Propellic will host a free webinar on July 16 at 10 a.m. Central Time explaining how AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini choose which hotels to recommend, and what hotel marketers can do to influence that decision. The session comes as travelers increasingly bypass traditional search results and book directly from AI-generated answers, making the trust signals AI uses a critical factor for direct hotel revenue.
The webinar, titled "Hotel SEO and GEO Best Practices for 2026," will be led by Brennen Bliss, founder and CEO of Propellic, and Javier Hernandez, the agency's senior SEO manager. Hernandez compiled findings from Propellic's client portfolio into the newly published Hotel SEO & AI Search Guide 2026, which anchors the session. The guide distills observations across hotels into four sections, nine insights, and seven deep-dive categories that detail how AI decides to trust a hotel.
The guide and webinar reflect the growing importance of AI for Hospitality & Events, where AI-driven recommendations can directly impact bookings. "Traditional travelers used to scroll through pages of blue links to book a hotel room. Today, they increasingly ask AI for a recommendation and book the answer," said Bliss. "Becoming part of that recommendation is no longer optional. The alternative is losing direct bookings before a guest ever reaches your site."
How AI decides which hotels to recommend
AI models run a confidence score on each hotel, cross-referencing claims made on a hotel's own site against outside sources like Reddit, TripAdvisor, and press coverage. Only when the model finds consistent, positive signals does it recommend the property. "AI doesn't rank a hotel, it decides whether to trust it enough to recommend it," said Hernandez. "This session breaks down exactly how that trust gets built, and the fixes most hotels are still missing."
The seven focus areas covered in the session, from technical SEO to analytics, align with core principles of AI for Marketing. The webinar will walk through the fastest fixes hotels are still missing, including how to structure content and manage signals that AI models rely on.
Key findings from the guide
The guide includes several data points that quantify the shift in AI-driven hotel discovery:
- AI referral traffic from ChatGPT and similar tools converts at a 20 to 30 percent bounce rate, with higher revenue per session than typical channels.
- Google's Gemini reads a grounding budget of roughly 2,000 words across the top five ranking pages for a query; a page ranking fifth may get read for only about 266 words.
- AI sentiment scores above 50 are considered positive, above 70 is strong, and scores near 100 are exceptional.
- Ranking first for a keyword earns roughly 25 percent of clicks, compared to about 7 percent for ranking third-nearly a 3x difference.
- An unmanaged event calendar can generate tens of thousands of low-value URLs that waste crawl budget, potentially harming AI discoverability.
Propellic's research shows that AI referral traffic is not just a fringe channel; it already delivers strong performance. The webinar will close with a live question and answer segment.
Why this matters for hospitality and events professionals
For hotel and event venue marketers, the rise of AI-powered recommendations means that the traditional playbook-optimizing for blue links and click-through rates-no longer suffices. AI models review a hotel's entire digital footprint, from on-site content to third-party reviews, and decide whether to include it in a short list of recommendations. Professionals who ignore the signals that build AI trust risk losing direct bookings to competitors who have already adjusted their strategies. The webinar offers a practical starting point: a free, live session that translates research into actionable steps, from managing event calendar URLs to improving sentiment scores across the web.
Registration is open at Propellic's webinar page.
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