AI assistants' share of hotel website visits has quadrupled in a year, and it is still under 1 visit in 100.
That is Similarweb data in Bain & Company's report of 30 September 2026, as Markus Busch reports in Hospitality.today on 7 October. AI platforms' share of visits to hotel and short-term rental websites quadrupled between July 2025 and July 2026. The sample is small, three to five sites per category.
Small channel, serious guests
Adobe found that AI visitors to US travel websites converted 47% less often than other visitors in July 2025. By July 2026 the gap was 1%. And Bain found 49% of US travelers who have used AI for travel now rely on it most or all of the time.
What to do with it
Rafael Osborne (Profit Guest Services): do not budget it as a volume channel. Treat it as a high-intent one and keep your website readable, starting with structured data.
- Filter 12 months of analytics for chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com.
- Compare their conversion with Google organic.
- Check which page they land on. Repeat every quarter.
Do you need an AI strategy now? Not before that report.
