AI Visibility Study: No Hotel Brand Tops 3.1% in AI Answers
Zen Media ran 1,000 traveler questions through ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok. No hotel brand topped 3.1% of mentions. Here's how to test your own AI visibility.
A new AI visibility study ran 1,000 traveler questions through ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, and no company got more than 3.1% of the mentions. Not Expedia, not Marriott, not Hilton. If the biggest names in travel can't own AI answers, the field is wide open, and that cuts both ways for a small business. You can get in. You can also be left out with nobody noticing.
What actually happened
Zen Media, a firm that sells AI visibility audits, published the study on October 30. It asked 1,000 unbranded questions, written for 373 traveler types, to ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok on October 28 in the US market. A company counted only when its name showed up in the answer text.
The three engines gave 3,015 answers that named 5,242 different companies. Expedia led at 3.1% of mentions, Marriott had 2.8% and Hilton 2.6%. Zen Media says no company paid for, reviewed or was told about the research before data collection.
Read it with the right amount of salt. It is one day, three engines, one market, and the publisher sells the fix. We found no independent replication. The direction is still worth acting on: in this sample, AI answers spread recommendations across a long tail instead of handing the top spot to the biggest brand.
Why AI visibility matters for your business
Search used to have ten blue links and a clear top three. AI answers don't. For any one question, each engine names a handful of businesses, and the engines don't agree with each other. A 3.1% share for Expedia means the "winner" is missing from about 97 out of 100 mentions.
For a local hotel, restaurant, shop or service business, that means:
Test your own questions. Write the 20 questions your customers actually ask ("dog-friendly hotel near Old Town Scottsdale"). Run them through each engine monthly. Count whether you are named.
Track by engine. Results differ between ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok. One average hides the gaps.
Publish the facts the engines quote. Clear pages for amenities, prices, hours, location and policies give an engine something specific to cite.
Don't buy a single score. A visibility number from one day is a snapshot. Ask any vendor for the question set, the engines and the dates.
Key takeaways
- Zen Media asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok 1,000 traveler questions on October 28
- 5,242 companies were named; the top share was Expedia at 3.1%, then Marriott 2.8% and Hilton 2.6%
- It is a single-day, three-engine, US-only sample from a firm that sells audits
- AI answers spread mentions across a long tail, so small businesses can get named
- Run your own customer questions monthly, per engine, and count your mentions
Measure your AI visibility with your own questions, not a vendor's score. We build simple tracking that runs your customers' real questions through each AI engine on a schedule and logs who gets named. Tell us which questions matter to you, or see what we've built.
Sources: Zen Media via GlobeNewswire, Yahoo Finance.
- #ai-visibility
- #chatgpt
- #gemini
- #hospitality
- #ai-search
Tommy Rush — Founder, Rush Commerce
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