A traveler planning a trip to Lisbon doesn't always start with Google anymore. She might just type "best food tour in Lisbon" into ChatGPT and trust whatever two or three names come back. If your company isn't one of them, you're invisible in a conversation that used to be a search result you could actually compete for.
This is happening in every destination, every niche, every day. AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are turning into a real booking channel, and getting mentioned by them takes a different kind of work than ranking on Google ever did. Here are five ways to actually show up.
AI models pull information from a lot of different places at once: your website, your OTA listings, review sites, directories. If those sources disagree on your price, tour length, or meeting point, the model has no clean fact to repeat, so it often just skips you.
Pick one version of your price, duration, and group size, and use it word for word on your own site, on Viator or GetYourGuide, and on your social profiles. If you're juggling several sales channels by hand, that's where things usually drift apart. A channel manager like TrekkSoft's keeps your availability and details synced automatically across OTAs, so you're not manually updating five different listings and hoping they still match.
💡Read tip: SEO checklist for tour operators
You can't fix a problem you can't see. Most tour operators have no idea whether ChatGPT even knows their business exists, let alone whether it would recommend them over a competitor down the street.
This is exactly what GeoSnake was built for. It checks how visible your brand is across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, gives you a score, and shows you which competitors are getting mentioned instead of you. Semrush and Ahrefs have started bolting some AI visibility tracking onto their existing SEO platforms too, but they're built and priced for large marketing teams, often costing several hundred dollars a month for the tiers that include this kind of tracking. For an operator running their own marketing, GeoSnake is a lighter, more affordable way to start, and it's built specifically for tour operators.
The more places your tours are listed for sale, the more places an AI model can find your name. Booking software like TrekkSoft connects your tours to major OTAs such as Viator, GetYourGuide, and Expedia at once, so you're not building and updating a separate listing on every platform by hand. Each of those OTA pages becomes another mention of your business online, feeding the same kind of repeated, consistent information that AI models look for before they recommend anyone.
It also keeps every booking synced back into one system, so your name is spreading across the internet while you're still only managing your tours in one place.
Reviews do double duty here. They build trust with a human reader, and they give an AI model independent confirmation that what you say about yourself is actually true. A review that says "great 3 hour kayak tour with Coastal Adventures in Split" is worth more to a chatbot than ten reviews that just say "amazing experience."
Ask happy guests to mention the specific tour name and location when they leave feedback. It's also worth building relationships with local tourism boards, blogs, and partner businesses that might mention you, since those third-party mentions carry weight an AI model can't get from your own website alone. TrekkSoft's guide on link building for tour and activity operators covers how to go about this without resorting to shortcuts that don't actually work.
AI models tend to favor pages that look current and that actually answer the question someone asked. A tour page that hasn't been touched in three years, next to a blog post from last month answering "is white water rafting safe for kids," sends two very different signals.
Write for the questions travelers are actually typing, not just for keywords. TrekkSoft's SEO tactics for tour operators guide is a good place to see how this works in practice, and the SEO checklist for tour operators gives you a routine to keep this up instead of doing it once and forgetting about it.
|
Tool |
What it's for |
Price range |
|
GeoSnake |
AI visibility score built specifically for tour and activity brands, with competitor comparisons |
Affordable, aimed at independent operators and small teams |
|
Semrush |
Full SEO suite with some AI/GEO tracking added on |
Enterprise pricing, often hundreds of dollars a month |
|
Ahrefs |
Full SEO suite with some AI/GEO tracking added on |
Enterprise pricing, often hundreds of dollars a month |
Getting mentioned by ChatGPT is only half the job. Once a traveler hears about you, they still need to be able to book you, wherever they happen to be looking. That's where TrekkSoft comes in: it connects your tours to OTAs worldwide, keeps every booking channel in sync, and gives you one system to manage all of it instead of ten logins and a spreadsheet.
If you want a clear read on where you stand with AI models right now, run a free check with GeoSnake's tool for tour operators. It's the fastest way to see the gap between you and the operators already getting mentioned.
No. Start with your best-selling tours and your most visible listings. Small, consistent fixes across your top pages matter more than a full rebuild.
For tracking AI visibility specifically, GeoSnake is built around that one job and priced for smaller operators. Semrush and Ahrefs are broader SEO platforms that have added some AI tracking, but they cost more and weren't designed around tour and activity businesses.
TrekkSoft is booking software built for tour and activity operators. It connects your tours to OTAs worldwide, keeps availability and pricing synced across every channel, and lets you manage all your bookings from one system, which also keeps your business information consistent everywhere an AI model might look.