A few years ago, someone planning a trip to Rio might have searched for "boutique hotels in Rio," skimmed a handful of links, and opened a few hotel websites.
Today, that same traveler is more likely to search as they speak:
"Plan me three days in Rio with a boutique hotel near Ipanema, a couple of local restaurants, and the best way to avoid the crowds."
Instead of returning a list of links, Google increasingly answers the question itself. It recommends neighborhoods, suggests restaurants, builds an itinerary, and often recommends hotels before the traveler clicks anywhere.
At Google I/O 2026, Google announced that AI Mode, powered by Gemini, is now the default Search experience on desktop and mobile. Travelers no longer have to switch to a separate AI tab. They simply search as they naturally speak, and Google responds with a synthesized answer rather than a traditional list of results.
Google says the change is already showing up in search behavior. AI Mode queries are, on average, three times longer than traditional searches, and travel planning queries are growing even faster than AI Mode overall over the past six months. People are not just searching for hotels anymore. They are asking Google to plan the trip.
AI is changing how travelers discover hotels, whether that's through ChatGPT, Perplexity, or other large language models. What's new is that this is no longer happening in a separate tool. It's inside Google Search itself.
The shift happens at the inspiration and research phase, not the booking stage. Travelers still need to visit a website to compare rooms, check rates, and complete a reservation. But instead of opening multiple websites to get there, they can narrow their options inside Google's AI-generated answer. By the time someone clicks, they have often already decided which properties are worth considering.
That means a hotel can have a beautiful website and excellent reviews, but still miss out if it never makes Google's AI-generated shortlist.
Travel is different from categories like flight trackers or retail, where a single answer fully satisfies the query. Booking a hotel still usually ends with a click. But the path to that booking is changing, and that is where visibility matters.
The hotels that appear in AI-generated recommendations are not chosen at random. They are pulled from sources Google's models already trust, especially high-quality editorial coverage from authoritative third-party publishers.
The search experience may have changed, but the sources AI relies on to make recommendations are largely the same. That's exactly what Curacity VISTA is built to help hotels understand and influence. The AI Analytics Dashboard tracks how your property appears across Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, as well as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI search platforms. VISTA Articles help strengthen your presence in the editorial coverage these systems already treat as authoritative.
If you're curious about how your property shows up when AI, rather than a traveler, is building the shortlist, schedule a demo to see where you stand.
