Keywords vs Prompts: Navigating the New Era of Hotel Search

The search game for hotels is changing, fast. For years, success online meant choosing the right keywords and building your SEO strategy around them. But AI-powered search engines don’t just match a keyword to a web page anymore; they interpret intent, connect dots across contexts, and deliver direct, conversational answers. For hoteliers, this means one thing: the rules of visibility are being rewritten. The competition isn’t just the hotel down the street, OTAs or travel blogs. Today AI platforms now summarise all things in relation to your property and location in a single answer. Instead of thinking in keywords, we’re moving into a world driven by prompts.

Before we get to prompts, let’s quickly appreciate what keywords did for us.

• Predictability: You could research “best beachfront hotel in Cairns” and know exactly how to target it.
• Ranking focus: The mission was to get your page to show up high in Google’s 10 blue links.
• Repeatable process: Keyword research → optimise pages → build links → monitor rankings.

For hotels, the formula was clear: choose your location-based keywords, optimise your rooms, dining, spa, and offers pages, and feed Google exactly what it wanted. The numbers backed it up. In the 2010s, keyword-driven SEO campaigns could deliver ROI multiples of 5–10x for hotels that ranked well in competitive locations. Even as competition increased, the model stayed stable, until AI disrupted the search landscape.

AI search engines, think ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and now AI-driven features in Google, don’t just scan for keywords. They interpret meaning. Instead of matching “luxury hotel Miami” to a page title, AI will take a traveller’s prompt like: “I’m looking for a hotel in Miami with a rooftop pool, great cocktails, and a lively night scene nearby, budget under $300 a night.” The AI doesn’t just spit out a list of pages with those words, it compiles an answer from aggregated hotel websites, reviews, booking platforms, and even articles. It’s curating, summarising, and recommending in a way that bypasses the old keyword logic. That’s where the shift happens: your visibility now depends on how AI interprets and responds to prompts, not just how a search engine matches keywords.

The danger for hotels? You could still be “ranking” in traditional search for your target keywords but missing entirely from AI-generated results, meaning the traveller never even sees your hotel name.

This shift to prompts is levelling the playing field, while also stacking the odds against hotels that aren’t prepared.

• Broader competition: AI might pull recommendations from OTAs, travel bloggers, and review sites before it even          considers your official website.
• Less control over context: In keyword SEO, you controlled the page targeting. In AI search, your brand’s context is  determined by how the AI interprets the web.
• More demand for structured, credible data: AI loves clean, structured information, it’s easier to summarise and serve to  users.

Let’s look at an example. In early testing with AI search platforms for hospitality-related queries:

• 60–70% of AI answers about hotel recommendations referenced OTAs before individual hotels.
• Long-tail prompts (multi-part, descriptive requests) were 3–5x more likely to feature curated summaries rather than raw search results.

If you’ve noticed fewer direct website bookings coming from organic search despite stable rankings, AI’s “answer-first” model is a strong suspect.

This isn’t just a numbers game, it’s an identity shift. For years, your website was the digital front desk. If someone wanted to know what your property offered, they’d come to you. Now, the “front desk” could be an AI chat window that decides whether or not to even mention you. That can feel unsettling. It’s like training your team to deliver five-star service, only to find the concierge desk has been moved to another building you don’t control. The reality? The digital conversation about your hotel is happening with or without you. The question is whether you want to be in the room when it happens.

Think of these as your first, manageable steps into the new AI search landscape:

• Think in “prompt scenarios”: Instead of focusing solely on keywords, imagine the questions a traveller might ask an AI, and make sure your online presence answers them clearly.
• Own your story across platforms: AI pulls from multiple sources, so ensure your property’s information is consistent, accurate, and compelling everywhere it appears.
• Get a free AI visibility snapshot from HyperHotels: Quickly see how your hotel appears in AI-generated search results and identify areas to improve your presence.

The shift from keywords to prompts is really a shift from search visibility to answer visibility.

• Search visibility: Getting on page one.
• Answer visibility: Being the name that shows up in the AI’s final recommendation.

In traditional SEO, you fought for rankings. In AI search, you fight for inclusion in the conversation, and that battle is often won long before the traveller types a prompt.  

The AI search revolution doesn’t mean keywords are dead. They’re still foundational, but they’re no longer the whole picture. The real opportunity lies in understanding how prompts shape the answers travellers see, and positioning your hotel so that AI search can’t help but include you. Those who adapt early will capture the bookings that others don’t even see slipping away. The hotel marketing playbook is being rewritten, but the goal hasn’t changed, be visible where your guests are looking. The only difference? Now, you need to make sure you’re visible where they’re asking. So, when the next traveller asks an AI for a hotel like yours, will it even know you exist?

AI Visibility Snapshot (Delivered by Mae) A personalised, insight-packed report for your hotel, revealing:

• Where you appear across major AI platforms (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, etc)
• The top 3–5 questions your guests are asking AI – and whether you show up
• How one of your key competitors is appearing

This is your AI baseline – the first step toward dominating direct bookings in the new AI landscape.  

With 20+ years in hospitality of all facets, including F&B, hotels, to a refined focus on hospitality digital marketing.