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AI Has Killed SEO — Here’s What Luxury Hotels Must Do to Stay Visible

If you’ve spent the last decade obsessing over SEO keywords, meta descriptions, and domain authority… take a deep breath. According to a new white paper from Spotlight Communications, search as we know it is officially over.


The new power metric? Machine-Readable Credibility — or MRC — the trifecta of trust, authority, and consistency that AI now uses to decide which hotel brands deserve to be seen.


SEO is Dead - MRC is the new search

Spotlight’s study, Invisible or Influential? Luxury Travel in the Era of AI Search, makes one thing clear: as AI becomes the world’s newest travel advisor, hotels are no longer battling for clicks. They’re battling to be understood by algorithms.


As CEO Lucy Clifton puts it: “AI-driven search no longer just directs travellers, it decides who deserves to be found. Visibility now depends on the quality of storytelling, the authority of coverage and the independent voices PR establishes. PR is no longer just what happens when the story is told – it is how AI learns to tell it.”


lucy clifton spotlight communications
Lucy Clifton, CEO, Spotlight Communications
AI-driven search no longer just directs travellers, it decides who deserves to be found. –– Lucy Clifton, CEO, Spotlight Communications

The Big Reveal: What Actually Matters Now


Spotlight, along with digital agency Make Lemonade Fizz, audited 15 luxury brands — from global icons like The Dorchester Collection and Corinthia Hotels to boutique gems in Italy, Shanghai, and the Maldives.


Using SEMrush, Google PageSpeed Insights, and a sweep of ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI, the team measured exactly why some hotels show up in AI summaries… and others vanish. They also conducted executive interviews and cross-checked every brand’s public-facing data to understand how AI “reads” each property.


And as Maria Sze, Founder of Make Lemonade Fizz, explains:“AI search rewards what it understands, what it’s fed, and what it sees repeated. AI-driven summaries now shape what we see online...every article, quote and story feeds the algorithm deciding who gets seen.”


The implications? Big — and remarkably consistent.


Eight Insights Hotels Can’t Ignore


1. MRC > SEO


AI now surfaces the brands it trusts, meaning those with authoritative citations, consistent data, and strong editorial presence.


2. Even Iconic Hotels Are Invisible


In the study, AI visibility scores ran from 0 to 70, and most properties showed up in less than 40% of the AI searches where they truly belonged. That’s the shocker:AI is skipping well-known luxury hotels simply because it doesn’t “see” enough credible, consistent information to recommend them.


3. Website Speed Is Not Destiny


Fast sites didn’t guarantee visibility. Slow ones sometimes dominated.What mattered most was domain authority + credible coverage.


4. Gorgeous Websites ≠ Discoverable Websites


Most properties had visually impressive sites, but lacked the structured data AI needs to understand amenities, awards, sustainability credentials, and differentiators.


5. Editorial Coverage Outperforms SEO


Properties with 1,000+ citations performed dramatically better than those with fewer than 100.


6. Credibility Is Now Currency


Algorithms filter options through perceived reliability — surfacing brands with strong PR, positive sentiment, and clear reputational signals.


7. The AI Readiness Gap


Most hotels are unprepared for the way AI ingests and prioritises information.


8. AI Discovery Is Earned, Not Bought


Press coverage, backlinks, expert endorsements, and reviews matter far more than paid marketing. As one participant put it:“AI doesn’t read your ads — it reads your reputation.”


Where Luxury Travel Goes From Here


The shift to AI-driven discovery marks a major change in how hotels are surfaced online. Instead of relying on keywords or traditional SEO, AI pulls from a hotel’s broader digital presence: data accuracy, media coverage, sentiment, and structure. Visibility now comes from how well these pieces work together. For many brands, this is an opportunity to bring PR, digital, and content into one coordinated strategy that reflects the reality of how AI learns.


Because in an algorithm-driven world, visibility is not bought. It is earned through trust, authority, and clarity.


Or as Lucy Clifton concludes: “AI is only as good as the information it is given. Hotels that invest in credible, consistent storytelling will shape the future of discovery because that is what AI learns from.”


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