# How to Measure AI Visibility for Your Travel Company

> AI answers about travel are written for where the traveler is: insurance and packages for the traveler's home country, tours, transfers and rental cars for the destination. How to build both question lists, file every cited site once, and give each shelf its owner.

By Vlad Shvets, Partner @ Qvery · Published 2026-09-04 · Updated 2026-11-02 · 16 min read
Canonical: https://qvery.ai/blog/travel-ai-visibility-measurement-playbook/

In a lot of travel companies, the AI question arrives as a screenshot. Somebody at head office typed "best travel insurance for Portugal" or "best food tour in Lisbon", the answer named three rivals, and the screenshot reached the commercial director with one line under it: this is what travelers see.

It's what that office sees. An AI answer about travel **changes with the asker's location**, and your head office is neither the country your travelers book from nor the street they stand on when they book the tour.

In Expedia Group’s March survey with YouGov across the US, the UK, and India, **53%** of adults were comfortable letting AI suggest travel options. Only 8% of US and UK travelers relied on AI chatbots to plan a trip. For those who ask, the answer is a shortlist.

We tested a trip to Portugal from US and UK connections, with repeated questions on ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, plus questions without a place asked from Portugal.

So the measurement is two lists, one per country you sell into and one per destination you sell in, and each list stands on its own shelf of sites that a different team in your company already works.

- **0** insurers named in both the US and the UK answers to the same Portugal insurance question
- **8 of 8** answers to place-less tour questions asked from Portugal that came back about a Portuguese place
- **35.59%** of cited sites shared by US and UK asks for a car, an eSIM and a Lisbon transfer; 39.53% between two asks from one country
- **10 of 159** cited sites whose kind my check changed after the assistant filed them

Source: Our research: twelve questions about one trip to Portugal, each asked twice on ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, 19 October 2026

This page builds both question lists, a record of answers, and a work list for each owner, then shows how we keep that work going at Qvery.

The Portugal example shows where the shortlist gets written, not whether it produces bookings. Your booking report must answer that separately.

**What you'll need**
- **Booking report:** the last twelve months by product, the traveler's home country and the destination
- **Questions:** five to ten a list, worded the way travelers write to your team
- **ChatGPT:** any plan or none, a temporary chat set to Unpersonalized
- **Google AI Mode:** google.com/ai, in a window signed out of Google
- **A connection in each home country:** an office, a partner, or a collector set to that country
- **Spreadsheet:** three tabs named Answers, Sites and Owners
- **Assistant:** any chat assistant that takes long pastes (the run used Claude)

Time: time the first destination by hand

It covers the measurement and the work list it produces. Hotels behave differently enough to need [their own method](https://qvery.ai/blog/how-to-get-ai-engines-to-recommend-your-hotel/), and winning a place on any one site is each owner's job, after this.

## Sort Each Product by the Market It's Sold Into, Not the Day It's Bought

Start with the catalog. Every product goes into one of two columns, and the column decides where you'll ask about it.

Sold into the **traveler’s home country.** Insurance and package answers from the US and UK shared no cited site in our run. Repeat asks from one country shared 38.78%: sites cited by both asks, divided by sites cited by either.

No insurer appeared in both countries’ answers. Expedia, KAYAK, and TUI appeared in both countries’ package answers, but the UK answers cited their UK addresses.

**Sold at the destination.** Tours, day trips, city passes and boat trips, obviously. Less obviously, the rental car, the eSIM and the transfer from the airport, even when the traveler books them a month before flying.

The car rental, eSIM and Lisbon airport-transfer answers shared **35.59%** of their cited sites between a US ask and a UK ask, close to the 39.53% two asks from one country shared. In the answers they behaved like the tours, and like the tours they're used in Portugal.

**Insurance and Package Answers Changed Completely With the Traveler's Country** (% of cited sites in common)

US and UK asks shared none of their cited sites on insurance and packages, against 38.78% between two asks from one country; on destination products the two figures stayed close.

| Label | Two asks from one country | A US ask and a UK ask |
|---|---:|---:|
| Insurance and packages | 38.78% | 0% |
| Car, eSIM and transfer | 39.53% | 35.59% |
| Tours, day trips and passes | 35.11% | 25.98% |

Share of cited sites two asks had in common (sites cited by both, of sites cited by either): two asks from the same country, and a US ask against a UK ask. ChatGPT and Google AI Mode together, 19 October 2026. Source: Our research: questions about one trip to Portugal, asked twice on ChatGPT and Google AI Mode from the US and the UK, 19 October 2026

The table is the first thing to build, one row per product line you sell:

**Where each product is sold, and how to ask about it**

| Product | Sold into | Ask it |
|---|---|---|
| Travel insurance | Home country | From each home country |
| Vacation package | Home country | From each home country |
| Rental car at the destination | Destination | With the country or city in the question |
| eSIM for the trip | Destination | With the country in the question |
| Airport transfer | Destination | With the airport in the question |
| Tours, day trips, passes | Destination | With the city in the question |

## Put the Place in Every Destination Question; Let the Connection Supply the Home Country

**Destination questions name the place.** Write them the way a traveler types on the way out of the hotel: the activity and the city, nothing about where they live.

A question with no place gets answered for wherever the engine thinks the person is. OpenAI's help page says ChatGPT estimates a location from the IP address, and gives the example of a "near me" question from the San Francisco area being searched as "top restaurants San Francisco."

In September, “best guided tour services” asked from the US returned Rochester, Minnesota’s trolley tours and civic center. The question had named no city.

**56.52%** of ChatGPT's in-destination answers asked from the US cited a site serving one town the question never named.

The October questions without a place, asked from Portugal, all returned Portuguese places. One ChatGPT answer began: “Based on your approximate location around São Domingos de Rana, near Cascais, Portugal.”

Home-country questions **leave the country out.** The traveler doesn't type it, and the connection supplies it. The US insurance answer opened "Assuming you're traveling from the United States"; the UK one, to the same words, opened "For a 10-day trip to Portugal from the UK."

Pick countries and destinations by their **share of bookings**, as you would [source markets for SEO](https://qvery.ai/blog/best-seo-tools-for-travel-companies/). Begin with five to ten questions per list, using travelers’ emails and chats for wording. Here are the worked example’s questions:

**The run's questions**

| Question | Sold into | Asked from |
|---|---|---|
| best travel insurance for a 10 day trip to Portugal | Home country | US, UK |
| best site to book a vacation package to Portugal | Home country | US, UK |
| best car rental company for a road trip in Portugal | Destination | US, UK |
| best eSIM for a trip to Portugal | Destination | US, UK |
| best way to book an airport transfer from Lisbon airport | Destination | US, UK |
| best food tour in Lisbon | Destination | US, UK |
| best guided day trip from Lisbon to Sintra | Destination | US, UK |
| best walking tour in Porto | Destination | US, UK |
| best city pass for Lisbon attractions | Destination | US, UK |
| best sunset boat tour in Lisbon | Destination | US, UK |
| best food tour | Test: no place | Portugal |
| best walking tour near me | Test: no place | Portugal |

![Two panels: home-country products like insurance are asked from each country and answered by comparison sites; destination products carry the place and are answered by marketplaces.](https://qvery.ai/blog/travel-ai-visibility-measurement-playbook/illustration-two-lists.webp)

*Sort a product by where it’s sold, and the list, the shelf and the owner follow.*

## Ask Each Question From the Country It Belongs To, Twice on Each Engine

**ChatGPT.** Open a new chat, select Temporary, and choose Unpersonalized before sending a message. OpenAI’s help page says this excludes memory, custom instructions, and plugins. Select Search from the tools menu to use the web, and use a new chat for each question.

![ChatGPT's message box with its tools menu open: Search, described as Find on the web, listed under Sources and set to Auto.](https://qvery.ai/blog/travel-ai-visibility-measurement-playbook/openai-chatgpt-search-tool.webp)

*Search sits under Sources in the tools menu; picking it makes sure the answer goes to the web.*

**Google AI Mode.** Open google.com/ai signed out of Google. Google’s help page says AI Mode can personalize answers from saved Search history; your company’s searches are not a traveler’s.

**The country.** ChatGPT reads the approximate location from the IP address, and OpenAI says a VPN or a network location can change that estimate.

Ask each home-country list from a connection there: an office, a partner agent, or a data provider’s collector set to that country.

Destination questions carry their place in the words, so where you ask them from **matters far less**: from the US and the UK they shared nearly as much as two asks from one country.

**Twice per engine.** Ask each question twice on each engine and keep both. One answer is a sample; the second ask shows how much an answer moves on its own, which is the baseline any difference between countries has to beat.

**Save per ask:** the question, engine, date, country, complete answer, and links, as one row on the Answers tab. Search for your company’s name, then read the sentence: a warning is not a recommendation.

Read each answer's opening lines before you save it. If a UK ask comes back "assuming you're traveling from the United States," the location didn't take: ask again from a UK connection and keep the first one too, marked as a failed location.

> 📌 **Answers to Save as They Are** 
> - An answer that ends on a question back, like one US package answer's "where will you be flying from?" Save it; the names above the question count.
> - A brand you know at a country's own address: expedia.co.uk for the UK asks, expedia.com for the US ones. File both; they're different pages, often with different owners.
> - Fewer links from Google AI Mode than from ChatGPT. Compare each engine with itself, month to month, never one engine's count with the other's.

As you add countries and destinations, repeated manual asks become a recurring job. The GEO Agent runs questions daily on both engines, per country:

GEO Agent: https://qvery.ai/geo-agent/

## File Every Cited Site Once, Under the Team That Can Work It

An answer cites a handful of sites, and the same sites keep coming back. In the run, about half the cited sites turned up in more than one answer, and they carried **80.35%** of all the citations.

So **file the site**, not the answer: decide once what each site is and who in your company can work it, and every answer that cites it inherits the decision.

Nine kinds cover a travel company's answers, and each maps to a person you already employ:

**Nine kinds of cited site, and who works each**

| Kind | From the run | Who works it |
|---|---|---|
| Comparison sites | KAYAK, GoCompare | Partner manager |
| Marketplaces | Viator, Expedia | Listings owner |
| Your own site | Yours | Web team |
| Rivals' own sites | Saga, Sixt | Nobody |
| Destination sources | Visit Lisboa, GOV.UK | Destination manager |
| Editorial and guides | Forbes, Which? | PR |
| Reviews and forums | Tripadvisor, Reddit | Customer experience |
| Google's own pages | Maps listings | Google listing owner |
| Video and social | Facebook | Social team |

The filing is the step an assistant does well, because most sites say what they are in their address and their page titles.

Give it a list with one line per site: the site, the title of one page the answers cited, and that page's link. Paste this prompt above the list, with your company's name and web addresses in the second paragraph:

**The filing prompt**

```
You are filing the websites that AI answers cited when travelers asked about trips. Below these instructions is a list with one site per line: the site's address, the title of one page the answers cited from it, and that page's link, separated by " | ".

Our company is <your company name>. Its own sites are <your web addresses, separated by commas>.

For every line, write one row, tab-separated, in this order:
1. Site: the address exactly as given.
2. Kind, exactly one of these words:
   comparison = compares prices or providers across many companies and sends the traveler elsewhere to buy, or hands out deals and discount codes (flight search, insurance comparison, deal alerts)
   marketplace = sells many companies' trips, tours, tickets, cars or packages and takes the booking itself (online travel agencies, activity marketplaces, car-hire brokers)
   ours = one of our own sites
   provider = any other company's own site, selling its own product (an insurer, an airline, a car-hire firm, a tour operator, an eSIM seller, a city-pass issuer)
   destination = a tourism board, a government body, a national park, a transport authority, or an attraction's own official site
   editorial = a publisher, magazine, newspaper, guidebook or blog that writes about travel or money
   reviews = a review site or forum where travelers post (Tripadvisor, Reddit, Trustpilot, Quora)
   google = Google's own pages (Maps, Travel, Flights, Google's help pages)
   video = YouTube or a social network
   other = none of these
3. Place: the town, city or region the site serves, if it serves only one; otherwise "none".
4. Unsure: "yes" if the address and the title do not settle the kind and you chose from what you know of the site; otherwise "no".

Never guess what a site is. When you cannot tell, write other and yes.
Write only the rows: no header, no comments, one row per line of the list.

THE LIST:
<your list of sites, one per line>
```

Read each row against its cited page. I corrected sites the assistant had left as “other” even though their titles identified them, including a Porto tour guide and an Alcochete walking-tour company.

A wrong kind sends the work to the wrong person, so keep the human check.

> 💡 **Rows That Need No Fix** 
> - A marketplace page that names your tour. The answer still sends the traveler to your product; check the listing says what the question asked.
> - A rival's own page in a home-country answer. Nobody can work it; note what it states that your page doesn't.
> - Your company named on the first ask and gone on the second. The second ask is there to catch exactly that, and one month of it isn't a trend.

## Comparison Sites Answer Home-Country Products; Marketplaces and Local Pages Answer the Rest

**Comparison Sites Answer Before the Trip, Destinations After It** (% of answers that cited any source)

Comparison and price sites sat under 38.52% of pre-trip answers and 6.14% of in-destination ones; destination and public sources under 8.2% and 33.33%.

| Label | Pre-trip questions | In-destination questions |
|---|---:|---:|
| Comparison and price sites | 38.52% | 6.14% |
| Booking sites and marketplaces | 31.15% | 40.35% |
| Providers' own sites | 66.39% | 52.63% |
| Destination and public sources | 8.2% | 33.33% |
| Editorial and guides | 31.15% | 29.82% |
| Reviews and forums | 6.56% | 11.4% |
| Google's own pages | 14.75% | 8.77% |

Share of the answers that cited any source with at least one site of each kind among their sources; an answer can carry several kinds. ChatGPT and Google AI Mode together, traveler questions asked from the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, 4 September 2026. Source: Our research: traveler questions on ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, asked from the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, September 2026

September’s research covered products bought before departure and after landing, from US, UK, Canadian, and Australian connections.

September included transfers and rental cars among pre-trip products. October sorted them by destination instead: comparison sites appeared under **81.25%** of home-country answers and **7.81%** of destination answers. Reviews and forums appeared under 12.5% and 48.44%, respectively.

Which review site and which forum depends on [the trip you sell](https://qvery.ai/blog/reddit-marketing-for-travel-brands/), and the editorial rows are mostly [best-of lists and guides](https://qvery.ai/blog/pr-tactics-for-travel-brands/), not news.

Each shelf has one thing for its owner to check:

**What each owner checks, and how they'll know it held**

| Shelf | What to check | How you'll know |
|---|---|---|
| Comparison sites | You're listed for that country, at its price | The next answers cite the page with you on it |
| Marketplaces | The listing answers the question: title, photos, what's included | The answer names your tour from the listing |
| Destination sources | You're on the tourism board's and the attraction's operator lists | The city's page names you |
| Editorial and guides | Which list is cited, whether you're in it, and its date | The cited list names you |
| Reviews and forums | What travelers say about you; never post as one | You appear in the threads the answers cite |
| Your own site | One page per product and place: price, length, what's included | The answer cites your page beside your name |

In two Reddit threads about tour bookings, the advice lands on the same two shelves:

**Tips**

> We get most private tour requests by e-mail after guests looked at our website
> ([r/Tourguide · Oct 2026](https://www.reddit.com/r/Tourguide/comments/1x0o4bc/i_started_a_boat_tour_company_a_year_ago_our/))

> Ensure your website has a dedicated page for private and team building events.
> ([r/Tourguide · Oct 2026](https://www.reddit.com/r/Tourguide/comments/1x0o4bc/i_started_a_boat_tour_company_a_year_ago_our/))

> get "private charters available" into your Get Your Guide reviews. Just ask happy guests to mention it.
> ([r/smallbusiness · Oct 2026](https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1x0o5jb/i_started_a_boat_tour_company_a_year_ago_our/))

## Size the Destination List by Bookings, Because It Never Gets Short

In September, the destination list needed more sites to cover four fifths of cited answers. Its first 18 sites covered only 67.54%, so a short national list would miss much of the work.

So size the destination list the way you'd size a sales territory: take the destinations that carry most of your destination bookings, measure those properly, and say out loud which ones you aren't covering.

The home-country list is short per country and repeats per country. For the same insurance product, the run's UK and US asks shared no site, so each list is worked in its own market.

> ✋ **What a Person Keeps** 
> - Every new site's kind, approved before it reaches an owner's list.
> - Every change to a marketplace listing, made inside the marketplace by whoever keeps it.
> - Everything sent to a tourism board, an editor or a forum, written and sent by a person.

## An AI Agent Can Redraw Both Lists When Bookings Move and File Only New Sites

Bookings shift through the season, and questions must follow them. New sites need filing: **34.75%** of sites in the second round of asks had not appeared in the first.

That recurring part is an AI agent's job, and it's narrow enough to brief tomorrow:

1. **Read Your Own Records Only** The booking report your reservation system exports (product, the traveler's home country, destination, month), the month's saved answers, and the site book. Nothing else.
2. **Start When the Month Closes** On the first working day after the month's bookings are final.
3. **Keep Both Lists by Booking Share** A home country stays on its list while it brings the share of home-country bookings you set, and a destination while it carries the share of destination bookings you set. Additions and drops show up as proposed changes, never silent ones.
4. **File Only the New Sites** A site already in the book keeps its kind. A site it hasn't seen gets a draft kind from the filing prompt and waits.
5. **Write One List per Owner** Each row is a site, its kind, the questions and countries whose answers cited it, and whether your company was named in those answers.
6. **Wait for a Person's Approval** The site book's owner approves every new kind and every change to the two lists before anything reaches an owner.
7. **Count Hours and Corrections** The hours the filing and list-keeping took by hand, against the minutes the approvals take, and the rows the approver corrects each month.

The agent hands marketplace links to a person. The terms recorded for Tripadvisor, Viator, and GetYourGuide forbid automated access without written permission.

Set up the booking export first, then the site book. Route lists to owners only after a person has checked the agent’s drafts.

## How Qvery Keeps Your Travel Measurement Current

Your booking mix tells us which markets matter. We follow the way you maintain the lists before setting up [our GEO Agent](https://qvery.ai/geo-agent/). Your brand, the travel industry, and competing businesses inform the questions it writes.

It runs each question on ChatGPT daily and does the same in Google AI Mode, in the countries you choose.

It keeps the full responses and all their citations, showing your visibility against rivals across topics and countries. You can examine sentiment and see which business takes a larger share of voice, along with the cited sources. We take the findings into the work on your pages, listings, and facts.

To handle the filing, we shape a custom agent around the booking export and site book you already maintain. Connected to your own systems, it runs on autopilot after the month closes, proposes list changes, and prepares new site classifications for approval.

We get the filing workflow running within two weeks, then train your list owner on that first version. Our weekly tally covers hours saved on filing and errors avoided when routing rows. Bring the export that decides which destinations deserve attention.

Keep Your Travel Site Book Ready for Each Month: https://calendly.com/qvery-vlad/30min

## Begin With Your Busiest Destination and One Marketplace Row

Take the destination that carries most of your destination bookings and write its five questions with the city in them. Ask them twice on each engine, file the sites, and find the first row where an answer names one of your tours through a marketplace page instead of your own.

That row belongs to whoever keeps your listings, and next month's asks show whether the answers now carry what they changed.

Prepare Tour Inquiry Replies With an AI Agent: https://calendly.com/qvery-vlad/30min

## Frequently asked questions



### How do I measure whether AI answers recommend my travel company?

Separate home-country products from destination products, then ask each question twice per engine from the appropriate country. Save the answers and links, and count recommendations of your company. Use ChatGPT and Google AI Mode as separate measures rather than combining their citation totals.

### Why do the answers change with the country I ask from?

ChatGPT estimates where you are from your IP address, OpenAI says, and can search for that place. In our Portugal run, the insurance and package answers asked from the US and from the UK shared no cited site on either engine, and named no insurer in common.

### Can I use a VPN to ask from another country?

OpenAI's help page says a VPN can change the location ChatGPT infers. If you use one, read the answer's opening lines: in our run, ChatGPT's insurance and package answers said which country they assumed.

### Should an airport transfer or a rental car go on the home-country list?

Put airport transfers and rental cars on the destination list. In the run, car rental, eSIM, and Lisbon transfer answers shared 35.59% of cited sites across US and UK asks, close to the 39.53% shared by repeat asks from one country.

### Does a cited site mean the answer recommended us?

A citation identifies a page the answer used, while a recommendation puts your company forward as an option. Search for your name, then read the surrounding sentence before counting it: the name could appear in a warning.

### How many destinations should we measure?

Choose destinations that carry most of your destination bookings and that your team can measure twice per engine each month. Record which places you exclude so nobody reads the results as covering your whole business.

### Which number should we report each month?

Report the share of answers that recommend your company, separately by engine and home country, using unchanged questions each month. For answers that omit you, record which sites they cite so an owner can investigate.

### Can this show whether we gained bookings?

AI answers alone cannot show whether you gained bookings. To connect a recommendation with a sale, you need your own record of where the booking came from.

### Who should own the sites that AI answers cite?

Assign each site to the person who can change your presence there: the listings owner for a marketplace, PR for an editorial guide, or your web team for your own page. Keep that assignment in the Sites tab so repeated citations inherit it.

### Why ask the same travel question twice?

The second answer shows how much the result moves even when the question and country stay the same. Keep both answers so a difference between countries is not mistaken for a change that also happens within one country.

### Can an assistant classify the cited websites for us?

Give it each site’s address, a cited page title, and that page’s link, using the filing prompt in this tutorial. A person must check new classifications before they reach an owner, because a wrong category sends the task to the wrong team.

### What should the monthly agent read?

Give it your booking export, saved answers, and site book. It should propose changes to the country and destination lists and classify unfamiliar sites, with a person approving both before the work reaches individual owners.

### Can the agent open travel marketplaces itself?

In this workflow, the agent gives marketplace links to your listings owner to open. The recorded terms for Tripadvisor, Viator, and GetYourGuide restrict automated access without written permission, so the workflow keeps that reading with a person.

### How does Qvery help a travel company with this work?

We use the GEO Agent to measure your answers on ChatGPT and Google AI Mode per country, then work on the pages and facts they cite. We also build custom agents for recurring filing and list maintenance, train the people approving their work, and count hours saved and errors avoided weekly.