Hotel AI Visibility: Direct Revenue & SEO for Boutique Hotels

Welcome everybody and thank you for joining today's boutique hotel news webinar in partnership today with Stiplo

and we are talking about hotel visibility and direct revenue opportunities in the A of AI search

probably one of the hottest topics in the industry today and I have a brilliant panel to talk you through some

uh practical insights today. So my name is Eloise Hansen. I am the editor of Boutique Hotel News and we are

an online trade publication. We cover boutique lifestyle, luxury hotels and branded residences worldwide.

As I mentioned, today's webinar is in partnership with Ziplo. And Ziplo is an ecommerce optimization platform for

hotels and it acts as a digital mystery shopper to drive direct bookings and identify gaps where hotelers are losing

revenue. We do have Carlo on the call today. You'll be hearing plenty more from him later. Um, and further details

about Stiplo are in our resources folder. So please do um uh explore that resources folder to learn more to tell

you where to find that resources folder. If you click on the um more button in the bottom of your toolbar with the

three dots, click on more and you'll be able to find a resources file and in there you'll be able to find all all

relevant details. So how will this webinar run today? We'll spend around 45 minutes in

conversation with our experts today. Um, and we will be taking some questions from our audience. So, um, anyone who is

tuning in live today, if you have any pressing questions, I suggest you get around to those quickly. You'll be

surprised how time does fly. So, you can you do so um by using the Q&A function. Again, if you click on more at the

bottom of your toolbar, you'll be able to find a Q&A box and you can post uh post your questions in there and I will

get round to asking those questions as and when relevant. Um, and today's webinar is being recorded. So, everyone

that has registered today will receive a copy of that recording along with a written summary of the key um insights

that have been discussed. Um and also uh if you have time when you leave this webinar any feedback around how we can

improve would be really appreciated. So firstly

um before we meet our speakers I would like to launch a poll just to get our audience members a little bit loose a

little bit thinking about what we are going to be talking about today. Um and our question today is around how

prepared is your hotel's digital footprint for AI search engines? Are you fully optimized? That is you are

actively tracking AI search visibility. Are you work in progress? So you've made some maybe subtle mainly basic updates.

Are you unprepared? So you are focusing on traditional SEO and OTAAS or are you unsure of where to start? And if you are

unsure of where to start, panic not because that is exactly why we are hosting today's webinar. So don't be

afraid to cast your votes. We will leave that poll open um throughout today's webinar. We will be sharing the results

of that poll towards the end. And whilst you're casting your votes, let's meet our experts today. So I'm going to move

from left to right as per the PowerPoint screen. I'll ask each to introduce themselves very briefly. Um and you will

also be able to find um all speaker LinkedIn profiles and bios in our resources folder too. So Carlo, let's

kick off with yourself and welcome. >> Thank you Louise. I'm Carlo. I'm the founder of Stiplo. Until January this

year, I was chief digital officer at Enismore, part of a core group. As my role, one of my main focuses was

optimizing the e-commerce flow of Enismore. And uh that's where the idea for steeplo came from because we had a

lot of challenges with making sure our sites were visible, making sure that uh you know our guest went through the

booking flow in a smooth way and converted correctly. So that's what we're going to be talking today.

Thank you very much, Carlo Vincent. Welcome over to you. >> Thanks, Eloise. And hello everybody. I'm

Vincent Thomson, originally from Amsterdam, currently based in uh in Spain. I am one of the managing partners

at Gain. Uh Gain is an advisory firm with over 30 advisors um that operate globally. Uh we serve hotel groups uh

anything from independent hotel groups up until really the large the large brands and we also serve hotel

technology companies. Um, right. So, we help uh both parties in commercial technology and marketing

transformations. Um, and we've been uh we've met we've been at it for the last five years. Um, and yeah, really excited

to be here. >> Thank you very much, Vincent. Lindsay, over to you.

>> Hello and good morning from the US, I should say. I'm Lindsay Kryer, executive vice president of commercial strategy

for Lark Hotels. I oversee the commercial side of across a portfolio of about 80 plus lark branded and

independent boutique hotels. Um, and really we're looking at how we drive demand, which channels it comes from,

and how much revenue we capture. So this is a great panel to be on because lately that means orchestrating our website

booking review and media partners around the question when travelers are looking at AI and where to stay how do we show

up and can they book us. >> Thank you very much Lindsay and Amriita over to you.

>> Hello everyone. So my name is Amriita. I'm director of commercial strategy at Iconic Hotels and Resorts. So we are

part of Elenor. Uh we are an owned and operated portfolio of 15 hotels across five countries. So some of the names you

may have heard is Clifton House, Tren Palace or Hotel Excelsier on Venice Leo. Uh so probably with the Venice Festival

just uh being there with the film festival hopefully you've heard about it. So my role uh similar to Lindsay's

actually is to basically make sure that uh the three teams which is revenue, sales and marketing are collaborating

together and what I say kind of singing from the same hymn sheet. Um so super excited to be here. Obviously you know

how each AI is changing uh how the guests find and book us is a very important topic something we discuss in

our commercial meetings quite a lot. So very excited to have this discussion. >> Brilliant. Thank you all so much. So,

let's let's kick off. Let's dive straight in. And I'm going to begin with Carlo because Carlo um I understand that

you um ran a study in Barcelona um examining um how hotels or or auditing I should

say how these hotels appear in um in in AI searches and and their visibility rankings. So before we talk about the

findings, I want to know why why why did you launch this study in the first place?

Absolutely. So AI visibility really became a topic for hotels probably about 18 24 months ago when uh some of our

owners while I was at Dennis M coming to us and asking us Carlo I just went on Chipity ask best hotel in Miami Beach

and we were not there. >> How do we make sure that actually we appear in that type of searches and so

me and the team started looking into it. uh we started reading all that there is out there and it became clear this was a

very hot topic but there was very little proper information and studies about it and most of the studies that are out

there are mostly showing who is ranking and who is not ranking. There was very little information about why somebody

was on the list or not on the list. And this is where the idea for this Barcelona study came to me. Uh when I

left uh N is more than I decided to try to do a control study looking not only who is visible but also trying to

understand why they are visible. We chose the city of Barcelona and we effectively asked about 27,000

AI questions and trying to understand who was visible out of about 650 hotels in Barcelona and trying to understand

what the hotels that were visible had in common that the hotels that were not visible didn't have. So here on the

screen is one of the key findings. We discovered that independent hotels are much more likely to be invisible to AI

compared to uh chain hotels. In Barcelona, it means that although less than 40% of properties are part of a

chain, they are the lion share of visibility. However, also very interestingly, once the pro the property

is visible, so the eye knows it exist, it's as likely to be recommended than chain hotels. So it's more about being

visible, but once you're visible, you know, the AI is as likely to tell the guest that that is, you know, your

independent property is a great property to stay in. So there is really this discovery gap rather than a quality gap.

Mhm. >> Another very interesting finding that we had is if you go to the next one is

actually finding this gap between you are visible and then this means in our uh study the the AI knows about your

hotel and talks about your hotel and actually the AI links to your website because eventually most hotels really

care about direct bookings. What we saw is that only in 7% of cases the chip or Gemini talks about a specific hotel and

links to that specific hotel which means that very often maybe I say is you know you should stay at Carlos hotel the link

it doesn't send to Carlos Hotel website it sends to Booking.com or Expedia or somewhere else. What we saw also is that

uh as expected OTAAS is much are much more often linked to to the by the AI engines and therefore uh it's something

that the hotels need to bear in mind and uh if you look at the last page which is actually what drives the

visibility we did this big piece of statistical analysis and we saw the number one

factor that define like increase your chances of being visible was actually the number of Google reviews. So this is

the single strongest uh factor to define whether you're visible or not. It doesn't matter so

much whether it's a good reviews or bad reviews. It's about the Google reviews. Trip Advisor or Booking.com reviews were

important but much less than the Google there. I can go much more in detail why it's that. So for example with the

hotels that we work with one of the first thing we always recommend them to do is to switch their post emails when

they ask for a recommendation for for a review to move away from Trip Advisor or some other site and tell their guest to

leave reviews on Google because that is where a lot of this visibility is driven from. Then we also saw SEO is very

important domain authority the score reviews and then the content. The last thing that we were very surprised by is

actually that a lot of the new fancy things that today uh are being seen as potentially very positive in terms of

visibility do not have actually much of an impact. LLM.txt which is a a metadata uh file that lots of people recommend uh

having actually doesn't really have any impact on your visibility. There's much more behind this, but we

have a full study and we're working on a London study now. So, there is about double the size of the Barcelona one.

So, it's coming out in a couple of weeks and uh yeah, make sure we share with you.

>> Thank you very much, Carlo. And if anybody wanted to um get their hands on this Barcelona report, where can they

where can they do so? >> Yeah, we have it on our website. If you go to steeplo.io, io uh you will find uh

there in the header there is a link to the to the website or you can reach out to me directly after this webinar. I'm

sure my details are somewhere on the uh resources. >> They absolutely are. Thank you so much

Carlo. So that's helped to sort of set the scene as to what is happening in the market um and some some taster points as

to as to how to maybe um improve your your visibility. We're going to take a step back first before we we start

refining our answers here because I'd like to come to Vincent now and ask a sort of from from a macro eagleeye view

over hotels more broadly. How is AI rewriting the rules of global distribution?

>> Yeah, I think it's a good question and um the findings that Carlo just discussed are are so interesting I think

right whereas a lot of people thought that maybe the the Google score or um your positive reviews um are really

going to put you forward in the top five, top 10 on ChetBT or CL or Gemini or whatever large language model

travelers use right now. um it actually is the volume right that matters a lot in the physibility. So it doesn't really

matter if you have the good or the bad. So I think that's an interesting interesting finding that that Carlo

discussed. Um, and where it really comes down to is it goes from search to recommendations, right? Whereas a

traveler would go um on one of the large OTAA sites uh first, then to Google, then maybe to Instagram or Tik Tok or

whatsoever, JPT or any of of the large language models all boils that down into one chat. um combining your price,

combining all the reviews, the location, um even images now, right? Uh are are are pulling into being pulled into one

centralized chat. Um that it's super simple for travelers to compare all those results, right? And then based on

all your memory over the last what is it 18 months that you told um your AI it will provide you a recommendation of

those um a personalized recommendation of those of those hotels right and the the properties. So I think the the the

rule that is being really rewritten is um it's it's more of a it it it really pulls it all together right interpreters

don't have to go to all these different channels. Um so that's that's uh super interesting to see I think. Um the

visibility over the rankings is uh is is interesting and then it you know these the AI has really become a gatekeeper

right whereas the large OTAAS used to be a gatekeeper for a lot of the travelers um AI is becoming more and more of a

gatekeeper. So making sure that um your properties are aligned to those um to the indications that Carlo just uh just

provided um is is super key. uh moving forward >> it's we've we I've certainly had

conversations with the team as well around with with AI now acting as a an extra layer between the OTAAS and the

hotelers what impact does this mean on the OTAAS like how how are the OTAAS going to

evolve in response to this new challenge that is now being posed I don't know if you've had any thoughts Vincent around

the impact on the OTAAS Um well I mean 12 months ago uh there were a lot of predictions that the OTAAS

would uh would would slowly disappear. I think uh you know and that's that's I think it's um people are dreaming a

little bit that that's not going to happen. I mean the the large RTAs they have so much budget in order to to um to

test right the a lot of these guys they do a thousand AP tests a day of which color and which text and

>> um what what first image to show. So you bet they're they're they're searching for more and more ways in order to

disrupt and making sure that they're not going to be lost behind. But I think it's a a huge opportunity for

independent hotels and boutique hotels um in order to st to stand out right it makes it provides so much more

opportunity I think to stand out um over a a large brand um uh because you can give it so much more context and so much

more visibility really um that the large brands you know are now trying to do on on the large OTAAS right and sure the

OTAAS themselves are going are you know integrating with some of these uh large language models. You s you saw Expedia

right um being one of the first guys integrating with uh with CHP they were I think one of the top 20 launch partners

um a couple of months ago um but I don't think boutique hotel they have to be afraid there's still a lot of

opportunity um and um in order to thrive yeah >> let's hear from our boutique hotel and

hear about where they see the opportunities than the blind spot. So, Lindsay, let's come to you first because

I could see you nodding along to what Vincent was saying there. So, where do you see the opportunities with AI

discovery and where do you see some challenges emerging? >> Yeah, and I think that's such a great

question and to Vincent and Carlo's point, it goes to the reviews, right? And I think that hasn't changed. And I

think that's really nice to see that like driving guest reviews, finding feedback, you know, making sure that

we're actually responding to those reviews is still going to be impactful whether it's on Google SEO or AIdriven.

So I think that's so great for boutique properties cuz we can control the controllable. Um, to Carlo's point, I

think one of the, you know, things that really jumped out to me is that we've been talking about this structured,

consistent, trustworthy information that needs to be built not only within your website, but also in your reviews and

Reddit and all these different channels. So, it was interesting to see that that actually was a lot lower in how it's

impacting your visibility than what the assumptions were. So I think our opportunity is and our blind spot really

is how are we showing up and how do we see that. Um so without just going through and constantly shopping like

we've done so so much in the past. Um, so we have to constantly put that pressure on our stakeholders and our

partners to ensure that they're actively working on that, whether it's your website, your booking engine, whatever

that is that's kind of fueling the background to enhance that AI journey. >> Thanks, Lindsay. And Amriita, what are

your thoughts here? Where do you see the opportunities and and blind spots from the the hotelia perspective?

>> Yeah, absolutely. So I would say I think the first place to start for me anyway which we've been doing is actually

looking what the AI platforms like ChatV Gemini and Propexity what do they say about your hotel. So if a guest was

supposed to you know be a like a guest and check what are they saying and sometimes you do see old information

come up. So you know for example a Strand Palace Hotel to take an example has it meeting rooms um fully renovated

and you would look for it and it's nowhere to be found right. So I think first of all it would be good to really

sense check what is the guest seeing. So if somebody's looking for meeting rooms in common garden do we actually come up

or not. Um and then it's trying to go in and fix where you find the sources where it is incorrect. It could be your OTAA

listing could be your Google profile whatever it is. Just make sure that consistent information is on all your

platforms I think is super super important. And then it's how about how do you bring that story some volume

right? So if we've had a reverb or you know we were the main hotel in the film festival for uh Venice, how do we make

sure that that story is out there? So I think that comes with basically press coverage or partnerships uh that you may

do. Um so giving a practical example of of the film festival in Excelsier. So our team really worked hard on the PR

part of it, the partner uh partnerships that we planned while being on site there and the brand and the social

content. Right. So, I think it's not just about putting the story on your social channels or on your website. It's

really getting as much extensive editorial and social coverage that you can from outside of your own channels to

make sure that if somebody does check on EI, where should I stay that you are the property that comes up and thankfully I

checked it this morning and excelsia did come up first which made me very happy. Um, so I think it's just about trying to

fix the things that you see. It's a gradual process I think. Um I want to speak to for ourselves we are you know

definitely not there yet. So we are fixing as we see the errors come up and make sure like the whole team is aligned

on getting the consistent messaging across every platform because AI will bring up results that it trusts. So it

will look at press coverage, it will look at your website, it will look at um you know reviews that we talked about

which is really important as well. And I think what's the nice thing about hotels and hospitality is that it's actually

brought the hospitality to the forefront. So that's in itself become a new distribution channel for you, right?

So the operations matter more than it ever did. So I think slowly with all of these things together we definitely get

there because it is it is hard because you're not going to know what >> you know Chad is going to recommend and

everybody's checking now for a short list of hotels that you can go to. So, it's really important that those moments

that you associate yourself with is kind of built in into your content. And I think that's where boutique

independent hotels do have the leg up, right? Is we are able to have that richer content. Um, which is so great

whether it's on social or it's actually in your web or it's in your reviews. Um, it's something that you can be really

creative with to make sure that you're telling those stories which I think Lur has done such a great job of. Um, but

you're right, we're we're not there yet and we're constantly having to challenge ourselves of like, yes, we can have the

story, but it needs to be readable as well. >> And just to piggyback off both Lindsay

and Amriita's point there, if you haven't voted in the poll, please do so now. So, how prepared is your hotel's

digital footprint for AI search engines? We will be sharing the results of that poll at the end of the webinar. So

please, if you haven't already done so, please get involved. There is something to be said here around making um

staying a breast of progress, staying in front of change or being prepared to embrace change when that comes. And I

know that the um call it the modern hotel stack can certainly cause some headaches for hotelers. And I want to

come to Vincent here to talk about the current modern hotel stack and where where is it for one of a better word

failing in terms of feeding that clean rich data that both Lindsay and Amriita are talking about to these AI agents and

and these answer engines. Yeah, it's a good question and um you know at at Gain we do about two or three

hotel audits of the technology stack a week um whether that's distribution or uh you know operations and consistently

we see that you know the the hotel stack is especially in distribution it's designed to sell rooms right it's not

designed to talk to autonomous AI agent that are going to book your hotel for travelers right so there's so much um I

want to say lack of visibility and and data that just doesn't passes through to the PMS to the CRS to your channel

manager uh your booking engine. So I I I totally agree what Lindsay is saying um is that you need to we really need to

see and um audit your um your technology vendors that you work that you work with, right? because these guys are you

what we usually see is that it's um it's it's pretty fragmented, right? You have all these different vendors and they're

not they're not talking to each other. And I'm not saying, hey, look for an all-in-one system because sometimes um

it's it's really better for depending on your brand and depending on your operations to have the best in breed PMS

and the best in breed booking engine and the best in breed payment provider. Um I'm not saying you know disrupt all of

that but what I'm saying is that yes you need to take a closer look at what data flows um within those systems and making

sure that um there's not like a how would you say this a broken chain right within that because if that happens your

the AI agents can't see can't talk to your website um you know we we have a lot of we have a lot of interesting

findings that we do in these audits um one of them is actually in a UK K chain a couple of weeks ago that the booking

engine was actually showing and you know don't get scared that we're showing uh hotels all across that region in the UK

not just from that portfolio. So as a traveler I would go on you know brand.com and I could see 300 instead of

12 properties right. Um, so the AI agents, they also think, wait, what's going on, right? This is not this it

this it doesn't make sense. So, let me actually not go on this website and don't recommend it because something is

is not right here, right? So, um, definitely audit your your your text stack, all your systems and make sure

that that AI is actually able to talk there and making sure that um data is transferred um to those agents.

[clears throat] >> I'm going to bounce this question or a follow-up question to to Amriita here

around um because I think you talked about auditing and and how do you um constantly keep track of of where you

are and how you're performing. How are you navigating um call it legacy technology or existing

technology to to keep all these processes as frictionless, as seamless and as modern as possible?

>> Yeah. Um I would agree with Vincent you know in terms of like systems we just need fewer systems we need clean data I

think it's a word that's come up quite a lot but it's very difficult to do [laughter]

you know to to make sure that the data you have is clean interestingly so you know talking about us here we just

started uh about a year ago so our platform is super new and we looked at all of the uh different systems the core

systems we had in terms of our PMS um you know CMS everything together to see okay what are

all these individual hotels working with and how do we all bring it together so it sits in one place so I think that's

quite important as well so you know your reservation rates your guest data your profile guest profile so you can

personalize the stay so everything under one system is quite good to have and that's what we are trying definitely

here and because our portfolio is so varied it's been a huge change for us here uh but we're working on it slowly

But I think also what to remember as well is one thing is when somebody searches on an AI platform and you get a

short list of hotels, right? What we would call kind of pre the click and one is after the click. So somebody has

found you, how do you then make sure that you don't lose that person in the process and actually convert that

booking and I think that's something we can definitely influence quite a lot. So you know just make the booking journey

kind of seamless for the guests so that if they are arriving on your platform to make sure they don't have to type the

dates again or the page is not slow or you know the price looks the same as what the AI just told them. I think

those are things we can definitely work on ourselves because if we don't do that they'll just go back to booking.com

right so all of these focuses I think kind of sit with us here um with the revenue team to make sure you know we've

got the same rates rate parity has become even more important same room description same par same same policies

everywhere so you give yourself a chance of getting that booking to come direct as well and also um I think which is

super important uh which we all know everybody's now searching on mobile as well. And sometimes you forget to see

how does your booking engine actually look on the mobile platform and how fast it is cuz this is where you lose them

and they'll go back to booking.com. >> So I think there are just kind of pre-click how do you make sure you get

recommended and postclick how do you make sure that that booking converts um is something that we do have control

over. >> Yeah. And and I think jumping in on this section, I think Amita 100% uh agreeing

with you. What we have been seeing is that AI is very meticulous when they're looking at the website, they look at all

the content. If you're asking them to check the pricing, the terms and condition, etc. They actually read the

whole thing. And for example, we have probably so far looked at the website of about 5,000 different hotels and we have

found about 23% of hotels have major issues with their terms and condition at the point of booking. Traditionally, a

human only clicks terms and condition once every 20 times according to research. An AI agent checks your terms

and condition before booking every single [laughter] time. If the terms condition is sending you to the wrong

hotel or somewhere else, go back to booking.com. So yeah, this is super important and so much so much more so

now. >> Absolutely. Thank you, Carlo. I appreciate that. Yeah. And I and I'll

jump in too because you know really with the boutique independent experience I think even if you have different

platforms whether you know we have Olive that sits on top of Muse um but really it's that converting that high intent

guest that already came to your site. So how do you make it as frictionless as possible? I love that you asked that

question, Eloise, because we just started including something like Apple or Google Pay, right? So that when

you're at checkout, it's not confusing to the guests. It's straight. There's no friction. You can hit your Apple Pay. I

know we all do it. Um it's like free money and we love, you know, hitting that little button. Um but it needs to

feel like that same experience. So it doesn't matter who your partner is once you're on that site. the path from the

website to your booking engine to our loyalty program, whatever that is, needs to feel like one experience once you get

on to those websites. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. I'm going to jump back over

to Carlo here because it's great to hear, you know, the the forward thinking hotelers who are um not just aware of of

what's happening but but optimizing their workflows to stay ahead of these um evolving trends. But what would be

your advice, Carlo, to perhaps anyone who's listening today? Um, and wanting to start measuring their AI visibility

and their conversion rates. How what would be your advice here? How should commercial teams be looking at this?

>> Absolutely. And I think both Lins and Amarita mentioned mention it the beginning. It's very simple. Just log in

to Chachet or Claude or whatever is your favorite agent and actually ask questions that are relevant for your

type of guest. What does your hotel guest going to ask to their AI assistant before they book a trip? And uh you know

you can see whether your property appears, whether your competitors appear, what the AI recommends and what

it talks about. I think this one is simple and can be done right after this webinar. So it's very practical. What we

do with steeplo, we look at this on three different layers. We look at what they say about your property. And I

think Amita was mentioning it about making sure that your content is relevant, is up to date. So, for

example, if you're doing a refurbishment, you need to make sure that the content is reflecting the

refurbishment and is not still talking about the hotel before the refurbishment. The second level is your

let's call it local level questions and these are questions that where your hotel should be appearing in. So, for

example, if you have a wedding venue uh outside of London, you should ask those questions that are relevant for that

type of guest. So, this is like a step up. And then the last layer which I think is the more interesting is do you

appear in the broader questions one of the strong one one of the new things with AI is that people are using it for

starting the planning very early in their journey so that whereas on booking.com traditional you arrive on

booking.com where you know you want to go to Bristol you know I need a hotel in central Bristol tell me where to go

whereas if somebody with AI starts way earlier say hey I'm thinking to take like a station within the half term I

want to go within 3 hours of London blah blah blah blah blah so that you need to make sure that your visibility starts

with those highlevel question because if you only get at the top of terminal hotel in Bristol but you never appear in

where shall I go in you know in the west of England over the term then you're already losing a big chunk of guest and

clearly you know you can do it manually you and have like setup automation or you can use a tool

>> clearly steeplo is one of those tools but you know there is there is plenty you know there there is plenty of uh uh

ways to do it and I think it's something that everybody in 2026 needs to be doing >> for sure

>> you've just touched on it um there Carlo and I think Lindsay also touched on um suppose booking flows and the economics

of customer acquisition and I'm going to bounce over to Vincent before coming back to Carlo here. Um Vincent, my

question to you is how is the rise of I call it AIdriven intent changing the economics of that customer acquisition

journey that Carlo was just mentioning. Um and what does this mean for actual costs to hotelers?

Yeah, I think there's a a really good opportunity for for boutique and independent properties um to increase

your direct bookings and to decrease your reliance on OTAAS um and even Google, right? Um Google in a sense, not

your not your reviews, you know, please, you know, push those reviews to Google. Um but uh I think I think it's going

it's there's definitely an opportunity to decrease your costs. um it you just need to make sure that that

direct channel is optimized uh even better than it was yesterday, right? So there's even more pressure to there was

already a huge pressure on you know increasing your direct channel. Now it's even more right. Um because what we

won't you know something that we need to watch out for I think is still that we don't make the same mistake I you know

I'm going to call it that we did in the past right relying too much on third parties and you know yes you know maybe

we start with 5% but uh you know within I think in Amsterdam you can't even get on um our our big friends um if you

don't if you don't uh um you know increase your commission to 20 or 5% in the inner city, right? If you don't pay

that, you don't you don't show up on our on our platform, right? So, becoming too reliant on third parties is is uh really

a challenge here, I think. Um so, yes, I think the the the the cost will decrease as long as you increase your investment

in your website and visibility on AI. Um so, it's uh it's not the chicken or the egg, but it's definitely uh there's a

way off here. Yeah, for sure. Um and lastly I think the attribution here is important right we can like we

talked about a lot of OTAAS don't know how much traffic is is being generated from AI right so using tools whether

it's TLO or or another tool to track how how much traffic is actually um coming from you know large language models it's

a good it's a very good start because without that data you're not going to be able to do anything

I um will be hearing from from Lindsay and Amriita shortly around what what they're seeing in terms of traffic

coming from AI channels versus traditional channel uh channels. But before we do so, um I'm going to pick up

on something that Amriita was talking about sort of pre-click and postclick. And my next question is is focused

around that postclick conversion. So, Carlo, where are you seeing that booking path typically break down when you

you've got your AI recommendation, but but hotelers aren't able to convert. >> Absolutely. And this is what going to

happen over the next 18 months. You know, the conversation has been so far about are you visible? Can AI see you?

Now if you've been following the the news over the last month month and a half everybody's talking about it is aic

bookings getting muse instinct dot all these new AI personal AI assistant to go from sharing knowledge to take action

and this is where it's becoming more and more important making sure that your site is set up correctly as Amriita and

Lisa were saying to make sure that an agent understands your site, trust your site and can complete a transaction.

It's still early stages but the you know the space is moving extremely fast. >> What we have been seeing is uh from from

the steeple point of view AI visibility is just the first step. the hospitality operator what they really care about is

actually can this visibility convert to a booking and where we see things breaking I mentioned terms and condition

it's one of the big ones because very few humans actually do read the terms and condition but what we have seen time

and time again is that if the terms and condition are broken wrong there's misleading this is something that an AI

agent actually flags and then bounce answers to somewhere else most likely an OTAA to complete the booking or to a

competitor. Another thing that we have seen is the information and the material that

the Nutell uses for facilitating the bookings for sharing information is not actually reachable by AI. So there's a

lot of content on website in PDFs, files, in popups, in models that actually are very difficult for an AI to

read and therefore you may think you have all the information but the information is not actually visible and

this is another area where things break very often. So would you advise me to embed it

directly as versus >> Yeah, I think there is a the push should be to make sure the

information the critical information is not in PDF is not in models. It needs to be easy to reach by an agent.

>> Again it's not a lot of what we are talking about is just e-commerce best practices, e-commerce hygiene. So the

reason why now it's becoming particularly important is because there is this probably three to four years

where you know the distribution AI you know distribution is being completely turn upside down thanks to AI and hotels

that are now taking the steps to make sure they land in the right side they're going to see a big benefit for example

last thing that we we noticed in the London study is that when we run Barcelona study in June there was very

few hotels direct links in Chip. >> Now in London because Chip roll out uh maps throughout their estate pretty much

every single answer from CHP about hotels as a hotel you know map of the city and links directly to the hotels.

So what hotels are being mentioned in the maps are the hotels that have clear maps information coordinated SAT and CHP

can read them and this like for example a massive upside for the hotels that are set up for it

>> and I would sorry [laughter] >> yeah I would like to add there as well what we've started doing um and again

quite new to it is bu building our uh rebuilding basically our tech stack as well with that in mind uh as Carla was

just explaining so from our content management content management system um to a schema markup uh which is something

I had to learn which is basically a standardized code um that you add to your website's HTML to help the search

engines and AI systems understand what the meaning of your content is right so rather than just a picture just saying

what it is it's actually describing a lot in detail behind it coded so that if somebody is looking for I don't know

making this up weddings in a country house in London that we do show up. So I think that's been quite a big change for

us as well. So really looking at the AI summaries that you get when you Google something to see what is it actually

saying and how can we influence that from the back end. So that's something that our marketing team is working on as

well. >> And Carlo are there any other types of content that AI AI engines reward?

>> Well absolutely. So there is a there are two areas. One is on-site content. So is the content that you

manage directly and this is for example is right by writing your content and especially the metadata which is what

exist behind uh the pages that humans can read. It definitely helps. It's also about the way you explain the content.

For example, uh most hotels have a page saying how to reach the hotel and let's take it from the train station. You in

the past you might have had like a Google maps or just like a picture how to get from your hotel to the to the

train station and you showed in the map that it was 5 minutes walk but AI is very good with text. They can read the

images but they are a bit lazy so that they don't actually read it. So when you ask a chip I need a hotel five minutes

from the train station in Bristol is more likely you get skipped if that is information is not easy to read. Whereas

if you write and tell is only 5 minutes down main road blah blah blah that's more likely to be picked up. So that

kind of like answering content is shown to help you being linked once you're already visible. So there is quite a bit

of uh work you need to do before but clearly making the your content easier for AI to digest. I think that's key.

And then the second part is actually more traditional SEO. You need also your content to be around the websites more

broadly. Booking.com and OTAAS are also a great source of information. But it this is where another of the question

you had where do we see things failing? Very often an OTAA has slightly different policies between what you have

on your site and what you sell on the OTAAS and the AI sometimes picks the information from the OTAA that disagree

on your website and we're seeing it child policy, dog policies, opening hours, restaurants that there's very

often a misalignment. >> Carlo, would you say FAQ building FAQs on the website helps as well? like as

many >> once once you're once you're visible. >> Yeah,

>> it doesn't help. It doesn't help with the first step of being visible. >> But then when the eye is selecting

between, you know, when usually people ask three or four or five questions to the eye and that's where it actually

helps. It usually does not help so much with the first step. >> Got it.

>> Yeah. I was I was going to say something similar that it almost sounds like you're adding an FAQ almost directly in

your content. Be it a location, be it you know by the pool you can access food or beverage or whatever it might be

is it's it's explaining it in in simple terms without it >> yeah customers having to to go and find

it. Let's let's come back to the hotelers on the panel. Um, so I mentioned this earlier and I think

Vincent mentioned this earlier around what volume of traffic is truly actually coming from AI channels now versus your

traditional ones. Um, so I'll kick off with Lindsay. Tell us what you're seeing, please.

>> Yeah. Um, I still think it's very muddy to see, you know, analytics wise what's directly coming from AI because it's

still showing up as branded search or direct, right? it's still coming into our site direct. Um, so we do have to

lean into our partners paid search within our team campaign data to see when AIdriven research actually turns

into branded demand. So I still think that's really muddy. So within our internal team, revenue, marketing,

sales, we're sharing one set of facts, right? We're always looking at the same rates, policies, amenities, shared

audience. So, we need to make sure that we're kind of casting that net further to see what else the audiences are

showing. But I think what it comes down to is our KPIs need to remain the same. So whether it's internal or with our

partners, it's direct share of revenue and net cost per booking. That that doesn't really change whether it's

coming from AI or whether it's, you know, coming through social or your branded site. um we need to make sure

that we're holding everyone accountable to the same KPIs, right? We're going to drive our um direct channel and lower

the cost. Um and I [clears throat] would love to come back just to Carlo's point and his study about the bigger hotel

chains having more resources, right? So, we really kind of have to play with the tools that we have at hand. So, using

Claude or Gemini or whoever your favorite AI assistant is as your multiplier. So doing those searches,

understanding how AI is describing your hotels. I think we constantly have to go in that share that data with our

partners, share that data with our internal teams and ask them to do the same because the more points of um

content that we have to analyze where we need to go next is really going to drive the results.

>> And before I bump this over to Amriita, I'm going to stick with you Lindsay for a moment. Do you have any other

practical strategies that you would like to share with our audience members around building that digital trust and

and driving those direct bookings? What's working for you? >> Yeah, and you know, I I think with over,

you know, 100,000 reviews within our Lark hotels, I think really building that trust and content within our

reviews has been really really great. Um, we have a 4.4 star average across all of our channels. Um, so really not

just having the content, but when they get into our site, when they do their research, however AI is grabbing us,

it's somewhere that people find the content trustworthy. And not only that, but they find the hotel trustworthy and

they want to go through and book that. Um, and then just consistency across all channels. I think Carlo even used the

example of if we say we're dog friendly or that the beach is accessible with your dog and you check in and the beach

is actually closed to your dog to the dogs, right? That's really going to create this content that's not merging

together. So, making sure that that's frictionless across all channels is really what we're leaning into.

>> Thanks, Lindsay. and and Amita h are you seeing traffic from AI channels or or how does that compare with traditional

is it similar to Lindsay different >> look I think I completely agree with Lindsay because it's very hard to

measure at the moment right because as we were talking previously the discovery can start on AI which which does happen

right so you you're having a conversation with whoever you prefer my chat GPD is called Noah you know so when

I'm speaking to Noah and asking where I should go in Greece it will give me a short list but that

doesn't matter like I can I can have a look at it and then go on booking.com or I can go to the direct website of

whichever hotel was recommended so the last click or would we say the final source of the booking will never tell us

where the decision actually started right so that decision actually for me started with Noah my chat GBD

>> um and then I booked it on a on their direct website as a result, but they will never know that that's where it

came from. So I think like measuring that is quite difficult at the moment. Hopefully it will get easier, but I

think there is a bit of a breakage there. So again, it goes back to how do you actually make sure that you are

visible, which is, you know, what we've talked about in quite a bit of extent here. So I think first making sure that

the visibility is there and then not losing them through the conversion is um is what I think is important. But to

measure it, I think it's a bit hard at the moment. >> And is is that gray area, that muddy

area, um affecting in any way how your teams, be it revenue, sales, marketing, how they're all collaborating

internally, or is it still the same, still focused on those? >> No. Um, and again, sorry, I'm quoting

Lindsay again. It's very important that we do have a shared goal and that we are all working towards the same KPI, right?

And I think having everybody in the room and just picking a set of questions and seeing what AI gives you as answers and

seeing where somebody could prefer an OTAA over you because the price is different or whatever it may be. So

having just shared goals that you work towards gets everybody to collaborate together. Um so I think it's changing.

Our commercial meetings look very different than they did a few years ago. Um but um yeah, I I think collaboration

just can only come from shared goals and shared KPIs. >> And I think that shared goal and shared

KPI takes the scariness of the unknown away for the teams, right? So you're still driving to success. You're still

driving revenue. You're still making the guest experience exactly what you want it. You want them to go tell stories,

right? So what we do in hospitality doesn't change. We just have to understand different aspects of how

people are finding us. So I think with that shared goal takes that scariness away from your teams and honestly it

will for the guests as well. >> Yeah. >> Thank you both. I'm going

[clears throat] to bounce over to Vincent um because something that I've heard a hotelier share with me

was around uh challenges with loyalty and it was the fact that some customers were more loyal to the OTAAS than they

were the hotel brands. Um, so with the rise of AI helping to research and at some point ultimately

book with this rise of agentic booking. Um, how do you think that this is going to shape

travel consumer behavior and that loyalty piece in the long term? Could it bring us closer to said brand versus the

OTAAS? Yeah, I mean AI has a lot to do with this, of course. Um, but I I still think

it it starts with the basics, right? Like just just before this this uh this panel started about two hours ago. Um I

booked a hotel in uh in Portugal for a couple months. Um okay, this is not part hotel, so it's none of the uh it's not

large, it's not iconic. Um unfortunately, next time next time, guys. Um but this is a yeah particular

independent in in Portugal and I was looking on on CHPT uh on booking on uh their own hotel their hotel website and

still the direct website for the same array for the same uh type of room same dates still 50 more expensive per night

than booking.com right so come on like it's 2026 um there's no reason why your direct website should

um higher than a book.com, right? So basic rate parity >> Vincent sometimes do naughty things, you

know. >> Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] That's true. >> Just putting it out there.

>> That's true. For sure. For sure. And it's not it's not necessarily the hotel's fault, but it is the traveler.

They don't really care, right? So, um I think yes, there's there's something to say on AI is influencing the loyalty of

guests. um whether that's more to the OTAAS or to the hotel independents or is it really to the AI itself

>> right um because now AI knows so much about you and it can provide so many personalized recommendations

um so I think it's it's interesting to see that that AI is getting a lot more trust from travelers and hopefully it's

going to take take that away from the OTAAS and I think again there's an opportunity for um a lot of the hotel to

provide more personalized um loyalty benefits on their on their direct websites. Um and then showcasing that

and uh telling the AIS that these things exist, right? Because the majority of the of the you know audits that we do um

the the loyalty benefits only become visible at checkout. Um right it it's really true like there's no and where is

the OTAAS provide that up on um you know discovery right if you book now you get 10% off you get free breakfast free

installations >> um so I think I think let's start with the basics uh honestly and and I know

it's it's it's quite hard but it's yeah it's crucial >> just last thing because I think it's

very relevant is there is now thanks to AI And thanks to like to to to a couple of uh features that uh for example we

are able to activate you can provide your the ani agent a different rate code compared to what a traditional visitor

will see. Therefore to avoid this issue of the OTAA undercutting you, you can actually have this special AI price

which is ephemeral. So it just lives in that specific conversation which we have seen actually leads in a way better

conversion because the AI effectively has an incentive for like to the user to book now at a better rate of what is

possible outside. >> It's a good point >> and um sorry I just wanted to touch upon

the previous question um about the the the visibility or the tracking of the bookings. Um there's really no reason

why your booking engines whatever which whatever booking instance you're you're using as a hotel why they should not be

able to track if a uh booking is coming from um perplexity um cla or cht or gemini right if they come directly from

those um AIS they should be able to track that and if they can't you need to look for a different booking engine

because it's it that's >> I think l you're right when when they do come you can track it but somebody could

have started start somewhere totally different but then gone ahead, you know. So, my point wasn't that you can't track

it. My point was just that it's blurry cuz the discovery started somewhere different and then the booking could

have come from a totally different source and then you can't track it. >> Yeah, that's that's that's for sure.

Yeah, that's uh that's hard to track. >> I'm I'm going to give the final couple of words to Carlo and I'm going to do

this whilst I'm sharing the results of our poll. So I asked at the beginning, how prepared is your hotel's digital

footprint for AI search engines? And 54% have voted that this is work in progress. So we have made basic updates.

Um followed by being unprepared. Um focus on traditional SEO and OTAAS at around 19%.

unsure of where to start came in at 15% and fully optimized. So, we are actively tracking AI search visibility at 12%.

So, I'm going to leave that up on screen. Carlo, I suppose I'm just going to leave some final words with you.

Practical advice. If anyone watching this webinar has to walk away with something that they can implement,

>> something that has proven successful, an area that they should focus on, what would that be?

>> Absolutely. Number one is monitoring. I think you need to check where you stand, whether it's a manual uh process where

you ask the CH GPS and others or you use a tool like Stiplo. Then the second part is uh making the law like the changes

that are easy technically to do like repoint your review to uh Google reviews rather than trip advisor. Make sure that

your content on your site on the OTAAS is aligned. Make sure that the booking flow end to end works. Those are like

the basics. And then there is the continuous improvement which I find it like interesting. you say fully

optimized is actively track AI search visibility is actually keeping not only like actively tracking but actually

taking action to make sure that you keep on improving because this is a space that changes extremely fast and I think

hotels that were at the edge like six months ago probably now they're already like a bit behind if they don't keep

following the space and making sure they are uh you know using a tool using like a pro internal process that allow them

to be at the cutting edge. >> Thank you, Carlo, Vincent, Lindsay, and Rita. Brilliant discussion. We're a

couple of minutes overrun. We could have carried on, I'm sure. But final notes, all the LinkedIn profiles of our

speakers today are in that resources folder. Please connect, carry on the conversation privately, ask the

questions that you want to. We're all learning, I think, is what I've figured from this conversation. We're all on

that journey together. Um, and the the way that we move forward is is to collaborate. So, LinkedIn profiles are

in that resources folder. I just have some final slides that I want to run through before I say a final goodbye

today. Um, I want to flag the next webinar um that I am hosting in the schedule which will be in a couple of

weeks time. um 2nd of November, the operator effect on branded residents success uh taking place at 2 p.m. and

the link to register will be popped into the chat and also in that resources folder. We would love to see you there.

And Urban Living Festival is taking place on the 16th of February 2027 in London. Um tickets are open for owners,

operators, investors, developers and lending sources across hospitality and living and those um can apply for a

complimentary pass online. So please do visit the urban living festival website. Again the uh website will be popped in

the resources folder and also in the chat. And if you're interested in working with

us um either across our digital events such as this or our in-person events like urban living festivals, please do

get in touch with my colleague Katie. Her details are up on your screen. And if you'd like to learn more about all

the brilliant work that Carlo is doing at Stiplo, please do also get in touch. His details are also on your screen. So

once again, thank you very much to our experts today. Thank you to Sitlo for their um continued support and success

with this webinar. Um really enjoyed it. The recording and the um insight summary will be sent to everyone within 48

hours. But until then uh take care everyone and I'll see you again on the 2nd of November. Bye now.