AI Hotel Landscape
How leading AI assistants recommend hotels — 616 prompts across 56 destinations, refreshed every Monday.
Named hotels in Melbourne — Perplexity
Perplexity's top picks specifically in Melbourne, AU. Pick a different destination above, or clear to see worldwide.
Wasn't on Perplexity's radar last week. Now it is.
| # | Hotel | City | Chain | Mentions | W/W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | Park Hyatt Sydney | The Rocks | Hyatt | 6 | ↑ 6 |
| 12 | Hilton Sydney | Sydney | Hilton | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 30 | The Langham, Melbourne | Southbank | Langham | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 28 | Sydney Harbour Hotel | The Rocks | — | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 17 | JW Marriott Gold Coast Resort & Spa | Surfers Paradise | Marriott | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 48 | Four Seasons Hotel Sydney | The Rocks | Four Seasons | 4 | ↑ 4 |
| 43 | Crown Towers Melbourne | Southbank | — | 4 | ↑ 4 |
| 69 | The Langham, Sydney | Millers Point | Langham | 4 | ↑ 4 |
| 53 | Hilton Surfers Paradise Hotel & Residences | Surfers Paradise | Hilton | 4 | ↑ 4 |
| 138 | Sydney Hotel QVB | Sydney | — | 3 | ↑ 3 |
| 136 | Sofitel Gold Coast Broadbeach | Broadbeach | Accor | 3 | ↑ 3 |
| 129 | QT Gold Coast | Surfers Paradise | — | 3 | ↑ 3 |
| 122 | Meriton Suites Surfers Paradise | Surfers Paradise | — | 3 | ↑ 3 |
| 317 | Le Méridien Melbourne | Melbourne | Marriott | 2 | ↑ 2 |
| 231 | Grand Hyatt Melbourne | Melbourne | Hyatt | 2 | ↑ 2 |
| 228 | Gili Lankanfushi Maldives | — | — | 2 | ↑ 2 |
| 203 | Dorsett Gold Coast | Broadbeach | — | 2 | ↑ 2 |
| 199 | Crowne Plaza Surfers Paradise, an IHG Hotel | Surfers Paradise | IHG | 2 | ↑ 2 |
| 192 | Comfort Apartments Royal Gardens | Fitzroy | Choice | 2 | ↑ 2 |
| 180 | Baros | — | — | 2 | ↑ 2 |
When Perplexity hands out a hotel link, where does it go?Worldwide
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 Perplexity pulls hotel information from
Every URL Perplexity cited classified into 12 buckets: OTAs, editorial, chain sites, direct hotel pages, social, meta-search, AI tools, community, government, directory consortia, and other.
OTA & Aggregator booking.com 46% · hotels.com 33% · expedia.com 21% | 21.1% | 96 |
Review Site tripadvisor.com 43% · tripadvisor.in 29% · tripadvisor.ca 28% | 17.8% | 81 |
Chain marriott.com 47% · hilton.com 32% · ihg.com 20% | 16.3% | 74 |
Other tripadvisor.com.my 56% · journeyera.com 25% · hotelscombined.com.au 19% | 13.2% | 60 |
Independent Hotel sofitel.accor.com 41% · meininger-hotels.com 30% · palladiumhotelgroup.com 30% | 11.9% | 54 |
Editorial thehotelguru.com 39% · timeout.com 31% · mrandmrssmith.com 29% | 6.4% | 29 |
Community businesshotels.com 41% · solotravelhotels.com 31% · myboutiquehotel.com 28% | 5.9% | 27 |
Meta-search kayak.com 56% · hotelscombined.com 27% · momondo.com 16% | 4.6% | 21 |
Top hotel parent groups by Perplexity mentionsWorldwide
Each Perplexity 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 | Oberoi | 9 → 15 | +67% |
| 2 | Kempinski | 15 → 25 | +67% |
| 3 | Hilton | 98 → 141 | +44% |
| 4 | Wyndham | 13 → 18 | +38% |
| 5 | Radisson | 21 → 27 | +29% |
| 1 | Shangri-La | 25 → 16 | -36% |
| 2 | Four Seasons | 66 → 54 | -18% |
| # | Brand | Mentions | Hotels | W/W | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marriott | 257 | 158 | ↑ 14.7% | |
| 2 | Hilton | 141 | 80 | ↑ 43.9% | |
| 3 | IHG | 90 | 59 | ↑ 5.9% | |
| 4 | Hyatt | 87 | 52 | ↑ 2.4% | |
| 5 | Accor | 77 | 53 | ↑ 6.9% | |
| 6 | Four Seasons | 54 | 30 | ↓ 18.2% | |
| 7 | Radisson | 27 | 16 | ↑ 28.6% | |
| 8 | Mandarin Oriental | 26 | 17 | ↑ 4.0% | |
| 9 | Kempinski | 25 | 9 | ↑ 66.7% | |
| 10 | Taj | 22 | 11 | ↑ 4.8% | |
| 11 | Minor | 20 | 13 | ↑ 25.0% | |
| 12 | Langham | 20 | 8 | · 0% | |
| 13 | Wyndham | 18 | 14 | ↑ 38.5% | |
| 14 | Peninsula | 17 | 10 | ↑ 6.3% | |
| 15 | Shangri-La | 16 | 10 | ↓ 36.0% | |
| 16 | Oberoi | 15 | 5 | ↑ 66.7% | |
| 17 | Sonesta | 8 | 5 | ↑ 166.7% | |
| 18 | Leela | 8 | 3 | ↑ 14.3% | |
| 19 | Rocco Forte | 7 | 3 | ↑ 250.0% | |
| 20 | Belmond | 7 | 3 | ↓ 12.5% |
Of the hotels named this week: how many resolved to a chain (Marriott / Accor / …), an independent property, a vacation rental, or stayed unmatched.
The 616 prompts we ask Perplexity 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).
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.