AI Hotel Landscape
How leading AI assistants recommend hotels — 616 prompts across 56 destinations, refreshed every Monday.
The 616 prompts we ask Gemini 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.
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
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 — Gemini
Hotels Gemini talked about most this week, with week-over-week movement. Filtered to Gemini only — switch tabs to compare across models.
Most-mentioned hotel by Gemini this week.
Wasn't on Gemini's radar last week. Now it is.
| # | Hotel | City | Chain | Mentions | W/W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai | Mumbai | Taj | 8 | ↑ 8 |
| 1 | Peridot Grand Luxury Boutique Hotel | Ha Noi | — | 8 | ↑ 8 |
| 6 | Marina Bay Sands Singapore | 10 Bayfront Ave | — | 6 | ↑ 6 |
| 4 | Katikies Santorini - Pelagos House | Oia | — | 6 | ↑ 6 |
| 5 | Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong | Central | Mandarin Oriental | 6 | ↑ 6 |
| 7 | Schweizerhof Zermatt | Zermatt | — | 6 | ↑ 6 |
| 8 | The Langham Gold Coast | Surfers Paradise | Langham | 6 | ↑ 6 |
| 3 | 1 Hotel South Beach | Miami Beach | 1 Hotels | 6 | ↑ 6 |
| 16 | Le Sirenuse | Positano | — | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 17 | Palacio Duhau - Park Hyatt Buenos Aires | Buenos Aires | Hyatt | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 23 | The Newbury Boston | Boston | — | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 12 | Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin | Berlin | Kempinski | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 14 | Hotel Schani | Vienna | — | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 18 | Pulitzer Amsterdam | Amsterdam | — | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 11 | Four Seasons Hotel Seoul | Jongno District | Four Seasons | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 22 | The Leela Palace, New Delhi | New Delhi | Leela | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 10 | Fairmont Rio de Janeiro Copacabana | Rio de Janeiro | Accor | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 19 | Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi | Ha Noi | Accor | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 9 | Eichardt's Private Hotel | Queenstown | — | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 24 | The Oberoi, Mumbai | Mumbai | Oberoi | 5 | ↑ 5 |
When Gemini 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 / …), or other. Chain folds into direct in the headline number because chain pages are still brand-controlled.
Where Gemini pulls hotel information from
Every URL Gemini cited classified into 12 buckets: OTAs, editorial, chain sites, direct hotel pages, social, meta-search, AI tools, community, government, directory consortia, and other.
Other 22places.com 43% · theluxurytravelagency.com 30% · travelandleisureasia.com 27% | 26.2% | 664 |
Editorial thehotelguru.com 54% · travelplusstyle.com 23% · guide.michelin.com 23% | 17.7% | 449 |
OTA & Aggregator booking.com 67% · expedia.com 20% · trip.com 13% | 17.1% | 433 |
Independent Hotel virginhotels.com 43% · hotelxtoronto.com 29% · theimperialindia.com 29% | 12.6% | 321 |
Chain all.accor.com 41% · fourseasons.com 35% · marriott.com 23% | 9.9% | 251 |
Community therooftopguide.com 47% · santorinidave.com 29% · myboutiquehotel.com 23% | 8.1% | 205 |
Hotel Directory themostperfectview.com 41% · boutiquehotel.me 29% · hotelsforkings.com 29% | 2.6% | 65 |
Social Channel reddit.com 93% · youtube.com 7% | 2.4% | 60 |
Top hotel parent groups by Gemini mentions
Each Gemini 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.
| 1 | citizenM | 8 → 10 | +25% |
| 2 | Shangri-La | 19 → 23 | +21% |
| 3 | 1 Hotels | 11 → 13 | +18% |
| 4 | Minor | 17 → 20 | +18% |
| 5 | Belmond | 10 → 11 | +10% |
| 1 | Marriott | 253 → 186 | -26% |
| 2 | Rosewood | 16 → 12 | -25% |
| 3 | Langham | 23 → 18 | -22% |
| 4 | Hyatt | 73 → 58 | -21% |
| 5 | Hilton | 52 → 42 | -19% |
| # | Brand | Mentions | Hotels | W/W | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marriott | 186 | 125 | ↓ 26.5% | |
| 2 | Accor | 115 | 82 | ↓ 5.0% | |
| 3 | Four Seasons | 82 | 35 | ↓ 13.7% | |
| 4 | IHG | 61 | 45 | ↓ 4.7% | |
| 5 | Hyatt | 58 | 37 | ↓ 20.5% | |
| 6 | Hilton | 42 | 33 | ↓ 19.2% | |
| 7 | Mandarin Oriental | 31 | 16 | ↑ 6.9% | |
| 8 | Shangri-La | 23 | 12 | ↑ 21.1% | |
| 9 | Minor | 20 | 16 | ↑ 17.6% | |
| 10 | Langham | 18 | 5 | ↓ 21.7% | |
| 11 | Peninsula | 17 | 7 | ↓ 15.0% | |
| 12 | Taj | 17 | 7 | ↓ 15.0% | |
| 13 | Kempinski | 14 | 7 | ↓ 12.5% | |
| 14 | Radisson | 14 | 11 | ↓ 6.7% | |
| 15 | 1 Hotels | 13 | 6 | ↑ 18.2% | |
| 16 | Rosewood | 12 | 8 | ↓ 25.0% | |
| 17 | Oberoi | 11 | 5 | · 0% | |
| 18 | Belmond | 11 | 4 | ↑ 10.0% | |
| 19 | citizenM | 10 | 8 | ↑ 25.0% | |
| 20 | Barceló | 9 | 7 | ↑ 200.0% |
Of the hotels named this week: 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 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.