In today’s fast-moving travel and hospitality industries, the evolution of online search means that ‘visibility’ no longer begins and ends with Google.
From TikTok trends to ChatGPT prompts, the ways to reach and engage travellers are evolving rapidly, making SEO ‘more essential’ than ever, and more complex for hotel and destination brands.
That’s where hospitality marketing agency three&six’s expertise steps in: to support brands through these ongoing shifts.
“Ten years ago, SEO visibility was all about ranking first for a single keyword on Google,” Jessica Bosward, senior SEO manager at three&six, tells Prolific North.
“It’s still important, but we are now moving more into AI generative search.”
The new meaning of visibility
Since joining three&six in late 2024, Bosward has led the agency’s SEO function, helping hotel brands understand how visibility is changing in the age of AI.
From ChatGPT to Google’s AI overviews, brands now need to be discoverable across Large Language Models (LLMs) too.
That means SEO and AI optimisation now go hand in hand.
“I tell every client that you cannot do AI optimisation without doing SEO optimisation. They don’t exist separately because AI optimisation relies on the foundations of SEO,” she explains.
“Where do you think ChatGPT is getting all of its data from? It’s pulling it from websites, social profiles, and Tripadvisor.”
And when it comes to SEO, she argues the fundamentals still matter.
“We do the basics of SEO – the good website build, the optimised pages, the content – but from an AI visibility point of view, we’re looking through a much wider lens.”
That means thinking beyond the website itself. She adds: “When you use ChatGPT, you’ll notice it lists its sources but it doesn’t just pull from your website; it also cites places like Reddit, Wikipedia, and Quora, so part of AI optimisation is about building brand trust and SEO signals across user-generated content platforms too.”
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Where Google once rewarded tightly optimised web pages, AI-driven search now favours depth of content, trust, and context.
“Structured data used to be an optional ‘nice to have,’ but now it’s essential because LLMs use it to read and understand your site. This is why we need to make sure that the back-end of the website is properly structured, readable and crawlable for LLMs.”
Ultimately, AI isn’t killing SEO; instead, it’s the “next step” in its evolution.
“People either ask: ‘Is this just a fad?’ or ‘Isn’t SEO dead?’ The hardest part of my job at the moment is trying to help people understand how important it is for brands to be implementing SEO and AI together. People are looking at them in isolation, but AI optimisation is only possible in conjunction with SEO.”
SEO fundamentals still matter
So what are the SEO fundamentals that brands should be paying attention to?
“Technical health and website speed are always core priorities,” Bosward explains. “Too often, we see sites that don’t rank simply because they were built wrong. Developers aren’t SEOs, and SEOs aren’t developers; you need both in the room when building a site.”
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Targeting is another common challenge, as what many marketers think their brand is and the keywords their target audience is actually searching for are often two very different things.
Her advice? “Don’t put yourself into a niche. Nobody’s searching for a ‘Brooklyn hotel with an extra-large king bedroom, $100 a night’. Instead, they’re looking for luxury, family-friendly, or dog-friendly hotels.” That means you need to use a broad set of keywords to ensure your potential guests can find your property.
And when it comes to content? It’s still “king”.
“At the moment, Google wants you to have at least 500 words on a page before it’ll even consider reading that page. That’s tough for image-heavy hotel sites, but without content, the page simply doesn’t exist in search and ChatGPT has nothing to pull from either.”
The rise of AI-generated search and navigating an “unpredictable” landscape
From an SEO standpoint, one of the biggest shifts Bosward has seen in search is the rise of AI overviews on Google.
“If you land on Google now, it’s no longer the 10 blue links you used to see. The feed is filled with AI-generated responses before you even get to an actual website,” she says.
That shift is reshaping user behaviour and redefining what discoverability really means.
“Users no longer need to check Instagram, a website, Reddit, or Tripadvisor. They can just ask ChatGPT things like: ‘What are the reviews like? Is it within walking distance?’”
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Bosward’s goal, from an SEO perspective, is to make hotel brands appear in that first ChatGPT or AI-generated response.
“The standard ChatGPT user might ask: ‘Can you find me five hotels that are artsy in Williamsburg, Brooklyn?’ and ChatGPT will list five, giving a brief snippet of each. I need to make sure I’m writing content that gets them featured in that top five,” she says.
“We see it in the referral traffic coming through Google Analytics from ChatGPT. People just don’t want to do the research themselves.”
Although the SEO landscape feels “less predictable” right now, particularly with AI increasingly shaping search results, she says three&six’s priority is focused on keeping hotel brands one step ahead.
“In SEO, we’ve always had to adapt to changes. We rely on Google’s algorithm, and the minute we figure it out, they change it, which is the fun part of the job!” she laughs.
“Everybody’s scrambling to figure out the changes, but at the moment, the only thing SEOs and people in the industry can do is continue to monitor it, because nobody has all the answers yet.”
Short-term challenges, long-term opportunity
So will AI make it easier or harder for brands to stand out? “Initially, it’s going to be harder,” she admits.
“ChatGPT is only trusting companies like Booking.com and Expedia because of their authority.”
It may be a “little bit harder” for individual brands to stand out in the short-term, but she believes this imbalance will eventually shift, much like it did in Google’s early days.
“We’ve seen it happen before with Google. When Google first launched Search 2.0 about ten years ago, if you searched for a pair of heels, the big sites from M&S, Next, River Island were all showing up first in the results.
“Then they [Google] realised they were hindering smaller businesses, so suddenly you’d see a local shoe shop ranking instead.”
As AI “finds its feet” and more brands start optimising for it, she expects smaller, independent sites will rise again.
“We’ll start to see smaller brands winning again, but it’s going to take time.”
Adapt or disappear
Looking ahead to 2026, Bosward’s advice for brands is simple: don’t let your site go stale.
“Don’t be stagnant,” she explains. “Too often, people put up a website, then don’t touch it. LLMs and tools like ChatGPT are only pulling data from the last six to nine months. If your website hasn’t been updated in the past 10 months, ChatGPT isn’t looking at it.”
Here are her top three visibility priorities for brands as we rapidly head towards 2026:
- Keep your website ‘technically sound.’ Make sure it’s fast, structured, crawlable, and aligned with how LLMs read content.
- Invest in quality, consistent content. Keep on top of evergreen content and blogs on your website and, if you have seasonal pieces, ensure they are regularly updated. “AI has to learn from something,” she adds.
- Embrace cross-channel optimisation. Leverage SEO insights across social and AI platforms to ensure your brand is visible everywhere.
For Bosward, AI may be rewriting how travellers are searching for information, but the brands that adapt and update their strategies will be the ones that thrive.
