AI Hotel Landscape
How leading AI assistants recommend hotels: 616 prompts across 56 destinations, a monthly edition checked before it is published.
+ 44 more
The 616 prompts we ask ChatGPT each edition
56 destinations × 11 templates. Each prompt has structured dimensions: city, country, region, persona (couples / families / solo / business), budget (luxury / mid / budget), and location zoom (wide city vs neighborhood vs landmark). Control prompts are unmodified baselines.
Every destination below gets the same 11 question types — just with the city name swapped in. That's how 56 destinations × 11 templates = 616 prompts per platform per edition.
- luxury hotels in <city>
- family friendly hotels in <city>
- hotels in <city> with rooftop pool
- hotels near <neighborhood>, <city>
- boutique hotels in <neighborhood>, <city>
- best hotels in <city> for solo travelers
- best hotels in <city>
- affordable hotels in <city> under $200
- best hotels in <city> for couples
- best hotels in <city> for business travelers
- best hotels in <neighborhood>, <city>
- hotels near <city> National Park
africa4 destinations · 44 prompts
americas14 destinations · 154 prompts
Each destination is asked the 11 prompt patterns above (11 prompts × 14 cities = 154 prompts in this region).
asia16 destinations · 176 prompts
europe17 destinations · 187 prompts
oceania5 destinations · 55 prompts
Each destination is asked the 11 prompt patterns above (11 prompts × 5 cities = 55 prompts in this region).
Named hotels of the week — ChatGPT
Hotels ChatGPT talked about most in this edition, with movement against the previous edition. Filtered to ChatGPT only — switch tabs to compare across models.
Most-mentioned hotel by ChatGPT in this edition.
12 → 9 (-25% vs the previous edition). Gated to ≥10 mentions in the previous edition.
| # | Hotel | City | Chain | Mentions | vs prev. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cairo Marriott Hotel | Zamalek | Marriott | 9 | ↓ 3 |
| 4 | Waldorf Astoria Shanghai on the Bund | Huangpu, Shanghai | Hilton | 8 | ↑ 3 |
| 2 | Playa Mujeres | Cancún | — | 8 | ↑ 1 |
| 3 | The Fullerton Bay Hotel Singapore | 80 Collyer Quay | — | 8 | ↓ 1 |
| 10 | The Ritz-Carlton Shanghai, Pudong | Pudong, Shanghai | Marriott | 7 | ↑ 1 |
| 9 | Shangri-La Sydney | The Rocks | Shangri-La | 7 | ↑ 3 |
| 8 | Four Seasons Hotel Sydney | The Rocks | Four Seasons | 7 | ↑ 1 |
| 7 | Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul At The Bosphorus | Beşiktaş | Four Seasons | 7 | ↑ 2 |
| 6 | Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong | Central | Four Seasons | 7 | ↑ 3 |
| 5 | 1 Hotel South Beach | Miami Beach | 1 Hotels | 7 | — |
| 20 | Wynn Las Vegas | Las Vegas | — | 6 | — |
| 19 | The PuXuan Hotel and Spa | Dongcheng | — | 6 | ↑ 2 |
| 16 | Memmo Alfama Hotel Lisboa | Lisbon | — | 6 | ↑ 2 |
| 17 | Park Hyatt Sydney | The Rocks | Hyatt | 6 | ↓ 1 |
| 18 | Sofitel Mexico City Reforma | Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City | Accor | 6 | ↑ 2 |
| 15 | Le Sirenuse | Positano | — | 6 | — |
| 14 | JOIA Bávaro by Iberostar | Punta Cana | Iberostar | 6 | ↓ 1 |
| 13 | Four Seasons Hotel Boston | Boston | Four Seasons | 6 | ↑ 2 |
| 12 | Emiliano Rio, an SLH Hotel | Rio de Janeiro | — | 6 | — |
| 11 | Electra Palace Athens | Athens | — | 6 | ↑ 2 |
What ChatGPT asks back
Since the week of 5 October 2026, ChatGPT ends many hotel answers with a short form: a few questions, usually with one answer already selected, and a button that sends a follow-up prompt. Counted on this edition's answers.
Share of answers ending with a questionnaire, by edition
Budget
In 375 of 381 questionnaires (98.4%). 1 asked as a free-text box.
| Option | Offered | Pre-selected |
|---|---|---|
| Under $200 | 68 | 4 (5.9%) |
| Under $150 | 63 | 9 (14.3%) |
| Under $100 | 56 | never |
| Under €150 | 34 | never |
| $250-$400 | 33 | 13 (39.4%) |
| $200-$350 | 29 | 21 (72.4%) |
| $350-$500 | 28 | never |
| $500+ | 28 | never |
Who is travelling
In 123 of 381 questionnaires (32.3%).
| Option | Offered | Pre-selected |
|---|---|---|
| 2 adults | 43 | 43 (100.0%) |
| 1 adult | 38 | never |
| Family | 35 | never |
| 1 | 30 | never |
| 2 | 30 | 30 (100.0%) |
| 3 | 27 | never |
| 4 | 25 | never |
| Solo | 25 | never |
Children's ages
In 16 of 381 questionnaires (4.2%). 11 asked as a free-text box.
| Option | Offered | Pre-selected |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7 | never |
| 2 | 7 | 7 |
| 3 | 7 | never |
| Mixed ages | 5 | never |
| 4 | 4 | never |
| 13-17 years | 3 | never |
| 4+ | 3 | never |
| Under 3 years | 2 | never |
Length of stay
In 32 of 381 questionnaires (8.4%).
| Option | Offered | Pre-selected |
|---|---|---|
| More than 2 weeks | 15 | never |
| 1-2 weeks | 13 | 1 (7.7%) |
| 1-2 nights | 10 | never |
| 3-5 nights | 9 | 9 |
| 5-7 nights | 7 | 4 |
| 2-3 nights | 4 | never |
| 3-4 nights | 4 | 1 |
| More than a week | 4 | never |
Dates and timing
In 185 of 381 questionnaires (48.6%). 142 asked as a free-text box.
| Option | Offered | Pre-selected |
|---|---|---|
| Flexible | 21 | 20 (95.2%) |
| January-March 2027 | 19 | never |
| December 2026 | 15 | 1 (6.7%) |
| Other dates | 15 | never |
| April-June 2027 | 12 | never |
| November 2026 | 12 | 1 (8.3%) |
| November-December 2026 | 11 | never |
| Flexible dates | 6 | 6 |
Area
In 78 of 381 questionnaires (20.5%).
| Option | Offered | Pre-selected |
|---|---|---|
| No preference | 12 | 5 (41.7%) |
| Broadbeach | 4 | never |
| Burleigh Heads | 4 | never |
| Surfers Paradise | 4 | never |
| Anywhere in central London | 3 | 1 |
| Anywhere in Miami | 3 | never |
| Anywhere in Mumbai | 3 | 3 |
| Anywhere on the Gold Coast | 3 | 3 |
Type of trip or occasion
In 101 of 381 questionnaires (26.5%).
| Option | Offered | Pre-selected |
|---|---|---|
| Romantic getaway | 51 | 36 (70.6%) |
| Honeymoon | 34 | never |
| Anniversary | 32 | never |
| Business trip | 20 | never |
| Family vacation | 15 | never |
| Extended business stay | 12 | never |
| Family holiday | 12 | never |
| Birthday celebration | 9 | never |
Priorities
In 105 of 381 questionnaires (27.6%). 1 asked as a free-text box.
| Option | Offered | Pre-selected |
|---|---|---|
| Best value for money | 17 | never |
| Meeting other solo travelers | 13 | 8 (61.5%) |
| A little bit of everything | 8 | never |
| Luxury hotel | 5 | never |
| Value for money | 5 | never |
| A mix of everything | 4 | never |
| Best location for sightseeing | 4 | 2 |
| Central location and sightseeing | 4 | 2 |
Room and meals
In 16 of 381 questionnaires (4.2%).
| Option | Offered | Pre-selected |
|---|---|---|
| Private hotel room | 4 | 4 |
| All-inclusive (food and drinks included) | 3 | 3 |
| Either is fine | 3 | never |
| No preference | 3 | never |
| Private room | 3 | 3 |
| All-inclusive | 2 | 1 |
| Breakfast only | 2 | never |
| Either | 2 | never |
Hotel style
In 310 of 381 questionnaires (81.4%). 1 asked as a free-text box.
| Option | Offered | Pre-selected |
|---|---|---|
| Luxury 5-star | 58 | 49 (84.5%) |
| Best value for money | 46 | never |
| Boutique and stylish | 31 | 2 (6.5%) |
| Boutique hotel | 30 | 2 (6.7%) |
| Modern and stylish | 18 | never |
| Luxury hotel | 17 | 1 (5.9%) |
| Social hostel with private room | 17 | never |
| 5-star luxury | 16 | 12 (75.0%) |
Pick a destination above to read every questionnaire in full. Topics come from the question text, then from the variable name in the form code. Options are counted together when they differ only in case or punctuation. Budget options are price ranges in the destination’s currency. Background and the October analysis: ChatGPT’s hotel questionnaire.
When ChatGPT hands out a hotel link, where does it go?
Every URL the AI returned for a named hotel, classified into direct (the hotel's own site), OTA (Booking / Expedia / …), chain page (marriott.com / hilton.com / …), Google Travel (Google's own hotel pages), or other. Chain folds into direct in the headline number because chain pages are still brand-controlled. Google Travel does not: it is Google keeping the booking click.
Week by week. Google Travel is a link to the hotel’s page on Google’s own hotel search (google.com/travel): Google keeping the booking click rather than sending it to the hotel. It is its own line, not folded into direct. From 7 September 2026 Gemini links nearly every hotel this way. Other Google is the rest of google.com (search results, maps), split out of what used to be counted as “other” for the same reason: the assistant keeping the click is worth seeing on its own rather than filed under the vaguest available label. Metasearch (trivago, kayak) stays in other — those are third-party marketplaces, not the engine linking to itself.
One note on the other line, because it used to be the least trustworthy series here. “Other” is every link we cannot place as the hotel’s own site, an OTA, a chain page or Google — so it is partly a measure of our own coverage, not only of engine behaviour. It previously showed a band of 45–65% between 08 June and 27 July that we could not explain. That band was a bug on our side, and it is now fixed. Google AI Mode returns hotel websites as bare domains (ritzcarlton.com) rather than full URLs, and the query that derives the domain for classification expects a scheme — so 16,194 perfectly classifiable links, every one of them AI Mode, were counted as “other” purely for lacking an https://. Those URLs have been normalised, the ingest no longer stores them scheme-less, and every week has been rebuilt: other is now 3.5% across all engines and weeks, and the band is gone. Read direct and OTA as behavioural; still read a move in other as measurement first.
Weekly until 19 Oct 2026, monthly from November 2026
Weeks with no classified links are omitted rather than drawn as zero — a missing run and a genuinely zero week look identical on a chart, and only one of them is a finding. Link volume per week: 04-27 1,789 · 05-04 2,729 · 05-11 3,814 · 05-18 4,008 · 05-25 4,518 · 06-01 3,525 · 06-08 3,661 · 06-15 3,301 · 06-22 3,292 · 06-29 3,830 · 07-06 3,499 · 07-13 3,656 · 07-20 3,767 · 07-27 3,880 · 08-03 3,805 · 08-10 3,352 · 08-17 3,357 · 08-24 3,445 · 08-31 6,691 · 09-07 2,718 · 09-14 2,553 · 09-21 3,013 · 09-28 2,683 · 10-05 1,694 · 10-12 2,165 · 10-19 2,197 · 11-02 2,619.
Where ChatGPT pulls hotel information from
Every URL ChatGPT retrieved classified into 12 buckets: OTAs, editorial, chain sites, direct hotel pages, social, meta-search, AI tools, community, government, directory consortia, and other.
Other okstays.com 40% · helloaxel.com 32% · wherebest.com 29% | 38.6% | 5,435 |
OTA & Aggregator booking.com 45% · hotels.com 34% · expedia.com 21% | 17.3% | 2,428 |
Editorial timeout.com 44% · cntraveler.com 31% · thehotelguru.com 25% | 12.9% | 1,816 |
Review Site tripadvisor.com 86% · oyster.com 9% · tripadvisor.co.uk 5% | 8.6% | 1,213 |
Community hotelierschoice.com 85% · therooftopguide.com 8% · budgetyourtrip.com 7% | 7.3% | 1,027 |
Government / DMO miamiandbeaches.com 44% · neworleans.com 31% · visitdubai.com 25% | 4.2% | 591 |
Independent Hotel luxuryhotel.com 52% · hotel.com.au 27% · helloprague.net 21% | 4.1% | 573 |
Chain marriott.com 51% · all.accor.com 34% · hilton.com 15% | 2.7% | 377 |
Hotel Directory hotelsforkings.com 73% · luxuryhotelcompare.com 15% · smallboutique-hotels.com 12% | 1.8% | 260 |
Meta-search kayak.com 65% · momondo.com 22% · trivago.com 13% | 1.6% | 221 |
AI Tool staygenie.app 100% | 0.3% | 41 |
Search engine google.com 89% · google.co.ke 5% · google.com.gh 5% | 0.3% | 39 |
Share of citations by source type, week by week. Search engine is its own bucket rather than part of metasearch, and covers Google (every regional domain), Bing and the rest. Google AI Mode routes its cited sources through google.com/searchviewer instead of linking the publisher, and those citations were landing under “meta-search” alongside trivago and kayak — which made the mix read as competitive pressure from metasearch when actual metasearch is under 1%. The dashed rule marks the week that started.
Weekly until 19 Oct 2026, monthly from November 2026
Which categories get a line is decided once over the whole window by total citations, not week by week — otherwise a category dropping out of the top N would look like it collapsed to zero. Everything below the cut is summed into “smaller categories” rather than dropped, so the lines always account for the full week. Citations per week: 04-13 4,218 · 04-20 3,605 · 04-27 10,013 · 05-04 11,586 · 05-11 1,054 · 05-18 1,296 · 05-25 10,366 · 06-01 19,118 · 06-08 18,803 · 06-15 12,162 · 06-22 9,388 · 06-29 14,505 · 07-06 13,627 · 07-13 6,373 · 07-20 6,423 · 07-27 6,073 · 08-03 6,058 · 08-10 6,331 · 08-17 5,801 · 08-24 4,234 · 08-31 5,638 · 09-07 2,652 · 09-14 2,688 · 09-21 2,679 · 09-28 2,773 · 10-05 2,435 · 10-12 14,894 · 10-19 16,222 · 11-02 14,071.
The domains ChatGPT pulls most — and how many it keeps
Individual domains ranked by URLs retrieved, with the category and the share that survive into the answer (throughput = cited ÷ retrieved). Worldwide, current week.
| Domain | Category | Retrieved | Cited | Throughput |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tripadvisor.com | Review Site | 895 | 105 | 12% |
| booking.com | OTA & Aggregator | 751 | 55 | 7% |
| hotelierschoice.com | Community | 698 | 32 | 5% |
| hotels.com | OTA & Aggregator | 566 | 57 | 10% |
| expedia.com | OTA & Aggregator | 343 | 19 | 6% |
| timeout.com | Editorial | 312 | 61 | 20% |
| okstays.com | Other | 228 | 13 | 6% |
| cntraveler.com | Editorial | 221 | 55 | 25% |
| helloaxel.com | Other | 183 | 18 | 10% |
| thehotelguru.com | Editorial | 175 | 23 | 13% |
| guide.michelin.com | Editorial | 172 | 29 | 17% |
| wherebest.com | Other | 164 | 15 | 9% |
| hotelsforkings.com | Hotel Directory | 146 | 7 | 5% |
| cntraveller.com | Editorial | 114 | 19 | 17% |
| trip.com | OTA & Aggregator | 111 | 9 | 8% |
Top hotel parent groups by ChatGPT mentions
Each ChatGPT mention matched against Google Places, then rolled up to parent group (Marriott = Ritz-Carlton + Westin + Sheraton + EDITION + …, etc.). Change vs the previous edition. Detection via 175+ brand-domain rules.
| 1 | Rosewood | 15 → 24 | +60% |
| 2 | Shangri-La | 26 → 30 | +15% |
| 3 | Rocco Forte | 11 → 12 | +9% |
| 4 | Marriott | 283 → 303 | +7% |
| 5 | Hilton | 130 → 137 | +5% |
| 1 | 1 Hotels | 17 → 9 | -47% |
| 2 | B&B Hotels | 10 → 6 | -40% |
| 3 | Peninsula | 29 → 21 | -28% |
| 4 | Capella | 16 → 12 | -25% |
| 5 | IHG | 113 → 91 | -19% |
| # | Brand | Mentions | Hotels | vs prev. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marriott | 303 | 175 | ↑ 7.1% | |
| 2 | Accor | 179 | 106 | ↓ 13.5% | |
| 3 | Hilton | 137 | 86 | ↑ 5.4% | |
| 4 | Hyatt | 121 | 68 | ↓ 12.9% | |
| 5 | Four Seasons | 101 | 40 | ↓ 5.6% | |
| 6 | IHG | 91 | 64 | ↓ 19.5% | |
| 7 | Mandarin Oriental | 41 | 16 | ↑ 2.5% | |
| 8 | Shangri-La | 30 | 14 | ↑ 15.4% | |
| 9 | Kempinski | 26 | 11 | ↓ 16.1% | |
| 10 | Minor | 24 | 16 | ↓ 11.1% | |
| 11 | Rosewood | 24 | 8 | ↑ 60.0% | |
| 12 | Peninsula | 21 | 8 | ↓ 27.6% | |
| 13 | Langham | 21 | 7 | ↓ 19.2% | |
| 14 | Radisson | 18 | 15 | ↓ 5.3% | |
| 15 | Wyndham | 17 | 14 | ↓ 15.0% | |
| 16 | Taj | 16 | 9 | ↓ 15.8% | |
| 17 | Belmond | 16 | 5 | · 0% | |
| 18 | Rocco Forte | 12 | 4 | ↑ 9.1% | |
| 19 | Capella | 12 | 6 | ↓ 25.0% | |
| 20 | Oberoi | 12 | 5 | ↓ 14.3% |
Of the hotels named in this edition: how many resolved to a chain (Marriott / Accor / …), an independent property, a vacation rental, or stayed unmatched.
What every metric means
Plain-English definitions for each number on this page. For deeper visuals + examples, see the annual landscape report linked at the bottom.
- Captures
- Number of AI responses we collected for this edition. Target = 616 per platform (one per prompt). Less when there are upstream errors.
- Web search
- Did the response trigger a live web fetch? Detected from the underlying response stream’s search-result events, not the unreliable top-level flag. We do NOT force web search — this is organic model behavior.
- Map widget
- Did the response render a hotel-card map (the Google-Maps-style widget ChatGPT shows for travel queries)? Each card is a "map entity" with its own provider.
- Sources / response
- Distinct URLs the model consulted while answering — the URLs that show up in its retrieval log, regardless of whether it cited them inline. Computed only over web-search responses (otherwise the answer is from training data, no sources to count).
- Citations / response
- Subset of sources that the model rendered as inline footnote pills in the answer. A source becomes a citation when the model explicitly references it.
- Fanouts / response
- Number of sub-queries the model spun up internally to answer the prompt (e.g. "best hotels Paris" might fan out to "hotels Paris Marais", "luxury hotels Paris", "rooftop hotels Paris", …).
- Map entities / response
- Hotel cards inside the map widget. Each carries a provider (Google Places, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Foursquare, SERP) and a place ID where applicable.
- OTA
- Online travel agency (Booking, Expedia, Hotels.com, Agoda, Trip.com, Priceline, etc.) — commission-based booking sites.
- Direct
- A hotel’s own website. Computed at request time by matching the cited domain against Google Places.
- Chain
- A hotel chain’s brand website (hilton.com, marriott.com, ihg.com, …). 175+ chain-domain rules.
- Editorial
- Travel media (Condé Nast Traveler, Time Out, Lonely Planet, Forbes Travel Guide, NYT, etc.) and city-specific travel blogs (santorinidave.com, theurbanlist.com, etc.).
- Directory
- Multi-property hotel consortia / brand collectives (Small Luxury Hotels of the World, Design Hotels, Preferred Hotels, Virtuoso, …). Aggregate hotels under one umbrella but aren’t a single OTA.
- Review
- TripAdvisor, Oyster, Yelp, Trustpilot, Holidaycheck — review-first platforms.
Does ChatGPT send people to Reddit and YouTube?
Share of answers citing at least one Reddit thread or YouTube video, week by week. Worldwide.
Share of answers citing at least one Reddit thread or YouTube video. Counted from the citation domains, so this measures what ChatGPT showed as a source — not whether it read them.
Weekly until 19 Oct 2026, monthly from November 2026
Latest week (2026-11-02): 5 of 616 answers cited Reddit (0.8%), 0 cited YouTube, across 14,071 citations.