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Hey there,
Since I ran the AI Visibility webinar 2 weeks ago, I've hosted 21 K2B assessments with operators 1on1 looking at how travelers discover tour and activity businesses through AI.
And there's something I keep telling operators on these calls:
"Now is a very good time to cozy up to your local tourism board."
Your city's tourism office. Your county's visitor bureau. Your state tourism organization. Get to know the people whose job is to bring visitors to your area.
Here's why.
Think about someone visiting your town this weekend. They have an afternoon free. They haven't decided whether to go hiking, take a food tour, or spend a few hours on the water.
Increasingly, your customers are asking ChatGPT:
"What are the the best things to do in [your city here]?"
This is a golden opportunity to become part of your customers' planning process before they even know what they want.
So we looked at where ChatGPT gets its answers to those discovery questions.
Across our 21 assessments, we checked 210 ChatGPT answers.
More than 7 out of 10 cited a tourism organization's website.
Meaning ChatGPT used that website as a source for its answer.
And tourism organizations showed up in the discovery results of every single assessment.
Let me give you a concrete example.
For Morgan Hill Wine Trolley, we tested questions like "What is there to do in Morgan Hill, California?" and "What are fun things to do on a weekend near San Jose, California?"
Across the discovery questions in that assessment, ChatGPT and Google's AI answers cited:
Three local tourism organizations. Each one cited more often than Tripadvisor.
That surprised me. I expected Tripadvisor to have a lot more influence there.
But it also tells us where to put some effort.
If AI is getting its ideas from these websites, you want your business featured on them.
Look at their things-to-do pages, weekend guides, and itineraries. Find the ones your experience belongs in. Then reach out and ask how to be included.
And don't assume this requires some huge marketing budget. Visit Morgan Hill, for example, offers free website listings for tourism-supporting businesses. It's funded through a local hotel assessment to help bring visitors to the area.
There are people already working to promote your destination. Give them something good to recommend. Send photos, explain the experience, and help them understand who it's perfect for.
There are many details that are important here, and we cover the important factors in the webinar.
Personally, I'd start those conversations now.
I think more operators are going to figure this out. And I'd much rather have those relationships in place before everyone starts asking to get into the same guides.
This is part of what we're doing with our new Genesis program: finding the sources AI uses in your market, identifying opportunities to get your business featured, and giving you a plan for pursuing them.
The webinar explains how this fits into the bigger picture of getting discovered, helping AI understand your business, and growing direct bookings. You'll also get the prompt for creating your own AI Start Here page, which has proven to more than double your AI citation rates.
→ Register and watch the free webinar here
Go watch it. And get to know your tourism people. I think you'll be glad you did. |
