How to get your hotel recommended by ChatGPT
When a traveller asks ChatGPT where to stay, it often searches the web first and builds its answer from the pages it finds, with links to them. A hotel is named when those pages answer the traveller's question clearly and agree with each other. Nobody can pay to be in the answer, but you can make sure ChatGPT is allowed to read your website, see what it says about your town today, and fill the gaps that shows.
Also called: ChatGPT SEO, generative engine optimisation, GEO, AI search optimisation, LLM visibility.
A OneHorizyn guide. Updated .
How ChatGPT finds hotels
When ChatGPT searches the web, OpenAI says it ranks what it finds by several things meant to bring up relevant, reliable information, and that no place in the answer is guaranteed. It may send a reworded question to other search providers, and can use the traveller's rough location for local results. OpenAI reads pages with three bots, each set separately in a website's robots.txt:
- OAI-SearchBot reads pages for ChatGPT's search. A website that blocks it isn't shown in ChatGPT's search answers, except as a plain link.
- GPTBot collects pages that may be used to train OpenAI's models. Blocking it keeps your pages out of training, not out of search.
- ChatGPT-User opens a page when a person asks ChatGPT something that needs it. It isn't used to decide what appears in ChatGPT's search.
The share of 37,325 people in 33 countries, India among them, who told Booking.com in April and May 2025 that they had already used AI for some part of their travel.
Let OpenAI's search bot read your website
- 1Open yourhotel.com/robots.txt in a browser.
- 2Look for a line naming OAI-SearchBot with Disallow under it, or a Disallow that applies to every bot.
- 3If you find one, ask whoever runs your website to let OAI-SearchBot in. You can still keep GPTBot out if you don't want your pages used for training.
- 4Ask your website's host whether its firewall blocks AI bots by itself. OpenAI asks that hosts and security services let its bot's published addresses through, whatever robots.txt says.
- 5Check your booking engine's address the same way: it often has settings of its own.
OpenAI says a change to robots.txt can take about a day to show in ChatGPT's search.
See what ChatGPT says about your town
- 1Write ten questions a guest of yours would ask, without your hotel's name in them: “a quiet hotel in Jaipur for a couple”, “a hotel near the airport with an early breakfast”.
- 2Ask each in a new chat, so that earlier chats don't colour the answer.
- 3Note the hotels named, in what order, and the sources shown with the answer.
- 4Then ask about your hotel by name, and check that what it says is right: your area, your facilities, your prices if it gives any.
- 5Ask again next month, after you have changed something, and compare.
Answers change from one asking to the next, so count how often you are named over several askings rather than trusting one.
Give it something to quote
ChatGPT names a hotel for what pages plainly say about it. If a traveller asks for a hotel with a pool for children and nothing about yours says so in words, it has nothing to go on.
- Say in words on your own pages what you are, where you are, and who you suit: families, couples, business travellers, groups.
- Give the facts guests ask for: distances, capacities, check-in times, what is included.
- Make the same facts agree on your Google listing and the booking sites, which ChatGPT may read instead of your website.
Be on the pages it cites
The sources shown with ChatGPT's answers about your town are the pages it leans on there: review sites, travel guides, local news, booking sites. Note which come up most often, and make sure you are on them, with your facts right and your reviews recent.
