At the EHL HumanX summit in Lausanne, Mirko Lalli, founder of The Data Appeal Company, warned that the rise of artificial intelligence represents a “tsunami” for the tourism industry, where destinations and independent hotels risk becoming completely invisible. According to him, although around 60% of travelers use AI for planning, nearly 80% of the generated suggestions come exclusively from online travel agencies (OTAs), leaving the rest of the market out of search results.<\/p>\n
To counter this trend, companies must reconfigure their strategies. Lalli estimates that adapting to the AI era depends 70% on content and only 30% on technical aspects. User search behavior has transformed into “vibe travel planning,” with the average length of a prompt increasing over the last decade from five to about twenty words. This is bringing blogs and detailed semantic content back to the forefront, which algorithms need to answer users’ specific and intentional queries.<\/p>\n
The impact of these changes is already visible globally. Data collected from over 300 destinations in 61 countries shows organic traffic drops of over 60% due to the “zero-click” phenomenon. As an example of this trend, even Wikipedia lost approximately 1.6 billion monthly visits within two years. In this context, traditional digital marketing disciplines are being redefined: SEO becomes GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), and SEM becomes GEM (Generative Engine Marketing). At the same time, advertising within generative engines remains highly selective, with OpenAI testing an ad beta version with a reported minimum cost of EUR 200,000.<\/p>\n
The European region and, in particular, Italy are lagging behind in this transition. In addition to the regulatory barriers imposed by the AI Act, fragmented technological infrastructure represents a major obstacle; for example, in Italy, each region uses up to 20 different property management systems (PMS). Ultimately, the recommended strategy combines the automation of repetitive tasks through AI with the leveraging of authentic human interaction, which will define the new luxury standard in hospitality.<\/p>\n
How is AI changing travel planning?<\/strong><\/p>\n Around 60% of travelers now use AI to plan trips, shifting search behavior toward “vibe travel planning” with longer, more detailed prompts.<\/p>\n What is GEO in digital marketing?<\/strong><\/p>\n GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization, which is the evolution of traditional SEO focused on optimizing content for AI-powered search engines.<\/p>\n How can independent hotels avoid becoming invisible online?<\/strong><\/p>\n Hotels must focus on creating detailed semantic content and blogs to feed AI algorithms, while combining AI automation with authentic human hospitality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the EHL HumanX summit in Lausanne, Mirko Lalli, founder of The Data Appeal Company, warned that the rise of artificial intelligence represents a “tsunami” for the tourism industry, where destinations and independent hotels risk becoming completely invisible. According to him, although around 60% of travelers use AI for planning, nearly 80% of the generated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":126712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3693],"tags":[5499],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-126797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-ai"],"article_style_override":"on","post-style":"style2","post_via":[{"title":"hospitalitynet.org | 11.06","post_source_url":"https:\/\/www.hospitalitynet.org"}],"post-top-image":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/hotelieri-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126797"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=126797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}