I have had some version of this conversation a dozen times in the past year: An owner or asset manager mentions that bookings are softer than expected. Rate is holding. Reviews are fine. The property looks good on paper. And yet something is off.
Here is what I think is happening:
Artificial intelligence systems are answering traveler questions directly; they're not pointing to a list of websites. A traveler opens ChatGPT or Perplexity or Google AI Overview, types a question about where to stay, and gets a specific recommendation with specific reasons attached. There's no browsing, no comparison shopping. The AI picked a winner and the traveler moved on.
If your hotel was not in the AI-generated reply, you were not considered. The traveler never saw your website, never read your reviews, never knew you existed. And you have no way of knowing it happened.
That is what erasure looks like. It's not a dramatic collapse; it's a quiet, invisible exclusion that adds up over time.
I wrote a book on this. It is called "Invisible: What To Do When AI Erases Your Business." The work behind it convinced me this is not a future problem. For a lot of hotels, it is already the present one.
The revenue case
Hotel rooms are the most perishable inventory in any industry I can think of. A room unsold tonight is gone. That revenue does not roll over.
That is why AI invisibility hits hospitality harder than most sectors. A software company that loses search visibility can run a campaign next quarter. A hotel absorbs each unsold night as a permanent loss. Multiply that across a portfolio and 365 nights, and the number gets uncomfortable fast.
The channel is not small. Similarweb tracked 357% year-over-year growth in AI referrals to travel sites in a recent measurement period. ChatGPT reached 37% of U.S. desktop users by September 2025, up from near zero 24 months earlier. Not forecasts. The shift already happened.
How AI decides who gets recommended
This is where most owners disengage, because it sounds technical. It is less technical than it appears.
AI platforms do not rank websites the way Google does. They read available information about a property, weigh how credible and complete that information is, and produce an answer. A hotel can have a beautiful website and strong search rankings and still be invisible if the underlying information is not organized in a way the platform can use.
Two things drive the outcome more than anything else:
The first is structured data. Think of it as a label on the back of the bottle. Code embedded in the hotel website tells AI systems exactly what the property is, where it is, what it offers and what guests have said about it. Without it, incomplete information loses to complete information every time. An agency can audit and fix it in a matter of weeks for a modest cost. It is not a one-time fix. It needs revisiting whenever the website changes, amenities are added or offerings are updated. It's maintenance, not installation.
The second is earned presence. AI systems pay attention to how often a property is mentioned across sources they consider credible, like travel publications, regional tourism sites, industry directories local media. A hotel that shows up regularly is treated as established. One that exists only on its own website is, from the AI perspective, unverified. Good PR and consistent editorial coverage build this over time. Ask your digital agency one additional question: Can AI systems read every page of our site as plain text? Heavy visual design and certain booking engine configurations can make a website invisible to AI crawlers without anyone realizing it.
What asset managers should be asking
Most of the AI conversations I have with owners center on operations. Chatbots, scheduling tools, revenue management software. Real applications with measurable savings. They address cost, not demand.
The prior question is whether the property is being found before the traveler decides. Saving money on labor does not compensate for a room that was never booked because the property never appeared in the search that mattered. The expense of fixing AI visibility is finite. The cost of not fixing it accumulates every night.
Asset managers who have started tracking this are adding AI visibility to performance reviews alongside revenue per available room and direct booking rate. Properties that show up consistently in AI-generated answers capture demand without paying OTA commissions. That is a direct improvement in net revenue.
Where to start
The first step costs nothing. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overview. Do not search your hotel name or brand. Search the way a traveler would who has never heard of you. Use location, trip type and amenities. Try something like: Best business hotel in downtown Nashville. Or: Luxury resort near Sedona with a spa.
Then run it again. And again, in a different session. AI search results are not fixed. The same query can return different answers each time. One appearance in ten searches is not visibility. Consistent absence is a problem. Showing up occasionally is also a problem. You are looking for reliable, repeated presence.
Take what you find to your digital agency or marketing team and ask three questions: Does our website have current structured data? Are we being cited regularly in credible travel and regional publications? Can AI systems read every page of our site? Those questions surface the gaps. From there it is a matter of sequencing the fixes into the capital plan.
A lot of owners run this test and find that hotels with strong local reputations and years of good reviews do not appear at all. Instead, a property they barely recognize shows up every time. The difference is almost always technical, not qualitative, which means it is fixable.
The owners and asset managers who address this will see it in occupancy and direct revenue. Those who set it aside are making a decision, whether they frame it that way or not. And that decision has a cost that adds up every night.
Michael J. Goldrich is founder and chief advisor at Vivander Advisors.
This column is part of ISHC Global Insights, a partnership between CoStar News and the International Society of Hospitality Consultants.
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