GEO, or generative engine optimization, is the work of making a hotel visible, accurately described and cited in the answers of AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Where SEO aims for a ranking in a list of links, GEO aims for a mention inside the answer itself.
Key takeaways
- GEO builds on SEO: AI assistants rely on search indexes, so a hotel that is poorly indexed is rarely cited.
- AI assistants recommend hotels they can identify clearly and see confirmed by several sources: your website, Google Business Profile, reviews and the press.
- Google AI Overviews and AI Mode have been live in France since July 22, 2026, which makes GEO a priority for French hotels too.
What is GEO?
The term comes from a 2023 research paper by Princeton University and partners, which named "generative engines" the search tools that write an answer instead of listing links. GEO covers everything that helps these engines find your hotel, understand it and quote it: accessible content, consistent information across the web and clear answers to the questions travelers ask.
For a hotel, the stakes are concrete. A traveler who asks ChatGPT for "a quiet boutique hotel with a spa near the Louvre" gets a short list of names, not ten blue links. Being on that list, with the right description, is the goal of GEO.
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO and GEO share the same foundations but not the same finish line:
- Goal: SEO targets a position in Google's results; GEO targets a citation or recommendation inside an AI answer.
- Unit of visibility: a page for SEO; a brand, a fact or a passage for GEO.
- Sources: SEO mostly works on your own site; GEO also depends on what reviews, OTAs, guides and the press say about you.
- Measurement: SEO has rankings and clicks; GEO is measured through citations, mentions and AI referral traffic.
Google states that there are no extra technical requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: a page must simply be indexed and eligible for a snippet. Good SEO for hotels remains the entry ticket.
How do AI assistants choose which hotels to recommend?
AI assistants search the web, gather sources, then write an answer from the ones they trust. An independent analysis of ChatGPT's hotel searches published in 2026 found that Google web results and Google Places data were used in about nine out of ten hotel queries. In practice, three things weigh heavily:
- A clear identity: the same name, address, category and phone number everywhere, starting with your Google Business Profile.
- Third-party confirmation: recent reviews, presence on Booking.com and Tripadvisor, and mentions in guides and the press.
- Useful content on your site: pages that state facts plainly, such as room types, spa hours, distance to landmarks or pet policy.
We cover the ChatGPT side in detail in how to get your hotel recommended by ChatGPT.
What are the first GEO steps for a hotel?
- Open the door to AI crawlers: check that your robots.txt allows Googlebot and OAI-SearchBot, the crawler OpenAI uses for ChatGPT search.
- Align your entity data: correct and harmonize your name, address, category and amenities on Google, OTAs and directories.
- Answer real questions: add factual sections and FAQs to your key pages (rooms, restaurant, spa, location, meetings).
- Add structured data: schema.org Hotel markup helps machines read your category, amenities and ratings.
- Earn mentions: reviews, press coverage and inclusion in curated lists give AI assistants independent confirmation.
Files such as llms.txt come after these steps, not before.
How do you measure GEO results?
Clicks from Google AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the overall "Web" search traffic in Search Console. For ChatGPT, links usually carry a utm_source=chatgpt.com tag, visible in Google Analytics 4. Add a monthly check of a fixed list of prompts ("best spa hotel in Annecy", "family hotel near Disneyland Paris") to track whether your hotel is mentioned and how it is described. Learn more about Google AI Overviews.
How does Influence Society approach GEO?
At Influence Society, we treat GEO as an extension of SEO, not a separate trick. We start by checking how AI assistants describe the hotel today, then fix the facts they get wrong, at the source, before producing new content. As we explain in ChatGPT already knows your guest, just not your hotel, the goal is for AI to know your property as well as it knows your guests. Discover our SEO and GEO expertise.
Sources: Aggarwal et al., "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", 2023; Google Search Central, AI features and your website (updated December 10, 2025); OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI crawlers; Abondance, launch of AI Overviews in France, July 22, 2026; Nicolas Sitter, Anatomy of ChatGPT hotel search 2026 (accessed October 2026).