. Answer the questions travelers actually ask

AI assistants love content that answers real questions directly: "How far is the guesthouse from the slope?", "Do you have rooms for families with two kids?", "Can I bring my dog?". A well-written FAQ page is among the most effective GEO investments — because it mimics exactly the shape of a conversation with the AI.

3. Add structured data (schema.org)

Structured data is a "technical datasheet" invisible to visitors but read directly by machines: property type, address, amenities, rating, price range. It is the native language of AI engines and of Google alike. Few properties have it implemented correctly — which makes it exactly the kind of cheap, durable advantage you want.

4. Cultivate reviews — volume, freshness, replies

For AI, reviews are the most credible source about you, precisely because you don't control them. What counts: the volume, the rating, how recent they are, and whether you reply. A steady stream of reviews that mention your specifics ("the best breakfast in the county") ends up, word for word, in how the AI describes you to others.

5. Be present in the sources the AI cites

When AI looks for "the best guesthouses in the region", it leans on existing articles and round-ups. Being present in local guides, travel blogs and travel media — even small publications — dramatically raises your chances of being picked up in recommendations.

6. Keep your information consistent everywhere

Name, address, phone, amenities — identical on your website, Google, Booking, Airbnb, Facebook. Inconsistencies confuse AI models and lower their confidence. And lower confidence means they recommend someone else.

The mistake I see most often

Owners treat AI as a fad that will pass, and they postpone. Meanwhile, guest behavior is shifting at a speed we didn't see even when Booking first appeared. The difference is that you could always get onto Booking by paying the commission; getting into an AI model's memory and trust is slow and hard. Whoever starts now builds a head start that those starting in two years will struggle to close.

Where to start

  1. Run the 2-minute test above, in ChatGPT and Gemini.
  2. Check whether your website says, in plain text, everything that makes you special.
  3. Look at your last 10 reviews: do they get replies? Do they mention what you want to be remembered for?

Those you can do yourself, today. For the rest — structured data, content strategy, presence in cited sources, measuring your AI visibility — you need someone who has seen how these systems work from the inside.