– in partnership with 85SIXTY, Hyperfunnel, and Agentic Hospitality.
Launch partners
A digital marketing agency for Travel and Hospitality that helps turn customer journeys into powerful growth engines.
Empowers hotels to shift from OTAs to AI search engines, enabling direct bookings, ownership of data and lower fees.
Enables hotels to own the guest journey through infrastructure-level AI, unlocking direct bookings across AI-native channels.
What is this course about?
The age of AI search is here and it’s already reshaping how travelers discover and book hotels. Instead of scrolling through endless links, guests now expect AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity to “do the Googling for them” and deliver one trusted answer. As a hotel operator, your job is to make sure your property is part of that answer. That’s exactly what this course is designed to help you do: stay visible, capture more direct bookings, and stay ahead of competitors in this new distribution landscape.
Now, AI might be evolving faster than traffic builds up in San Diego on a rainy day, and yes, every platform has its own quirks. But the good news is you don’t need a PhD (or even deep SEO experience) to adapt. There are clear, pretty simple, common-sense practices you can start implementing today to optimize your discoverability in AI search results. Not rocket science. In this course, you’ll learn exactly what those are, step by step, with practical hotel-focused examples, checklists, and action items you can apply immediately. By the end, you’ll not only understand how AI search works—you’ll have a concrete roadmap to ensure your hotel is always part of the answer.
Who is it for?
This course is designed for everyone across the hospitality spectrum – from independent hotel owners and general managers who wear twenty hats a day, to revenue managers and marketing directors at boutique properties, to senior executives at global hotel brands. Whether you’re a first-timer who has never touched SEO or a seasoned digital marketing expert with years of campaigns under your belt, the playing field has just shifted. AI search isn’t a distant future – it’s our new reality, shaping how travelers discover, compare, and book hotels today. That means operators, brand marketers, asset managers, Booking Engine providers, distribution specialists, as well as SEO agencies working with hospitality companies need to master these strategies now. Waiting is not an option; in this AI-driven landscape, being late means being invisible.
What’s in it?
Basically, the course takes you from theory → to practice → to ownership. Here’s what to expect:
Chapter 1: The foundation
- Introduction
- What AI search platforms exist
- How hotel search is conducted now
- Search volume trends: traditional vs AI
- Projections
Chapter 2: Searching vs Booking – big difference
- What AI search platforms exist
- Search vs booking – big difference
- AI has officially entered the booking funnel
- Booking capabilities by AI
- Tracking AI-sourced traffic to your website
Chapter 3: Traditional SEO vs AI search optimization – similarities and differences
- Traditional SEO refresher (Pre-AI)
- Key differences between SEO and AEO/GEO
- What do LLMs really want? The method to the AI madness.
- Universal parameters observed across all
- Unique prioritization parameters per LLM
- Static vs dynamic content: understanding the difference
- From text to image to video: what is more important?
Chapter 4: AI search optimization process
- Step 1: Technical website optimization
- Step 2: On-site content optimization
- Step 3: Off-site optimization
- Types of web sources used by AI
- Role of social media in AI search
- Is optimizing for voice search different?
Chapter 5: How to approach AEO in your organization
- Audit your web presence
- Measure performance
- Tools you can use
- AI visibility tools available on the market today
- Driving direct bookings through AI
- Owning GEO/AEO effort in your organization
- Conclusion
Huge thanks to all the contributors who responded with feedback!
Fernando Benitez, Max Starkov, Marie Claire Louillet, Matt Schwartz, Aaron Bailey, Victor V.T. Tofan, Stephanie Smith, Jim Jandrew, Michael Mahar, John Burns, Isabel de Castro, Marco Correia, Shannon McCallum, Mark Carrier, Jan Freitag, Sunish Sadasivan, Verena Reiterer, Christian Lundén, Edward St Onge, Felix Laboy, Piergiorgio Schirru, Juanjo Rodriguez, Dmitry Koltunov, Karen Massey (85SIXTY).
Best,
Ira Vouk
Included in this course (for your future use):
- GPT tool “Hotel Content Mapper”: turns your GA4 audience screenshots into a full-blown targeted content strategy
- GPT tool: “AI Content Converter for Hotels”: converts your existing content into AI-friendly structured content
Downloadable PDFs available in the course:
- Chapter 3 Handout: Key differences between SEO and AEO/GEO
- Chapter 3 Handout: AI Platforms Compared: Hotel Optimization Priorities
- Chapter 3 Handout: Recommendations for creating and storing images
- Chapter 3 Handout: Recommendations for creating and storing videos
- Chapter 4 Handout for developers: Technical optimization
- Chapter 4 Handout for marketers: Content optimization
- Chapter 4 Handout: Web Source Evolution in AI Search
- Chapter 5 Handout: Hotel AI Visibility Audit Checklist
- Chapter 5 Handout: New KPI Framework for AI Search
- Chapter 5 Handout: Marketing budget strategy for future AI optimization
