Your Next Guest Is Asking AI Where To Go. Can It Find You? | Sarah Colgate
When I ran Aquaduck on the Gold Coast, the way people found us was simple. They walked down Cavill Avenue, they saw the bright amphibious vehicle, and they came over to ask what on earth it was. Word of mouth. A spot on a brochure rack. A listing on an OTA that took a fat commission for the privilege.
That world has changed, and it has changed fast.
Right now, a traveller sitting on their couch in Melbourne or Manchester is not opening fifteen browser tabs to plan their Queensland holiday. They are typing a sentence into ChatGPT or Gemini. Something like “plan me a four day trip on the Sunshine Coast with a couple of water activities and one really good local food experience.” And in seconds, they get an itinerary. A real one. With named operators in it.
Here is the question that should keep you up at night. Were you one of the named operators? Or did the AI hand your best customer to the business down the road because it could not confidently find you?
The numbers are not small, and they are not slowing down
I have to say, when I first started looking at this, I expected the numbers to be a bit of hype. They are not.
The Amadeus Travel Trends 2026 report found the share of global travellers using generative AI to plan their trips rose 64 per cent year on year. Across the wider market, roughly 40 per cent of travellers are now using AI tools somewhere in their planning. Klook surveyed 11,000 travellers and found a remarkable 91 per cent leaning on AI travel planners in some form.
And it is not idle curiosity. McKinsey reported in March 2026 that 84 per cent of people who used AI for travel said it improved their experience. TakeUp surveyed leisure travellers and found 78 per cent had booked travel based primarily on an AI recommendation.
Let me say that again, because it is the whole point. Nearly eight in ten AI users have booked something because the AI suggested it.
So what are they actually asking it to do? The research is consistent. Custom recommendations, finding the hidden gem, sit right at the top at around 75 per cent. Itinerary building is close behind at 70 per cent. Inspiration, turning a vague “I want an adventure” into a real shortlist, sits near 69 per cent.
This is the discovery phase of the trip. The exact moment a traveller decides who makes the shortlist and who does not. And more and more, that decision is being shaped before a single human is involved.
Why this is a real threat to small operators
Here is the part the big platforms will not tell you.
The same research that is so positive about AI also carries a warning for businesses like yours. Industry experts have said outright that smaller businesses are the ones most at risk, because they often lack the digital presence the AI needs to find and recommend them. Older, independent operators struggle the most.
Think about what that means. For years you could survive on being known locally. The AI does not know you locally. It knows you by what it can read about you online, in clear, structured, trustworthy language. If your website is a pretty brochure with lovely photos and very little plain text answering real questions, the AI has almost nothing to grab onto.
TakeUp put it bluntly. If AI cannot confidently understand your business, it will not confidently recommend it. And 78 per cent of travellers said it is very or extremely important to them that a business shows up in those AI recommendations.
So this is not a tech problem for the IT department. This is a profit problem. It is the new version of being the operator nobody could find on the brochure rack, except the rack is now an AI that millions of people trust to do their thinking for them.
What I am actually doing about it at Exceptional Experiences
I am not going to sit here and tell you to fix your AI discoverability without showing you that I am doing the exact same work on my own business. Trust me, I am in it right now.
Here is what the work looks like, step by step, on the Exceptional Experiences site. You can copy this.
I wrote pages that answer the real questions operators ask. Not “about us” fluff. Actual operator questions, things like how to reduce OTA commission, how to fill the off season, where the profit leaks are. AI loves clear question and answer content because it can lift a clean answer straight out of it.
I added FAQ schema. This is a small bit of code behind the page that labels your questions and answers so a machine reads them perfectly. Most operators have never heard of it. It is one of the highest value, lowest effort things you can do.
I built definitional pages. Plain pages that explain exactly what a thing is, in plain words. When AI wants to define or recommend a category, it reaches for content that defines that category cleanly.
I linked my pillar pages to my blogs. Internal links tell the AI which pages matter and how they connect. A site that links its own content well is far easier for a machine to understand than a pile of unconnected pages.
I made sure the positioning is consistent everywhere. Same description of who I am and what I do, on the website, the social profiles, the directory listings. When the facts about your business match across the internet, AI trusts them more. When they contradict each other, it gets nervous and leaves you out.
None of this is glamorous. My VA team is working through it methodically, one page at a time. But this is the work that decides whether a machine puts your name in front of a buyer or skips straight past you.
Five things you can start this week
I suggest you do not try to boil the ocean. Start here.
Open ChatGPT or Gemini yourself and ask it to plan a trip in your region. See if you get named. See who does. This is your free, brutal market research.
Write down the ten questions your customers actually ask you, and answer each one in plain text on your website. One question, one clear answer.
Ask whoever runs your website to add FAQ schema to those answers. If they look at you blankly, that tells you something too.
Check that your business is described the exact same way on your website, your Google listing, your social profiles and any directories. Fix the ones that drift.
Stop hiding your information inside images and PDFs. AI reads text far better than it reads a poster. Put the words on the page.
The bit that has not changed
Here is what I want you to hold onto, because it matters.
The research is also clear that travellers do not fully trust AI on its own. Only around 46 per cent are willing to trust it with their travel decisions outright. They use AI to narrow the field, then they check reviews, watch a video, ask a mate, and only then do they book.
So the human stuff, the genuine experience you give people, the reviews, the word of mouth, none of that is going away. AI is the first gate, not the whole journey. But if you do not get through that first gate, the human magic you offer never gets a chance to work, because the buyer never finds you.
For me, that is the real message here. Being a brilliant operator is no longer enough on its own. You also have to be a findable one.
I have been an operator, not a consultant, for over 20 years inside the tourism industry. I have made payroll, paid the OTA commissions and lived the seasonal cash flow. The Tourism Business Health Check is where this starts. It is a straight look at where your business stands, including how findable you are.
