Broader strategy required for AI visibility

Hotels need to think of AI not as another channel, but as trigger to change an entire strategy, attendees of today’s webinar; Route To Recommendation: The New Digital Funnel, hosted by HOSPA and supported by Screen Pilot, heard.

Sam Trainor-Buckingham, partner & chief creative officer, Screen Pilot, said: “The way that people are researching hotels has changed and changed really quickly and it’s a real challenge. The statistics are phenomenal; 40% of general travellers are using AI to research their trips, rising to 68% for frequent travellers.

“Hotels that don’t address this in their marketing strategies will definitely lose share. Once a competitor is established in AI recommendation lists they are going to be hard to dislodge. If you win now, you win in the long term. The investment you make now is crucial.”

Trainor-Buckingham and his colleague Paul West, partner & president EMEA, Screen Pilot, emphasised the difference when marketing with AI in mind to current thinking, focusing on the level of detail required by LLMs, but also the information now available on guests.

Trainor-Buckingham said: “One of the mistakes people are making is treating AI as just GEO. That misunderstands what has happened in the digital marketing strategy. It doesn’t mean that traditional techniques don’t work any more. Thinking of it as another channel doesn’t work. It’s not a unique budget item, it’s a strategy.”

West added: “It’s worth taking a step back and understanding the staggering change around us, how we organise paid, social, organic, your CRM, where your understanding of brand fits into this landscape. The innovation that’s going on at the various LLM platforms is just the tip of the iceberg, it’s going to disrupt marketing of the sector in fundamental ways.

“The AI LLMs know a lot about the user. They’re not just listing things, the engine is providing a lot of information and that makes it sticky from a user perspective because the more that your AI agents know about you, the more accurate  they’re going to be and the more you still continue to use them.”

Trainor-Buckingham agreed, adding: “We’re in a unique and exciting position at the moment; people are telling us what they are interested in, what they’re looking for when they book a hotel, we can get some deep insight.

“What LLMs love is specific detail about your hotel, down to the menu by the pool and how long it takes to walk to the beach. People have very specific requirements when they travel and you need to look at your hotel with a fresh viewpoint. It can help to have someone do a walkthrough of your hotel and might even help to drive more offerings. In the past, this detail wasn’t important, now it’s the difference between making it onto the list for a recommendation. Those specific examples are incredibly important.”

Looking at the different stages of the booking funnel, from recommendation to the booking itself, West said: “AI has changed the marketing funnel, which starts with AI models responding to search queries - which are more sophisticated, more in depth - the AI goes off and does all the considering that was previously done by a human. The AI is trying to consider all the options and covers a much broader base of possibilities.

“When creating your recommendation thesis, data is at the heart. It looks at competitors and their ranking, versus how you’re ranking, it looks at reviews, it looks at social signals, paid search data; an LLM can access all those data points to determine whether you should be considered and then recommended.

“We know what people are looking for, we then need to write a compelling brand-led story. The algorithms like well-articulated, emotive language. The LLM will bring that content into the recommendation, but it won’t if it’s not compelling. If you don’t do these basics, you won’t even be considered.

“AI then crunches this data to present the options and the recommendation justifies its recommendations, unlike previous searches. It gives you reasons why you should consider it.

“Currently humans don’t trust their AI engines to make decisions for them and guests will go and validate that shortlist and this is where the influence of brands becomes powerful; if one of those recommendation is, say, Ritz Carlton and you know that brand then that will have an impact.

“The final layer is conversion, and somewhere the other areas of the marketing mix can influence the decision; social media or your website. On the horizon is the potential for agents to complete the booking for you but there’s a question about how long it will be until we trust our AI agents to do that and some are sceptical as to when we will ever get there.”

The pair emphasised the active role that social media played in decision making, becoming more important than a mere hygiene factor, with West concluding: “Integration is key. All channels must work together.”