Publish live rates and amenities
Structured data for rooms, rates, dates and facilities on your own site. Without it, the price prompt goes to an OTA and takes your margin with it.
Optimise Content →Solutions · By industry
AI plans the trip before anyone searches.
Travellers now ask AI to build the itinerary, and the answer names specific hotels, tours and neighbourhoods. Prefer tracks every travel prompt in your market, shows which guides and reviews decide them, and helps you win the recommendation before an OTA takes the commission.
“5 day itinerary for Lisbon with kids”Itinerary prompt
Per engine
ChatGPTAbsent
PerplexityAbsent
ClaudeNamed
ChatGPTAbsentPerplexityAbsentAI OverviewsAbsent
ClaudeNamedNamed in the answer
Time Out picks
Booking listingsWho decides ittimeout.comCity guides supply the shape of most itineraries
The new front door. One prompt produces a full plan, and every named hotel and tour is a booking decided in advance.
The trip math
One prompt. A whole itinerary.
How AI engines answer travel questions, across 340 tracked travel and hospitality domains.
79%of itinerary answers name specific properties
The booking shortlist is set before any search happens.
4.7×OTAs and guides out-cite hotel websites
Booking.com and Time Out carry the recommendation.
61%of hotels have no rates AI can read
No live rate data means the OTA wins the price prompt.
2-6 wksfrom shipped fix to measurable movement
Except seasonal prompts, which are decided months ahead.
Prefer benchmark · 340 travel and hospitality domains · 6 engines · Q2 2026.
The itinerary · 01
The trip is planned before the search.
Travellers used to browse for weeks. Now one prompt returns a day-by-day plan with named hotels, restaurants and tours. If your property is not in that plan, you never enter consideration, and the OTA takes the booking you would have had direct.
“5 day itinerary for Lisbon with kids”
ChatGPT, answered this morning.
Base yourself in Alfama or Príncipe Real for easy access to the centre. Memmo Alfama has family rooms and a rooftop pool, around €220 a night in May. Day one: Castelo de São Jorge and tram 28. Day two: Oceanário, the best rainy-day option with young children.
Sourcestimeout.com
tripadvisor.combooking.com
2hotels named1rate quoted0times Solvara appears
Who decides · 02
Guides and reviews pick the hotels.
Travel citations concentrate in review platforms, city guides and OTAs. Hotel websites are cited mostly to confirm rates and amenities, after the recommendation is made.
Where citations come from
One tracked category, 270 prompts, last 30 days.
- Review platforms
- 26%
- City & travel guides
- 24%
- OTAs
- 19%
- Community
- 15%
- Press & media
- 9%
- Your owned pages
- 7%
DomainTypeCitation share
1tripadvisor.com4.2 stars, noise theme recurringReviews13.4%
2booking.comYour listing outranks your own siteOTA11.8%
3timeout.comNot in the Alfama neighbourhood guideGuide9.6%
4
reddit.comr/Lisbon practical threadsCommunity8.2%
5
cntraveler.comNot in 2 seasonal roundupsGuide6.9%
6
google.comBusiness profile missing amenitiesReviews5.8%
7
lonelyplanet.comGuide4.6%
8
solvara.comNo rates or amenities in structured dataYour domain2.7%
Domains cited across 270 tracked travel prompts, last 30 days. Guides decide the recommendation; OTAs supply the price.
The prompt map · 03
Six families decide a booking.
Two are unique to travel: practical questions and seasonal timing. Both are won months before the trip, and both are usually ignored.
Solvara, per family per engine
Status of the best prompt in each family.
CitedNamedAbsent
FamilyExample promptChatGPTPerplexityAIOClaudeWhat wins it
Itinerary5 day itinerary for Lisbon with kidsCity guide placement + a neighbourhood page
Destinationbest boutique hotel in AlfamaReview volume + structured amenity data
PriceLisbon hotels under €200 in MayLive rates AI can read on your own site
Practicalis Alfama walkable with a strollerHonest local guides that answer the question
Reviewsis Solvara Lisbon worth itThe recurring complaint fixed at source
Seasonalwhere to go in Europe in OctoberSeasonal guide placement, pitched two quarters early
Live from the Solvara demo workspace. Seasonal prompts are tracked year-round, because autumn answers are written in spring.
The playbook · 04
Six plays win travel categories.
Each play maps to the Prefer tool that runs it, so this is a queue, not a PDF.
Get into the city guides
Time Out, Cond é Nast and local guides out-cite hotel sites nearly five to one. Prefer finds the guides you are missing and briefs the pitch.
Action Center →Answer the practical questions
Walkability, transfers, accessibility, what to do in the rain. These build the trust that gets your property named alongside the answer.
Create Content →Fix the recurring review theme
One repeated complaint, noise, breakfast, check-in, becomes the caveat on your property in every answer. Prefer traces it and tracks the repair.
Answer Engine Insights →Own your neighbourhood
A genuinely useful area guide is the cheapest way into itinerary answers, and it is a page no OTA will write for you.
Create Content →Ship seasonal content early
Autumn answers are formed in spring, when AI crawls the seasonal guides. Prefer tracks the calendar so pitches land two quarters ahead.
Competition →Direct vs OTA · 05
Winning direct means beating your own listing.
Independent properties fight to be named at all. Groups and OTAs fight over which listing AI picks. Prefer ships a prompt set for each.
Direct bookings
You want the recommendation to end on your site, not an OTA's. Where you are exposed:
Price“hotels under €200 in May”
Destination“best boutique hotel in X”
Practical“walkable, family-friendly, transfers”
Reviews“is X worth it, X noise”
Exposure: your own Booking.com listing outranks your website in AI answers.
Groups and OTAs
Scale, inventory and coverage across markets. Where you are exposed:
Itinerary“5 day itinerary for X”
Seasonal“where to go in October”
Comparison“X vs Y for families”
Loyalty“is X rewards worth it”
Exposure: a guide names a competitor's property in the itinerary you should own.
Proof · 06
Named in the plan. Booked direct.
“We were paying commission on guests who asked ChatGPT for a Lisbon itinerary. We published a proper neighbourhood guide, put our rates in structured data, and started appearing in the plan itself rather than in a listing.”
3% → 26%mention share on itinerary prompts0 → 92%room types with structured rates6 weeksto first measurable move+19%direct bookings from AI referrals
Questions
Asked plainly.
How do hotels get recommended by AI assistants?
By being in the sources AI reads: review platforms, city guides and OTA listings, plus their own pages when those carry structured rate and amenity data. AI names specific properties in itinerary answers, so a hotel absent from the guides is absent from the trip.
What is AEO for travel and hospitality?
Answer engine optimization for travel means winning a place in AI-planned itineraries and destination answers rather than a rank in search results. It combines guide and review placement, structured rate data, and practical content that answers what travellers actually ask.
Which travel prompts should we track?
Six families: itinerary, destination, price, practical questions, reviews and seasonal. Practical and seasonal prompts are unique to travel, and both are decided long before the trip is booked.
How do we win direct bookings back from OTAs?
Publish live rates and availability as structured data on your own site. In Prefer's benchmark, 61% of hotels have no rates AI can read, so the price prompt defaults to the OTA that does, and the commission follows.
Which sources do AI engines cite for travel answers?
Review platforms first, then city and travel guides, then OTAs. In Prefer's Q2 2026 benchmark of 340 travel domains, review platforms took 26% of citations, guides 24%, OTAs 19%, and hotels' own pages 7%.
When should we publish seasonal travel content?
Two quarters ahead. Autumn and winter answers are largely formed in spring, when AI crawls the seasonal guides being published. Prefer tracks seasonal prompts year-round so pitches land before the answer sets.
Can AI answers hurt a property's reputation?
Yes. AI summarises your review corpus, so a recurring theme like noise, breakfast or check-in becomes a caveat attached to your property in every answer. Prefer traces the theme to its source so it can be fixed.
How fast do travel AI answers change?
Two to six weeks for most prompts, because review and guide sources are crawled often. Seasonal prompts are the exception and need months of lead time.
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