Artificial intelligence is transforming the discovery and consideration stages of the hotel booking journey. Where the traditional model focused on rankings and search results, conversational environments introduce another variable: a brand’s ability to be understood, recognised and considered a relevant option worth recommending. We are moving beyond the age of search and into the age of recommendation.
This broadens the concept of digital visibility. What matters is not only what a hotel says about itself, but also who is talking about it, where it appears and which values it is associated with beyond its own channels.
In this context, public relations takes on renewed strategic value through digital PR: helping to build authority.
Much more than securing coverage
Public relations has always sought to make a brand relevant enough for the media to talk about it.
As traditional media lost influence, it seemed that PR might lose some of its relevance. Instead, the opposite has happened: the new digital and technological ecosystem has given it renewed strategic value.
Today, coverage leaves a digital footprint. A news article can rank on Google, generate traffic and backlinks, lead to further coverage or become a source of information for users, traditional search engines and AI-powered search tools.
Reducing the value of PR to securing coverage or backlinks would be too narrow a view. Its real value lies in building presence and authority beyond a brand’s own domain.
And not every mention contributes in the same way. When a hotel is consistently associated with sustainability, gastronomy, design or family travel, it helps consolidate its positioning. Every mention contributes to defining what a brand represents in the digital landscape.
From ranking pages to positioning brands
Traditional SEO taught us to think in terms of pages and rankings: which content appears first when someone performs a particular search.
Artificial intelligence introduces a complementary question: What information exists online that allows a hotel brand to be understood and considered a relevant option worth recommending?
When someone asks an AI assistant for a sustainable hotel, a gastronomic getaway or a suitable property for hosting an event, the answer may be built from multiple sources, including media coverage, specialist publications, interviews, rankings, awards and industry recognition.
This is where one of the major opportunities of digital PR emerges. A PR strategy can generate editorial coverage and backlinks that strengthen SEO, but it can also generate mentions that associate a brand with specific positioning territories, as well as external content that expands the information available about it and reinforces its authority.
Mentions also build digital authority
Backlinks remain a valuable SEO signal: they can build authority, generate qualified traffic and support organic visibility. But the new ecosystem means we also need to consider brand mentions, even when they do not include a link.
Early analysis of visibility in AI-powered search engines is showing a relationship between brands being present in external sources and their visibility in these environments. This does not mean that securing a media article will automatically make ChatGPT recommend a hotel. The relationship is far more complex. But one idea is clear: the more relevant, consistent and credible evidence about a hotel exists online, the stronger its digital authority will be.
From measuring coverage to measuring authority
This evolution should also be reflected in the metrics we use. The volume of coverage and potential audience remain relevant, but they do not tell the whole story.
A digital PR strategy should also consider the quality and relevance of the sources, the backlinks secured, brand mentions, the territories the brand is associated with, traffic generated, changes in branded search volume and, increasingly, its presence in AI-powered search environments.
Because the objective should no longer be simply to secure coverage. The aim is to ensure that this coverage helps shape a specific perception of the brand and strengthens the territory it wants to own.