Boosting Travel Bookings via AI Visibility
The challenge
The travel platform relies on organic search for a majority of its bookings. At the start of 2024 none of its destination guides or product pages were cited inside AI Overviews for priority phrases such as “family resorts Bali” or “cheap flights Rome”. If the AI summary quoted competing sources, the brand’s familiar blue-link listings would fall below the fold, threatening enquiry volumes just as post-pandemic travel demand was stabilising.
Objectives
Earn citations in AI Overviews for at least thirty high-volume trip-planning queries within twelve months.
Keep total organic sessions flat year on year even if some users stop clicking through.
Lift on-page conversion enough to deliver mid-single-digit growth in gross bookings.
PR-led solution
Shape the story before rivals do. Senior executives accepted exclusive interviews with two high-authority business titles, explaining how the Company was rebuilding content for AI consumption. More than two hundred syndicated pieces followed within forty-eight hours, establishing expertise without disclosing proprietary tactics.
Publish press materials that machines can parse. Every announcement opened with a concise plain-language abstract, followed by bullet facts and a short FAQ. Web versions included FAQ Page schema so language models could lift sentences verbatim.
Secure links from domains trusted by AI. Embargoes went first to an international wire service and two technology outlets with domain-authority scores above eighty, producing hundreds of consistent backlinks.
Upgrade evergreen content with data-rich storytelling. Six hundred destination hubs were rewritten to start with 120-word conversational summaries, seasonal price bands and accessibility notes. In tandem, the PR team placed local-expert features in lifestyle media that linked back to those guides, reinforcing topical depth.
Track generative SERPs each week. A Generative Parser crawl logged when Company pages, or stories quoting its data, appeared in AI Overviews. Insights fed directly into the editorial calendar so gaps could be filled quickly.
Business outcomes
By December 2024 the Company was referenced in AI Overviews for 33 of its 50 monitored keywords, up from zero at project launch.
Organic sessions slipped three percent, yet booking conversion on pages newly cited in AI summaries improved nine percent, more than offsetting traffic softness.
Independent SERP audits in April 2025 recorded the Company being cited more often than any direct competitor for informational queries such as “best time to visit Barcelona” and “visa rules Thailand”.
Why it worked
Content was written for direct quotation, so AI systems could safely reuse the brand’s wording.
High-authority syndication created a backlink graph that reinforced credibility signals.
Weekly monitoring provided rapid feedback, allowing the team to double down on formats that earned citations.
Destination guides offered genuine depth rather than keyword density, matching the semantic detail AI Overviews prefer.
Lessons for marketers
Build press releases so they double as structured data feeds.
Target publication outlets that large language models already regard as authoritative.
Monitor where your brand is cited inside AI answers, not just where it ranks.
Treat evergreen pages as both landing pages and source documents; rich, well-structured content is reusable by humans and machines alike.
