AI Hotel Landscape
How leading AI assistants recommend hotels — 616 prompts across 56 destinations, refreshed every Monday.
The 616 prompts we ask ChatGPT every week
56 destinations × 11 templates. Each prompt has structured dimensions: city, country, region, persona (couples / families / solo / business), budget (luxury / mid / budget), and location zoom (wide city vs neighborhood vs landmark). Control prompts are unmodified baselines.
Every destination below gets the same 11 question types — just with the city name swapped in. That's how 56 destinations × 11 templates = 616 prompts per platform per week.
- luxury hotels in <city>
- family friendly hotels in <city>
- hotels in <city> with rooftop pool
- hotels near <neighborhood>, <city>
- boutique hotels in <neighborhood>, <city>
- best hotels in <city> for solo travelers
- best hotels in <city>
- affordable hotels in <city> under $200
- best hotels in <city> for couples
- best hotels in <city> for business travelers
- best hotels in <neighborhood>, <city>
- hotels near <city> National Park
africa4 destinations · 44 prompts
americas14 destinations · 154 prompts
Each destination is asked the 11 prompt patterns above (11 prompts × 14 cities = 154 prompts in this region).
asia16 destinations · 176 prompts
europe17 destinations · 187 prompts
oceania5 destinations · 55 prompts
Each destination is asked the 11 prompt patterns above (11 prompts × 5 cities = 55 prompts in this region).
Named hotels in Madrid — ChatGPT
ChatGPT's top picks specifically in Madrid, ES. Pick a different destination above, or clear to see worldwide.
Most-mentioned hotel by ChatGPT this week.
Wasn't on ChatGPT's radar last week. Now it is.
| # | Hotel | City | Chain | Mentions | W/W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Kuda Huraa | — | Four Seasons | 9 | ↑ 9 |
| 44 | Gili Lankanfushi Maldives | — | — | 6 | ↑ 6 |
| 123 | Serras Barcelona | Barcelona | — | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 78 | El Palace Hotel Barcelona | Barcelona | — | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 111 | Mercer Hotel Barcelona | Barcelona | — | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 114 | Palacio de los Duques Gran Meliá - The Leading Hotels of the World | Madrid | Leading Hotels | 5 | ↑ 5 |
| 157 | Anantara Kihavah Maldives Villas | — | Minor | 4 | ↑ 4 |
| 177 | Four Seasons Hotel Madrid | Madrid | Four Seasons | 4 | ↑ 4 |
| 199 | Hotel Neri | Barcelona | — | 4 | ↑ 4 |
| 220 | Mandarin Oriental Ritz, Madrid | Madrid | Mandarin Oriental | 4 | ↑ 4 |
| 280 | Yurbban Passage Hotel & Spa | Barcelona | — | 4 | ↑ 4 |
| 524 | Wittmore Hotel | Barcelona | — | 3 | ↑ 3 |
| 508 | The St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort | — | Marriott | 3 | ↑ 3 |
| 337 | Gran Hotel Inglés | Madrid | — | 3 | ↑ 3 |
| 357 | Hotel Europa | Madrid | — | 3 | ↑ 3 |
When ChatGPT hands out a hotel link, where does it go?Worldwide
Every URL the AI returned for a named hotel, classified into direct (the hotel's own site), OTA (Booking / Expedia / …), chain page (marriott.com / hilton.com / …), or other. Chain folds into direct in the headline number because chain pages are still brand-controlled.
Sponsored placementsWorldwide
OpenAI is rolling out paid sponsor placements in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada — testing may expand. We detect real single-advertiser ad units (organic shopping cards excluded) and pull the brand.
| # | Advertiser | Captures |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Booking.com | 432 |
| 2 | Expedia | 58 |
| 3 | Radisson Hotels | 25 |
| 4 | Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group | 12 |
| 5 | The Excellence Collection | 8 |
| 6 | GetYourGuide | 5 |
| 7 | Funjet | 2 |
| 8 | IHG Hotels & Resorts | 2 |
| 9 | Apple Vacation | 2 |
| 10 | FrenchBee | 1 |
Where ChatGPT pulls hotel information from
Every URL ChatGPT cited classified into 12 buckets: OTAs, editorial, chain sites, direct hotel pages, social, meta-search, AI tools, community, government, directory consortia, and other.
Editorial thehotelguru.com 34% · timeout.com 33% · cntraveler.com 33% | 28.6% | 64 |
OTA & Aggregator booking.com 63% · expedia.com 26% · hotels.com 11% | 13.4% | 30 |
Other destination.com 37% · hanoitourism.org 32% · traveltipswithlove.com 32% | 12.5% | 28 |
Review Site tripadvisor.com 71% · oyster.com 18% · tripadvisor.ca 11% | 11.6% | 26 |
Meta-search hotelscombined.com 44% · kayak.com 42% · momondo.com 15% | 8.5% | 19 |
Community hotelierschoice.com 56% · budgetyourtrip.com 23% · therooftopguide.com 21% | 7.6% | 17 |
Government / DMO neworleans.com 43% · esmadrid.com 31% · discoverzermatt.com 27% | 7.1% | 16 |
Independent Hotel ritzcopacabana.com.br 42% · marinabaysands.com 33% · blog.palosantohotel.com 25% | 3.6% | 8 |
Top hotel parent groups by ChatGPT mentionsWorldwide
Each ChatGPT mention matched against Google Places, then rolled up to parent group (Marriott = Ritz-Carlton + Westin + Sheraton + EDITION + …, etc.). WoW delta vs last week. Detection via 175+ brand-domain rules.
| 1 | Belmond | 8 → 12 | +50% |
| 2 | IHG | 94 → 128 | +36% |
| 3 | Wyndham | 14 → 19 | +36% |
| 4 | Minor | 31 → 42 | +35% |
| 5 | Accor | 141 → 190 | +35% |
| 1 | Peninsula | 33 → 20 | -39% |
| 2 | Capella | 10 → 8 | -20% |
| 3 | 1 Hotels | 12 → 10 | -17% |
| 4 | Shangri-La | 42 → 37 | -12% |
| 5 | Kempinski | 26 → 23 | -12% |
| # | Brand | Mentions | Hotels | W/W | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marriott | 353 | 172 | ↑ 8.0% | |
| 2 | Accor | 190 | 104 | ↑ 34.8% | |
| 3 | Hyatt | 136 | 63 | ↑ 12.4% | |
| 4 | Hilton | 136 | 84 | ↑ 3.8% | |
| 5 | IHG | 128 | 84 | ↑ 36.2% | |
| 6 | Four Seasons | 99 | 32 | ↑ 1.0% | |
| 7 | Mandarin Oriental | 58 | 19 | ↑ 31.8% | |
| 8 | Minor | 42 | 27 | ↑ 35.5% | |
| 9 | Shangri-La | 37 | 17 | ↓ 11.9% | |
| 10 | Langham | 27 | 7 | ↑ 12.5% | |
| 11 | Radisson | 24 | 20 | ↑ 14.3% | |
| 12 | Kempinski | 23 | 10 | ↓ 11.5% | |
| 13 | Taj | 21 | 10 | ↓ 4.5% | |
| 14 | Meliá | 21 | 13 | ↑ 5.0% | |
| 15 | Peninsula | 20 | 6 | ↓ 39.4% | |
| 16 | Wyndham | 19 | 17 | ↑ 35.7% | |
| 17 | Rosewood | 17 | 6 | ↑ 13.3% | |
| 18 | Oberoi | 13 | 4 | ↓ 7.1% | |
| 19 | Leela | 12 | 3 | ↓ 7.7% | |
| 20 | Belmond | 12 | 3 | ↑ 50.0% |
Of the hotels named this week: how many resolved to a chain (Marriott / Accor / …), an independent property, a vacation rental, or stayed unmatched.
What every metric means
Plain-English definitions for each number on this page. For deeper visuals + examples, see the annual landscape report linked at the bottom.
- Captures
- Number of AI responses we collected this week. Target = 616 per platform (one per prompt). Less when there are upstream errors.
- Web search
- Did the response trigger a live web fetch? Detected from the underlying response stream’s search-result events, not the unreliable top-level flag. We do NOT force web search — this is organic model behavior.
- Map widget
- Did the response render a hotel-card map (the Google-Maps-style widget ChatGPT shows for travel queries)? Each card is a "map entity" with its own provider.
- Sponsored placements
- Paid sponsor placements. Detected from real single-advertiser ad units in the response stream. Excludes ChatGPT’s organic shopping cards (which are unpaid product carousels). US/AU/NZ/CA only as of May 2026.
- Sources / response
- Distinct URLs the model consulted while answering — the URLs that show up in its retrieval log, regardless of whether it cited them inline. Computed only over web-search responses (otherwise the answer is from training data, no sources to count).
- Citations / response
- Subset of sources that the model rendered as inline footnote pills in the answer. A source becomes a citation when the model explicitly references it.
- Fanouts / response
- Number of sub-queries the model spun up internally to answer the prompt (e.g. "best hotels Paris" might fan out to "hotels Paris Marais", "luxury hotels Paris", "rooftop hotels Paris", …).
- Map entities / response
- Hotel cards inside the map widget. Each carries a provider (Google Places, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Foursquare, SERP) and a place ID where applicable.
- OTA
- Online travel agency (Booking, Expedia, Hotels.com, Agoda, Trip.com, Priceline, etc.) — commission-based booking sites.
- Direct
- A hotel’s own website. Computed at request time by matching the cited domain against Google Places.
- Chain
- A hotel chain’s brand website (hilton.com, marriott.com, ihg.com, …). 175+ chain-domain rules.
- Editorial
- Travel media (Condé Nast Traveler, Time Out, Lonely Planet, Forbes Travel Guide, NYT, etc.) and city-specific travel blogs (santorinidave.com, theurbanlist.com, etc.).
- Directory
- Multi-property hotel consortia / brand collectives (Small Luxury Hotels of the World, Design Hotels, Preferred Hotels, Virtuoso, …). Aggregate hotels under one umbrella but aren’t a single OTA.
- Review
- TripAdvisor, Oyster, Yelp, Trustpilot, Holidaycheck — review-first platforms.