Kurt Weinsheimer, Chief Strategy Officer at Sojern.
From activities to cultural interactions, now more than ever, travelers want experiences, and GenAI is playing a pivotal role in helping them book trips that will meet or even exceed their expectations. A 2025 Phocuswright survey found that 78% of respondents felt GenAI improved trip planning, and Google is now incorporating AI-generated content into its search results. Now, instead of spending hours meticulously researching potential destinations, hotels and activities, travelers are getting AI recommendations, ideas and even full-blown itineraries with just a few prompts.
While these options are certainly convenient for travelers, it’s a different story for marketers. Perplexity launched its ad business in November 2024, and Google is experimenting with Gemini ads, but there are currently no display ads on ChatGPT, which is the most widely used AI tool on the internet. These AI search results often favor user-generated content (see Instagram’s July 2025 decision to allow posts from professional accounts to be integrated into Google search results) along with media from online travel agencies (OTAs), pushing paid ads and organic links below the fold.
AI is already enabling travelers to bypass many of the touchpoints in the traditional marketing funnel, and further funnel disruption is likely in the future. Travel marketers must be prepared. Here are three ways to get on travelers’ radars to drive bookings in an increasingly AI-driven world.
1. Rethink The Marketing Funnel
With the rapid rise of GenAI, brands must reimagine how they approach the customer journey. Today, the customer base itself has become the center of marketing strategy. Instead of treating upper- and lower-funnel efforts as separate, we’re seeing the customer experience and bottom-of-the-funnel engagement actively fuel awareness and demand.
The lines are blurring. What happens after the stay or purchase is now shaping how new customers discover and evaluate brands. Search algorithms are already reflecting this shift, pulling in signals from guest experiences, reviews and availability alongside paid activity.
For travel marketers, this means success requires delivering memorable, high-quality on-property experiences that naturally generate advocacy. When a guest leaves delighted, that moment becomes a powerful driver of visibility and growth.
While large language models (LLMs) are using bottom-of-the-funnel content to drive search results, travel marketers must still enable smart, multichannel awareness and consideration marketing strategies so that their brand or property stands out in the GenAI response.
Travelers still watch TV and visit websites, so marketers can drive upper-funnel awareness by investing in CTV, display, native and other channels. Then, through using first-party data, brands can build lookalike audiences based on current customer data to contextually target the right people to expand upper funnel reach.
By targeting travelers early in their journey, marketers can build awareness that entices travelers to book—if or when GenAI displays the brand in search results.
2. Build The Relationship
Now more than ever, relationships and brand loyalty matter. While data plays a critical role in building those relationships, so do one-to-one marketing strategies.
For hotel guests, first-party data is a great way to get to know their preferences and personal information. When that information is combined with real-time insights into search and booking signals, they can reach potential travelers at exactly the right moment. Marketers can then use that first-party data to activate one-to-one marketing and engagement, including via email and text, to build better relationships that drive better reviews.
While email, in particular, is more of a traditional tool, AI is making it more efficient and effective than ever, giving marketers a new and old way to engage with guests to drive new and repeat business, as well as upsell opportunities.
3. Get Connected
Deploying the right campaigns, building relationships and creating a great experience hinges on convergence. For a long time, hotel revenue management was a separate function from distribution, but those two functions converged because pricing impacted the performance of OTA channels. Now, travel brands must do the same with guest marketing and guest experience, including operations.
For guests, the phone is their number one touchpoint, using it for text, email and more, and they can’t have two separate experiences when they’re on property.
For example, a guest may text a hotel to book a spa appointment and request additional towels. One request is a marketing or upsell opportunity, while the other is for operational support, and brands must have technology that can answer both questions at once. While AI is already helping travel marketers with everything from behavior analysis to content generation, it will also enable marketing and operational convergence.
GenAI is changing how travelers consume information, but marketers still have multiple opportunities to get on their radars before they hit the “book” button. By rethinking their funnel, building the right relationships and creating a connected brand, they can deliver the experiences travelers want and turn those experiences into bookings.
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