Nicolas Sitter
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Live · refreshed weeklyUpdated September 28, 2026

AI Hotel Landscape

How leading AI assistants recommend hotels — 616 prompts across 56 destinations, refreshed every Monday.

Data is directional. Some prompts retry due to upstream variance, so absolute counts can shift ±5% week to week.
PROMPTS

The 616 prompts we ask ChatGPT every week

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.

Prompts / week
616
across 6 platforms
Destinations
56
distinct cities
Countries
37
dest country
Regions
5
continental groupings
56 destinations across 37 countrieseuropeamericasasiaafricaoceania
Template patterns

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 week.

  • 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

Each destination is asked the 11 prompt patterns above (11 prompts × 4 cities = 44 prompts in this region).

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

Each destination is asked the 11 prompt patterns above (11 prompts × 16 cities = 176 prompts in this region).

europe17 destinations · 187 prompts

Each destination is asked the 11 prompt patterns above (11 prompts × 17 cities = 187 prompts in this region).

oceania5 destinations · 55 prompts

Each destination is asked the 11 prompt patterns above (11 prompts × 5 cities = 55 prompts in this region).

HIGHLIGHTS

Named hotels in Vietnam — ChatGPT

ChatGPT's top picks specifically in Vietnam. Switch country at the top to filter, or clear to see worldwide.

Hotel of the Week
3 mentions
Ha Noi

Most-mentioned hotel by ChatGPT this week.

Top 20 hotels by ChatGPT mentions — week of September 28, 2026
#HotelCityChainMentionsW/W
22Peridot Grand Luxury Boutique HotelHa Noi—3↓ 4
138Sofitel Legend Metropole HanoiHa NoiAccor2↓ 2
128PROVERB HOTEL HANOIHa Noi—2↓ 1
117Meritel HanoiHa Noi—2—
55Capella HanoiHa NoiCapella2↓ 1
731O'Gallery Premier Hotel & SpaHa Noi—1NEW
669Lucien Hanoi Lakeside Hotel & RooftopHa Noi—1↓ 1
668Lotte Hotel HanoiHa Noi—1↓ 1
653La Siesta Premium LakesideHa Noi—1↓ 1
648L'HÔTEL du LAC HanoiHa Noi—1—
627JW Marriott Hotel HanoiHa NoiMarriott1↓ 1
615InterContinental Hanoi Landmark72 by IHGHa NoiIHG1—
515HOTEL du LAC SIGNATUREHa Noi—1—
451Hanoian Central Hotel & SpaHa Noi—1—
450Hanoi Tirant HotelHa Noi—1—
449Hanoi Pearl HotelHa Noi—1NEW
448Hanoi Media Hotel & SpaHa Noi—1NEW
447Hanoi Emerald Waters Hotel & SpaHa Noi—1NEW
436Grand Mercure HanoiHa NoiAccor1↓ 1
427GRAND HÔTEL du LAC HanoiHa Noi—1NEW
This is the top 20 of this week, so the W/W column skews upward by construction: a hotel that fell simply drops out of the table rather than showing a ↓. Read it as “what rose into the top 20”, not as a balanced gainers-and-losers view — the risers and fallers below are computed over every hotel, not just these twenty.
ADS

Sponsored placements

OpenAI is rolling out paid sponsor placements in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada — testing may expand. We detect real single-advertiser ad units (organic shopping cards excluded) and pull the brand.

How much of ChatGPT carries an ad, week by week?
25 weeks · 2026-04-13 → 2026-09-28

Share of answers containing at least one real single-advertiser placement, worldwide. Organic shopping cards are excluded, so this tracks paid inventory rather than commerce surfaces in general.

Answers with a sponsored placement
0%25%50%75%100%04-1305-0405-2506-1507-0607-2708-1709-0709-28

Latest week (2026-09-28): 1.5% of 595 answers carried one — against a peak of 89.8% in the week of 2026-07-13. The rate is volatile by nature: placements are rolled out per country and per prompt type, so a quiet week is a rollout decision, not a trend.

Showing the most recent week with ad data — week of August 17, 2026. Current week had no captured ads.

#AdvertiserCaptures
1Expedia5
2GetYourGuide1
SOURCES

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.

Retrieved-vs-cited is withheld for ChatGPT this week

100% of the URLs we captured were cited in the answer. A ratio that high does not mean ChatGPT uses almost everything it finds — it means we are no longer seeing what it discards. ChatGPT sat at 24.8% on 10 August, before the retrieval layer stopped coming through. Publishing 97% as selectivity would invert the finding, so the number is withheld rather than shown. The counts below are what was captured, and are unaffected.

Other
34.0% (17)
OTA & Aggregator
24.0% (12)
Independent Hotel
18.0% (9)
Review Site
10.0% (5)
Community
8.0% (4)
Editorial
6.0% (3)
Top categories
Other
hanoitourism.org 81% · biirdee.com 13% · hanoiecohotels.com 6%
34.0%17
OTA & Aggregator
booking.com 92% · expedia.com 8%
24.0%12
Independent Hotel
grandhoteldulachanoi.com 33% · hanoi.capellahotel.cn 33% · hanoiancentralhotel.com 33%
18.0%9
Review Site
tripadvisor.com 80% · tripadvisor.co.uk 20%
10.0%5
Community
hotelierschoice.com 50% · hostelworld.com 25% · therooftopguide.com 25%
8.0%4
Editorial
cntraveller.com 33% · guide.michelin.com 33% · theluxuryeditor.com 33%
6.0%3
Has that changed over time?
23 weeks · 2026-04-27 → 2026-09-28

Share of citations by source type, week by week, for VN. 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.

OtherIndependent hotelOTAReview siteEditorialCommunityChainSmaller categories
0%20%40%60%searchviewer04-2705-1806-0806-2907-2008-1008-3109-2109-28

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: 04-27 107 · 05-04 238 · 05-11 12 · 05-18 34 · 05-25 240 · 06-01 346 · 06-08 335 · 06-15 325 · 06-22 161 · 06-29 263 · 07-06 266 · 07-13 122 · 07-20 126 · 07-27 113 · 08-03 114 · 08-10 144 · 08-17 115 · 08-24 64 · 08-31 86 · 09-07 34 · 09-14 37 · 09-21 46 · 09-28 50.

REDDIT & YOUTUBE

Does ChatGPT send people to Reddit and YouTube?

Share of answers citing at least one Reddit thread or YouTube video, week by week. Worldwide.

How often does ChatGPT cite Reddit or YouTube?
23 weeks · 2026-04-27 → 2026-09-28

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.

RedditYouTube
0%25%50%75%04-2705-1806-0806-2907-2008-1008-3109-2109-28

Latest week (2026-09-28): 0 of 616 answers cited Reddit (0.0%), 0 cited YouTube, across 2,773 citations. Reddit peaked at 69.6% in this window and is now at zero while citations kept flowing — so this is ChatGPT no longer citing it, not us no longer seeing it.

BRANDS

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.). WoW delta vs last week. Detection via 175+ brand-domain rules.

↑ Gainers
biggest WoW jumps
no qualifying brands this week
↓ Losers
biggest WoW drops
1Accor10 → 4-60%
#BrandMentionsHotelsW/W
1Accor43↓ 60.0%
2Capella21· 0%
3Marriott11↓ 50.0%
4IHG11↓ 50.0%
Chain vs Independent

Of the hotels named this week: how many resolved to a chain (Marriott / Accor / …), an independent property, a vacation rental, or stayed unmatched.

Chain27.6%↓ 50.0%
Independent72.4%↓ 43.2%
Vacation rental0.0%
Unresolved0.0%
DEFINITIONS

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 this week. 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.
Sponsored placements
Paid sponsor placements. Detected from real single-advertiser ad units in the response stream. Excludes ChatGPT’s organic shopping cards (which are unpaid product carousels). US/AU/NZ/CA only as of May 2026.
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.
Want a deeper read? See the in-depth annual report