SEO is NOT Dead. But AI Search Is Rewriting the Rules for Tour Operators.
Every day I see someone claiming “SEO is dead”, “marketing is dead”, or that AI agents will replace entire content teams.
The truth is much simpler: nothing is dead. The rules are just changing, and SEO is evolving faster than most operators realise.
I had dinner with some operators AT ITB and I asked have you searched for your own tour or brand in ChatGPT yet?
Because right now, whilst they’re thinking about Google rankings and OTA listings, a growing chunk of their potential guests are opening ChatGPT or Perplexity and typing: “What are the best food tours in Barcelona?” or “Is there a good walking tour in Edinburgh for families?”, yes it is still small compared to traditional search, but the growth rate is alarming (and if you are me, exciting).
If you or your tour business is not appearing in those answers, you’re losing guests before they’ve ever seen your website.
This is what GEO, Generative Engine Optimisation, is about. And for tour operators, it matters more than most people realise. And here’s why, the fundamentals to rank in these, are pretty much the same as they are with traditional SEO to rank on SERPS (search engine results) – so what do you have to loose?
SEO and GEO: What’s the Difference?
SEO is what you’re probably already thinking about: getting your pages to rank in traditional search results. Keywords, backlinks, page speed, meta descriptions. All still relevant. All still worth doing.
GEO is the newer layer. It’s about getting your content cited or surfaced by AI tools when someone asks a relevant question. Not ranked, cited. And the mechanism is different.
Google ranks pages. AI models extract answers. A beautifully optimised page might never get cited by an AI if it doesn’t directly answer a question. And a fairly ordinary page might get cited constantly if it does.
For tour operators, this shift is significant. You’re not just competing for page one anymore. You’re competing to be the source an AI pulls from when someone asks “what’s the best night tour in Lisbon?” from their sofa at 10pm.
How Travellers Are Actually Using AI Right Now
I want to be honest about the data: we don’t have precise figures yet on how many bookings are influenced by AI search. But the directional shift is clear, and I’ve been testing this with operators I work with.
Travellers are using ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overview earlier in the planning process, in the dreaming and shortlisting stages, before they’ve committed to a destination or opened a booking platform. I know this for a fact as I have seen the results on waiver forms and feedback forms from real guests on real tours. What they’re asking tends to fall into a few patterns:
General discovery: “What are the best food tours in Lisbon?” Or: “Things to do in Porto that aren’t on TripAdvisor.”
Validation: “Is [specific company] any good?” Often asked before reading reviews, not instead of them.
Specific needs: “Best tours in Rome for elderly guests”, “family-friendly walking tours Amsterdam”, “food tours under €60.”
That last category is where smaller specialist operators can genuinely win against bigger players if their content is set up to answer those specific queries.
What AI Models Actually Look For
AI models surface content that is useful for answering a specific question. That means a few things matter a lot more than operators tend to think.
Specific, factual product descriptions. “A wonderful food experience” doesn’t answer anything. “A 3-hour small-group food tour of Lisbon’s Mouraria district, capped at 8 guests, €75 per person, with 6 tastings including one at a family-run tasca that’s been open since 1947” does. The more concrete your listings, the more useful they are as a source.
A proper FAQ page. Your FAQ is now one of your most important GEO assets. Every question a guest might type into ChatGPT “Is this tour wheelchair accessible?”, “What happens if it rains?”, “Can I book for a group of 20?” needs a clear, direct answer. Not a vague paragraph. A direct answer. If you can as well try to answer as much as possible in your FAQ section, including longer form questions.
Consistency across platforms. AI models build their picture of who you are from everywhere you appear: your website, Viator, GetYourGuide, TripAdvisor, Google Business Profile, press mentions. The more consistent and accurate your information is across all of these, the more credible you look to an AI.
Schema markup. Slightly more technical, but vital. Schema is a way of tagging your content so search engines and AI models understand it more clearly. There are specific schema types for tours and activities. If you’re on WordPress one tool I personally like is Rank Math make which makes it manageable without a developer.
Tip: Use Schema.org to check your current Schema using the validate button. Common schema you should check for your tour company product pages are.
- price
- availability
- brand/company
- ratings
Mentions on authoritative sites. A write-up in a city guide, a feature in a food publication, a mention on a travel blogger’s post, these are signals AI models use to decide who’s worth citing. Not just nice-to-haves for brand awareness anymore.
TIP: Want to see where AI tools are looking? Just hit the Source button at the bottom of the text to expand where the model fetched the data from.
Free Tools Worth Using
None of these require a budget. They do require an afternoon of setup.
Google Search Console (free). The absolute foundation. Shows you what queries are sending people to your site, which pages are performing, and where there are indexing issues. If you have a website and you’re not using this, start here.
Bing Webmaster Tools (free). Massively underused by tour operators. Bing powers Microsoft Copilot, one of the most widely deployed AI assistants in the world. If you’re not properly indexed in Bing, you’re invisible to Copilot. It also integrates Microsoft Clarity, giving you heatmaps and session recordings to understand what visitors actually do once they land on your pages. Well worth setting up.
Google Business Profile (free). Your local search presence. AI models treat your GBP as a primary source for basic information about your business. Make sure it’s complete, accurate, and that you’re collecting and responding to reviews. A neglected GBP is a gap in your credibility.
Perplexity (free to test). Perplexity is citation-heavy by design — it shows exactly where it’s pulling information from. Search for your type of tour in your city and see what sources it cites. That tells you who’s winning the GEO game in your space, and why.
An Honest Note on What We Don’t Know
GEO is not a magic lever. The rules are still being written. What we know about how AI models select sources is incomplete, and it will shift as these tools evolve.
Traditional SEO still drives significant traffic for operators. Organic Google rankings still matter enormously. GEO is the next layer, not the replacement.
What I’m confident about: operators who produce specific, honest, well-structured content and maintain a consistent presence across platforms are building the kind of digital footprint that AI models want to cite. That’s not a new strategy, it’s a sharper version of what good SEO always was.
There is honestly no point in waiting for GEO to be fully understood before acting as you find you are starting from scratch whilst others have been quietly building and testing for two years.
Where to Actually Start
If I had one hour with one operator, I’d start with their FAQ page. Most tour operator FAQ pages are either empty or embarrassingly vague. A genuinely thorough FAQ one that answers every question a guest might plausibly type into an AI is one of the highest-leverage pieces of content you can create. It’s free, fast, and exactly what AI models are looking for. If you can add one to every city page & every tour page.
After that: get your Google Business Profile in order, set up Bing Webmaster Tools so you have a point of reference for AI visibility (FREE), and then spend an hour on your main product pages making them as specific and detailed as possible.
Then test yourself. Open ChatGPT and type: “What are the best Food Tours in London?” (or whatever your tour + location is) See who appears. If it’s not you, look at what those operators have that you don’t.
Oh and btw, around 90% of search is still happening on Google 😉
Resources
Marketing Claude Skill by Coreyhaines31 – The SEO option is powerful
Schema.org – use this to check your current websites Schema status
My Website
My new Github Repo for Tour Operator Claude Skills
https://www.linkedin.com/embeds/publishingEmbed.html?articleId=8517384946589620159&li_theme=light
AI & Marketing Consultant · Tour Operators & Travel Brands