Glossary: AI and marketing terms for tour operators

These are the terms that come up most when I talk to tour and activity operators, listed in alphabetical order. Where a term has a deeper guide on this site or on Arival, the entry links to it.

AEO (answer engine optimisation)

AEO, or answer engine optimisation, is the practice of structuring your content so AI tools and search features can lift a direct answer from it.

GEO is about being recommended at all; AEO is narrower: one clear question with one clear answer right beneath it. For an operator, that means tour pages and FAQs that answer "Is this suitable for children?" in the first sentence, not the fourth paragraph. More in my Arival guide, Getting Found in the AI Age, and my AI search guide for tour operators.

AI agent

An AI agent is software that uses an AI model to complete multi-step tasks by itself, on a schedule or trigger, using the tools you connect to it.

A chatbot answers when asked; an agent keeps working while you are away. The best first jobs are dull and recurring: checking tomorrow's departures against the guide rota, drafting review replies, sending the Monday ads report. Start with one, and keep a person checking anything a guest will see. See the six jobs I helped an operator hand to an agent, my Grok Bot guide and AI agents for tour operators.

AI Overview

An AI Overview is the AI-generated summary Google shows at the top of some search results, answering the query with links to supporting sources.

Google says there are no extra requirements or special optimisations needed to appear: the page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, and normal SEO practice applies (Google Search Central). So what gets you in is what ranks a tour page: specific product details, clear answers and an accurate Google Business Profile. More in AI search for tour operators.

Booking system

A booking system (also called a reservation system or res-tech) is the software that holds your products, availability, prices and bookings, and takes payment online.

Bókun, Rezdy, FareHarbor and Peek are familiar examples. Every other tool depends on it, so judge it on what it connects to: Google Things to Do, OTAs, Zapier and AI tools. Export your bookings and you can ask an AI model about seasonality and lead times in plain English, as I show in 5 ways to start optimising your tour company with AI and automations.

Channel manager

A channel manager is software that keeps your availability and prices in sync across every place you sell, so a slot sold on one OTA disappears everywhere else.

Without one, selling on several channels means overbookings or late-night manual updates. Many booking systems include some channel management, so check yours before paying for a separate tool. If your booking system is not a Google-approved connectivity partner, your channel manager may be your route into Google Things to Do. More in direct bookings for tour operators.

Commission

Commission is the percentage of each booking's value that an OTA, reseller or agent keeps in return for selling your tour.

It is the biggest cost of distribution, and it moves: rates differ by platform and contract, and in 2025 Arival reported that GetYourGuide had notified some operators of increases to 30% or more (Arival). Know your effective commission per channel and price with it in mind. See my direct bookings guide.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the share of visitors who complete the action you want, usually a booking: bookings divided by sessions, multiplied by 100.

It shows whether your website does its job once traffic arrives. Track it per tour page and per channel, because one strong tour can hide a weak one. The usual levers are clear prices, real photos and video, answers next to the booking button and a short checkout. More in direct bookings for tour operators.

Direct booking

A direct booking is a reservation a guest makes with you, through your own website, phone, email or messaging, with no OTA or reseller in between.

There is no commission, and you keep the guest relationship and data: the pre-trip email, the review request, the next booking. Use OTAs for reach and direct for margin; the aim is to stop depending on any one channel. My direct bookings hub covers the funnel.

E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness: the qualities Google says its systems try to reward in helpful content, with trust the most important.

Google says E-E-A-T is not a specific ranking factor (Google Search Central). For operators, that means visible first-hand experience: named guides, real photos from real departures, honest details on group size and accessibility, and a clear answer to who runs the company. See AI search for tour operators.

FAQ schema

FAQ schema is structured data (the FAQPage type from Schema.org) that marks up the questions and answers on a page so machines can read them as pairs.

It no longer earns a special search result: Google limited FAQ rich results to well-known government and health sites in August 2023 (Google Search Central Blog) and stopped showing them in Search from 7 May 2026 (Google Search documentation updates). I still add it here because it costs nothing, but the real asset is the visible FAQ. My post on how AI search is rewriting the rules explains why the FAQ page is where I start.

GEO (generative engine optimisation)

GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is the work of getting your business cited and recommended in answers from AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews.

The term comes from a 2023 research paper, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. It matters because travellers now ask AI what to do: Arival's 2026 Experiences Traveler study, which I summarised in How to Get Your Experiences Recommended by AI, found 53% of travellers use AI for destination research and 33% use it to discover things to do. A search engine ranks pages; an AI tool writes one answer and names a few businesses in it.

Full playbook: my GEO guide for tour operators and AI search hub.

Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile is the free listing that shapes how your business appears in Google Search and Maps: hours, location, photos, reviews, links and booking options.

It is often a traveller's first sight of you, and Google's guidance on its AI features tells businesses to keep Business Profile information current. It holds your Google reviews, the ones I tell operators to prioritise, and offers a free route into Google Things to Do. See review strategy for tour operators.

Google Things to Do

Google Things to Do is Google's directory of tours, activities and attractions, shown in Search and Maps, with free listings and an optional paid ads format.

It puts your product, price and booking link in front of people searching for things to do in your destination, with no OTA in the middle. Basic listings can come through your Google Business Profile; feed-based listings and Things to Do ads need a connectivity partner such as Bókun, FareHarbor, Magpie or Rezdy (Google's partner list). My Arival guide: Google Things To Do ads for tours and attractions. See also tour operator marketing.

Hallucination

A hallucination is when an AI model states something false with complete confidence, such as an invented price, opening time, policy or source.

It is why I keep a human check on anything a guest will see. It cuts the other way too: if your prices and policies differ between your website, your OTA listings and Google, AI tools may repeat the wrong version. The fix for both is one current source of truth, a second brain for your tour company.

LLM (large language model)

An LLM, or large language model, is an AI system trained on huge amounts of text to read and write language. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all run on LLMs.

Most of what operators call "using AI" is an LLM writing, summarising or analysing. GetYourGuide's AI That Works report found 76% of operators already use AI to write listings. Pick one model, use it daily and give it context, because it knows nothing about your tours until you tell it. Start with AI for tour operators: a practical guide.

llms.txt

llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at a website's root that gives AI tools a short summary of the site and links to its key pages.

Jeremy Howard proposed it in September 2024 (llmstxt.org), and it is still a proposal, not an official standard. In June 2026 Google said these files are not needed for Google Search and will neither help nor hurt rankings (Google Search documentation updates). I publish one here because it is quick and free, but never ahead of your FAQ, product pages or Business Profile. More in AI search for tour operators.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard that lets AI apps like Claude and ChatGPT connect to your tools and data.

Anthropic introduced it in November 2024 (Anthropic), and the project likens it to a USB-C port for AI applications (modelcontextprotocol.io). For an operator, it means asking how a tour page performed last week and getting the answer straight from your analytics, not from pasted exports. Start with read-only access. I explain it in 5 ways to start optimising with AI; more in AI tools for tour operators.

OTA (online travel agency)

An OTA, or online travel agency, is a marketplace that sells other companies' travel products for a commission, such as Viator, GetYourGuide or Klook for tours and activities.

OTAs bring reach and trust that are hard to buy alone. The trade-off is commission, less control of the guest relationship and dependence on someone else's ranking rules. Your OTA listings also shape what AI tools say about you, so keep them accurate. More in direct bookings for tour operators and tour operator marketing.

Review velocity

Review velocity is how quickly and how steadily new reviews arrive, measured as reviews per week or month, rather than your total review count.

Recent, regular reviews beat an old pile: GetYourGuide's help centre says recent reviews count more towards an activity's overall rating, as I noted in my Arival operator guide to reviews. Track it alongside your review rate (reviews received divided by completed bookings, multiplied by 100), and if you are seasonal, push for a burst of reviews at the start of each season. My review strategy hub covers how to ask.

Schema markup

Schema markup is code, using the shared Schema.org vocabulary, that tells search engines and other machines what your page describes, such as a tour, price or review.

Useful types for operators include TouristTrip, LocalBusiness, Event and Review. On product pages, mark up price, availability, brand and ratings, and keep it consistent with what visitors see. Google says no special schema is needed to appear in its AI features, so treat it as good hygiene, not a magic switch. Test pages with the free Schema Markup Validator; more in AI search for tour operators.

Second brain

A second brain is one organised collection of your company knowledge (numbers, brand, products, policies), kept in plain Markdown files that any AI tool can read.

An AI model knows nothing about your tours, margins or tone of voice until you tell it, which is why so much AI copy sounds generic. A second brain lets you brief it once, and becomes the memory an agent checks before it acts. Keep it current and keep guest personal data out of it. My walkthrough: Building a second brain for your tour company.

Social commerce

Social commerce is selling through social platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where discovery and, increasingly, the purchase itself happen inside the app.

In-app booking is arriving: in my Arival piece on digital marketing priorities for 2026, I noted Klook was one of the first experience platforms with a direct TikTok integration. For most operators, that means short-form video sending people to a bookable product page, measured in bookings, not likes. See my Arival guide to selling tours with short-form video and tour operator marketing.

Vibe coding

Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want in plain English and letting an AI tool write the code, then testing and refining it.

Computer scientist Andrej Karpathy coined the term in February 2025 (Wikipedia). For operators it means small tools without a developer, such as a guest hub page, a guide expense form or digital waivers, built with tools like Lovable, Replit or Claude Code. Keep personal data off anything public. See my Arival article, 5 vibe coding examples every tour operator can use, the Experience This! episode where I introduce it and AI tools for tour operators.

Zero-click search

Zero-click search is a search that ends without a click to any website, because the answer was already shown on the results page or in an AI response.

It is not only an AI issue: SparkToro and Datos estimated that 58.5% of US Google searches in 2024 ended with zero clicks (SparkToro), and AI answers add to it. Being named in the answer, with your price and reviews visible, now matters as much as the click, so check the facts Google and AI tools show about you. See AI search for tour operators.

For the bigger picture, read my practical guide to AI for tour operators or browse the Journal. For these ideas explained live, see my speaking page, or read more about me.

Sources: Getting Found in the AI Age (Arival), Experiences Recommended by AI (Arival), AI That Works (GetYourGuide Supply), GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (arXiv), AI features and your website (Google), Search documentation updates (Google), HowTo and FAQ rich results changes (Google), Helpful content guidance (Google), Things to do connectivity partners (Google), The /llms.txt file (llmstxt.org), Introducing MCP (Anthropic), What is MCP? (modelcontextprotocol.io), Vibe coding (Wikipedia), Vibe Coding Examples (Arival), Google Things To Do Ads (Arival), Operator Guide to Reviews (Arival), Digital Marketing Priorities 2026 (Arival), Short-form Video to Sell Tours (Arival), GetYourGuide Commission Increases (Arival), 2024 Zero-Click Search Study (SparkToro), TouristTrip (Schema.org), Schema Markup Validator, Experience This! S4 E3 (Buzzsprout).