Travel and Tourism: AI goes beyond Google’s Top 10

More than half of the citations for AI Overview in the tourism sector come from domains that do not appear in Google’s organic Top 10. For years, the story was straightforward: the playing field was the first page, with TripAdvisor, Booking, Trivago, OTAs, metasearch engines, and major portals on it, and everyone else trying to get in. Now, the task has become twofold. The organic SERP continues to function, but it is no longer the sole boundary of visibility. There is also the list of domains that Google selects as sources within the generative response—a citation displayed above the summary text, complete with a clickable link.

The two lists can be very different even for the same keyword. The AI response pulls in local guides, destination verticals, experience platforms, social media, and industry magazines. Results that are less prominent in the classic SERP become material for the summary that the user reads while deciding where to go, what to see, when to leave, or which experience to include in the trip.

The strong domain continues to dominate the SERP, but does not automatically appear in the AI citation for the same keyword. Within the generative response, the page that Google can best use to construct the summary carries the most weight, and that page often comes from a different part of the organic landscape.

How We Analyzed Travel on Google

Our study is based on data from the SEOZoom Observatory. We isolated over 75,000 travel-related queries from our daily tracking of the Italian market, observed them for ten months—between June 2025 and April 2026—and for each one, we compared who ranks in the organic Top 10 and who is cited within the AI Overview response for the same keyword.

Travel is a sector that is difficult to isolate with precision. The automatic classification of keywords by category generates noise: queries such as “Milan weather,” “Milan,” or “booking” can end up in the “travel” category even though they are not tourism-related searches. To build a reliable sample, we worked on the textual patterns of the queries, selecting keywords with prefixes clearly linked to tourism: hotel, beaches, agritourism, bed and breakfast, vacations, what to see, what to do, flights, cruises, what to eat, itineraries, where to go, where to stay, when to go. Brand-related navigational queries and ambiguous phrasing were excluded.

The final scope consists of 77,703 keywords, with a total search volume of 42,255,070 searches, distributed across 15 thematic clusters. “Hotels” is the largest cluster, with 41,289 keywords, followed by “Farm Stays” (7,543), “B&Bs” (6,745), ‘Vacations’ (6,399), and “Beaches” (5,693). On the opposite end are the clusters of purely exploratory queries: When to Go (117 keywords), What to Eat (603), Itineraries (305), Where to Go (326).

The selection prioritizes queries that can be precisely attributed to tourism and excludes searches that are too ambiguous or broad. The sample encompasses different stages of the journey: inspiration, comparison, organization, evaluation, and booking.

The metrics used in the analysis have precise definitions. AI KW is the number of distinct keywords for which a domain appears as a cited source within an AI Overview response. AI Traffic is our estimate of the traffic generated by visibility in AI Overviews, calculated based on search volume, position in the response, and SEOZoom’s proprietary CTR models. AI Activation Rate is the share of keywords in a cluster for which Google generates an AI Overview response. AI Conversion Rate indicates the percentage of organic keywords on page 1 that also generate an AI Overview citation. Non-organic sources are the domains cited in AI Overviews that, for that specific keyword, do not appear in the top 10 results of the organic SERP.

The Top 10 Loses Its Exclusivity on the Answer

For each search in the sample, we compared the ten traditional organic results with the list of domains cited as sources within the AI Overview answer, when active. We then calculated what proportion of AI citations comes from domains that, for the same keyword, do not appear on page 1.

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In the Hotels category, which includes 41,289 keywords and over 23 million in aggregate search volume, AI Overview generates 4,927 mentions. Of these, 2,406 come from domains already ranking in the organic Top 10 for the same keyword. The remaining 2,521 come from domains outside the first page. The share outside the Top 10 is 51.2%, an absolute majority, albeit by a narrow but stable margin.In “what to see in” queries, the gap widens further. Out of 2,971 AI citations, 1,075 come from domains in the organic Top 10 and 1,896 from domains outside the Top 10. The share rises to 63.8%. For purely informational queries, where the user seeks guidance rather than availability, the shift in sources is even more pronounced: nearly two out of three mentions come from domains that the organic SERP did not place in the top ten results.The more informational the query, the more the list of cited domains diverges from the SERP. The closer the query is to a transaction, the more the divergence diminishes, but in the two clusters analyzed, it still exceeds half of the citations. The signal therefore applies to both a segment close to booking and exploratory search.

It’s important to understand the word “out” here. It does not mean a weak, irrelevant, or unknown domain. The calculation is based on the keyword-domain pair: a domain is “out” if, for that specific query within the observed scope, it does not appear in the top ten organic results. The same domain may rank well for other keywords in the industry, may appear on page 2 for that search, or may dominate the overall organic results of the cluster.

Booking, for example, ranks on page 1 for 36,338 keywords in the Hotel cluster, but for 10 keywords it is mentioned by AI Overview without appearing in the organic Top 10 for that specific query. The two coexist: AI Overview introduces a selection that does not always align with organic rankings, even for domains that dominate the SERP.

The Focus on Hotel Dynamics

Of the 739 keywords in the Hotel cluster for which Google activates an AI Overview response, the non-organic share is 51.2%. This means that over half of the work involved in constructing the AI response in the most transactional travel cluster is done by drawing on sources that the SERP, for the same keyword, does not promote on the first page.

Among the names appearing outside the Top 10 in the Hotel cluster are well-known industry players: Kayak, Expedia, Hotels.com, Momondo, Agoda, and even Booking, which appears 10 times as an AI source on keywords where it is not in the organic Top 10. Google can retrieve them as travel references even when, for a single search, they do not occupy the first page.

These are joined by less prominent players in the classic Hotel cluster SERP: Instagram (29 keywords), Facebook (33 keywords), Google Maps via google.it (57 keywords), and then vertical publications and magazines, such as hotellerie.pambianconews.com and benessereviaggi.it, which appear in AI responses as industry editorial content.

The AI response for the Hotel cluster combines OTAs, metasearch, social media, local listings, and journalistic content within the same text. The organic Top 10, for the same keyword, presents a different landscape: booking engines, Maps listings, generalist OTAs, direct hotel listings, and results tailored for practical decision-making.

The divide in “what to see”

In the informational cluster, the divide is wider and changes in nature. It’s not just the gap between the Top 10 and the AI Overview that widens: the profile of the domains entering through the AI gateway changes.

In the “what to see” cluster, OTAs and booking engines lose their centrality. Travel blogs, niche vertical portals, experience platforms, and social content enter the picture. Souvenirdiviaggio.it, 10cose.it, archetravel.com, and tropicalspiritblog.it are genuine travel blogs, built for reading. Winalist is a wine tourism vertical. GetYourGuide and Viator are experience platforms. YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok enter as visual sources. Italia.it is the institutional portal.

This is content that the organic SERP for searches like “what to see in Rome” or “what to see in Florence” wouldn’t always have chosen as the top ten results. Yet within the AI response for the same keyword, they appear and carry weight. The specific relevance of individual content—a clear itinerary, a detailed guide, a well-crafted vertical page—becomes a much stronger signal than the domain’s overall authority alone.

The paradox of the big players: strong organic, weak AI

The most surprising element is the disproportion between organic strength and presence in AI Overviews. The transactional nature of many pages plays a role, because AI Overviews appear less frequently in searches related to booking. However, the data remains useful for understanding how little of the organic strength of the major players is transferred into the AI summary of the Hotel cluster.

The key metric is the AI conversion rate, which measures what portion of a domain’s organic strength is successfully transferred into the generative response. In the Hotel cluster, among the major organic players, the weighted average is just 0.41%.

Tripadvisor ranks in the Top 10 for 38,953 keywords and is mentioned in the AI Overview for 212 keywords: an AI conversion rate of 0.5%. Booking goes from 36,338 organic keywords to 175 AI keywords, still 0.5%. Trivago goes from 25,528 to 71, equal to 0.3%. The ratio remains low for other players in the sector as well: Expedia and Kayak hover around 0.5%, Hotels.com and Agoda drop to 0.3%, while Lastminute.com and Reserving.com register a mere 0.0% within the observed scope.

This data makes the value of the SERP clearer. A domain can dominate the first page yet be much less prominent in the AI response. It may be an organic result, have a strong brand, history, backlinks, effective templates, and massive search volume, yet receive few mentions when Google generates a summary. This does not mean that AI Overviews ignore these players, as they are also mentioned in other contexts and for other keywords. What emerges is something else: for the specific keyword “hotel + city,” Google AI prefers to construct the response using other sources in the vast majority of cases.

The domain’s organic strength, on its own, is not enough to explain the AI citation. The data indicates that, in the Hotel cluster, the specific relevance of the page to the response Google is generating carries significant weight. A generic listing from a major comparison site may rank very well for “hotels in Florence,” but offer little useful material for the AI summary on that same keyword. If the page is identical for all cities—same layout, same boxes, same filler text—the specific content to incorporate into the answer is reduced.

Specific relevance does not coincide with the number of backlinks or the overall strength of the domain: it depends on the relationship between the page’s content and the query. Organic ranking in travel remains central, but it ceases to be a reliable proxy for visibility within AI Overviews. These are two dimensions that must be measured together.

How Competition Is Expanding

When large transactional domains transfer only a small portion of their organic strength into AI Overviews, the summary space is occupied by sources of a different nature.

In the Hotel cluster, among the domains referenced by AI Overviews—even while remaining outside the Top 10 for specific keywords—well-known travel players appear, such as Kayak, Expedia, Hotels.com, Momondo, Agoda, and Booking. Alongside these names are players that are more peripheral compared to the classic SERP: Instagram, Facebook, Google Maps / Hotels, hotellerie.pambianconews.com, Benessereviaggi. Here, AI Overview combines reputation, location, social signals, editorial content, and industry information.

In the “what to see” group, the composition changes. It includes city guides, travel blogs, experience platforms, visual content, institutional portals, and thematic verticals: Winalist, 10cose.it, Souvenir di Viaggio, Tropical Spirit Blog, Archetravel, GetYourGuide, Viator, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Italia.it, Volagratis, and Columbus Assicurazioni.

The difference between “hotels” and “what to see” is instructive. In the first case, the content relevant to the query may come from comparisons, reputation, local data, information about accommodations, social media pages, or industry publications. In the second case, the focus shifts to guidance, storytelling, the order of stops, firsthand experience, visual content, and the local context.
A metasearch can be useful when the query concerns a specific property. A blog may be more suitable when the query concerns a destination. A video can make a place feel more immediate. An experiences platform can help Google connect “what to see” and “what to do.”
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The domain category matters less than the role the page plays in the summary. Competition is taking on a new form: it’s not just the strongest sites in organic search that compete, but the content that Google can best use to answer a specific query. The first page shows you who occupies space in the SERP. AI Overview tells you who Google uses to build the answer.

The Cruise Segment Exception

One cluster out of 15 shows a different dynamic: Cruises.

Here, AI Overview is active in 57.3% of keywords, a high percentage. But when AI is activated, the cited sources largely coincide with the organic market leaders. MSC Cruises gets 29,580 in estimated AI traffic and 115 AI keywords. Costa Cruises reaches 20,561 in AI traffic with 124 keywords. Together, they account for 71% of the group’s AI traffic.

Above all, these are the same two brands that dominate the organic SERP for searches in the sector. Google AI Overview confirms the organic ranking rather than rewriting it.

The explanation is structural, tied to the nature of the product. The cruise market is concentrated: a few operators with standardized catalogs, defined routes, user-recognizable brands, and a specific product. When Google needs to generate an AI response for “Mediterranean cruise August,” the pool of relevant sources is narrower, and MSC and Costa are included in it as both organic and AI sources.

Unlike tourist destinations, cruises generate less independent, local, or narrative content. The specific relevance that AI seeks, in a concentrated market, is already at the top of the organic SERP.

The mechanism is the same as what you see in other clusters, applied to a different market. Where competition is fragmented and the narrative offering is broad—such as destinations, cities, experiences, and activities—AI has more material to select from and may diverge from the SERP. Where the market is concentrated and product-centric, AI Overview tends to confirm the leaders because relevant alternatives are fewer in number and less widespread.

When the user explores, AI responds

AI Overviews are more prominent in searches that kick off the trip, not those that wrap it up. In tourism, these are also the queries where the gap between organic results and AI summaries becomes most visible: searches that guide the decision-making process, such as where to go, what to see, when to leave, which experience to include, and which accommodation to consider.

In the travel sample, the most exploratory queries have very high activation rates: When to go reaches 96.6%, What to eat at 91.6%, Where to go at 85.6%. These are searches where the user is still exploring possibilities: evaluating the time of year, looking for a destination, gathering ideas, comparing experiences, and trying to figure out if a place is worth the time, attention, and budget.

Queries closer to booking behave differently. Hotel triggers AI Overview in 1.8% of cases, Farmstay in 2.6%, B&B in 3.0%, and Where to stay in 3.7%. Here, Google continues to give significant prominence to maps, local listings, comparison sites, booking engines, and traditional results, because the user is already close to making a concrete decision: price, availability, location, reviews.

This data clarifies where AI visibility originates in the travel industry. Before the room comes the destination. Before the rate comes the desire. Before the booking comes a phase in which Google guides, organizes, suggests, and selects. And that is precisely where editorial content, local guides, experiences, itineraries, and thematic verticals can come into play.

Because exploratory queries open up more space

The gap between SERPs and AI Overview is not uniform in travel: it varies depending on what the user is searching for. In pure exploratory clusters—those where the user seeks information and guidance—AI Overview is almost always active. “When to go” triggers AI in 96.6% of the cluster’s keywords. “What to eat” in 91.6%. “Where to go” in 85.6%.

In transactional clusters, the situation is reversed. “Hotels” activates AI in 1.8% of the keywords. “Farm stays” in 2.6%. “B&Bs” in 3.0%. “Where to stay” in 3.7%. For searches where the user is already in the booking phase, Google still prefers traditional formats: local listings, maps, booking engines, and comparison sites.

The dichotomy between exploration and transaction applies wherever AI Overview responds. What becomes specific to travel is how this dichotomy combines with the gap between the two rankings. The more exploratory the query, the more active the AI, and the more the list of domains mentioned diverges from the organic Top 10 for the same keyword. The 51.2% for Hotels becomes 63.8% for Things to See. Exploration and independence from organic results go hand in hand.

Between the two extremes lie hybrid clusters, where AI activates selectively based on the precise wording of the query. “Beaches” activates AI in 22% of cases, “Vacations” in 22%, “Things to do” in 44.6%, and “Cruises” in 57.3%. In these areas, the presence of AI depends heavily on how the user formulates the question: “beaches Sardinia,” “Blue Flag beaches Sardinia 2025,” and “beaches for children Sardinia” can trigger different responses.

The practical consequence is clear: discussing AI visibility in travel without distinguishing the type of query leads to misinterpretations. The AI exposure surface for those working solely on transactional queries is structurally smaller. The surface for those who excel in exploratory queries is much broader and competes with a wider pool of sources than the classic SERP.

When a user searches for “what to see in Palermo in three days,” Google can generate a summary consisting of stops, tips, priorities, and context. When searching for “hotel Palermo center,” the search is more focused on availability, price, location, and direct comparison. The traditional SERP still has very powerful tools to handle that type of search.

In travel, therefore, AI visibility often arises before the conversion. Before the room, before the rate, before availability. It arises when a person is choosing a destination, imagining an itinerary, evaluating a time frame, or seeking an experience.

It’s intent that makes the difference

The reason lies in the nature of the user’s intent and the type of page that needs to be displayed. In AI Overviews for travel, the overall strength of the domain is not enough to guarantee inclusion. The value of the page’s specific relevance to the answer Google is constructing is growing.

A page may be perfect for organic ranking but ill-suited to be used as a source in a generative summary. It may work very well as a grid, listing, comparison tool, or template, yet offer less textual material useful for explaining, contextualizing, or guiding.

A Tripadvisor or Booking listing for “hotels in Florence” is a very strong organic asset: it has brand, signals, reviews, structure, links, and commercial depth. But when AI Overview builds a response, it may need more: specific text, local context, descriptive elements, and information that can be reused in the summary.

The pages of major transactional players are excellent for capturing searches like “hotels in Florence,” “hotels in central Rome,” “hotels in Naples near the station.” They offer availability, reviews, prices, filters, maps, and comparisons. These are all very strong elements for organic search and for users close to making a booking.

The AI summary operates on a different level. It requires embeddable snippets: descriptions, context, motivations, orientation elements, and information that can fit within a conversational response. A grid of results can dominate the SERP. A local guide, an editorial page, or destination content can become more useful within AI Overview.

What changes for OTAs, hotels, and travel publishers

For travel brands, this shifts part of the editorial work upstream. Guides, destination content, itineraries, seasonality, experiences, and local tips become assets that can influence perception even before the user reaches the transactional page.

The 0.5% figure shifts the focus to the pages: how much material they offer to the AI summary, how specific they are, and how much they help Google build a response.

For OTAs, metasearch engines, and comparison sites, the issue is structural. Many pages are templates replicated on a large scale: “hotel + city,” “deals + destination,” “where to stay + location.” They work because they aggregate availability, prices, filters, reviews, and maps. These are strong pages for transactional queries, close to the booking stage.

When AI Overview activates, however, those same pages may offer little material that can be incorporated into a narrative summary. To appear more frequently in AI citations, the transactional model needs to be complemented by editorial assets: destination guides, local content, in-depth coverage of neighborhoods, experiences, seasonal highlights, and itineraries.

For a single accommodation provider, the perspective changes. The domain often has less authority than large intermediaries, but a highly specific page can be valuable for niche queries: “seaside hotels with spas in Liguria,” “farmstays with pools near Bolgheri,” “where to stay in central Matera.” In these cases, what matters are real details, local context, location, amenities, the promised experience, and verifiable information.

For a travel publisher, the format is already close to what AI Overview uses in exploratory searches: guides, itineraries, destination stories, local tips, visual content, and comparisons of alternatives. AI mentions can bring authority and brand exposure, even when a click isn’t guaranteed. For this traffic, mentions and position in the summary must be measured separately.

The most important consequence is methodological. In travel, organic ranking cannot be the sole indicator of brand visibility. It is necessary to measure AI mentions in parallel: how many keywords within one’s scope trigger a generative response, on how many of those the domain appears as a source, in what position within the summary, and against which competitors.

The three practical and operational consequences

There are at least three practical consequences that make a difference in tourism visibility.

1. The first concerns monitoring the competition. Those who only track the organic Top 10 for transactional terms in their sector—hotel plus city, B&B plus area, agritourism plus region—lose sight of much of the AI landscape, because AI barely activates on those terms. AI presence in travel plays out across a broader range of queries: planning questions, destination searches, and informational queries about activities and places. Monitoring rankings for transactional terms remains useful for traditional traffic, but it reveals little about who is appearing in AI answers when the user has not yet booked.
2. The second point concerns who can compete in AI Overviews for travel. Data from travel blogs, niche verticals, and specialized portals show that, in informational queries within the sector, the specific relevance of a single page to the answer Google is constructing can carry more weight than the domain’s overall authority alone. A well-written guide to Lecce, published by a blog with far fewer backlinks than Tripadvisor, can end up in the AI answer for “what to see in Lecce” if it offers a more specific and user-friendly summary. This isn’t a fairy tale about democratic SEO: it’s a measurable consequence of how AI source selection works.
3. The third concerns the moment when visibility is at stake. The searches that trigger AI Overview in travel are those where the user is still planning the trip: where to go, when to go, what to see, what to eat, what experiences to have, what itineraries to follow. These are searches that can precede the actual booking by weeks or months. Visibility in AI Overviews is established before the booking stage, while the user is still deciding. Those who position themselves well in that phase enter the user’s consideration as a credible option. Those who focus only on the booking phase operate downstream, when part of the decision has already been made.

The shift in perspective is clear: for visibility in travel, it’s not enough to know if you rank for the term “hotel Florence.” You need to know if you’re mentioned by AI when someone searches for what to see in Florence, where to go in Tuscany in April, what the typical Florentine dishes are, or which itineraries to follow for a three-day stay in the city. Those are the searches where the user builds their idea of the trip. Those are the searches where AI Overview is active and selects sources often outside the Top 10. That is where the recognizability of your tourism brand in 2026 is formed.

Measuring the new landscape with SEOZoom

The organic SERP has established metrics: position, volume, estimated traffic, variations, competitors, features. The citations within AI Overview require their own metrics, because the unit of measurement changes. Here, you’re not just looking at who ranks first or second in the classic results. You need to understand whether a keyword triggers AI Overview, which domains are cited, where they appear in the summary, how many mentions they receive, how often they become the primary source, and how much estimated AI traffic they generate.

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SEOZoom lets you monitor both rankings within the same analytics environment. With SEOZoom’s AI Overview, you can identify keywords in your industry where AI summarization is active, see the domains cited as sources, view the placement of those citations within the response, and track estimated AI traffic. It’s a map of the second-tier rankings for your niche: who appears in the response for your keyword and where you stand in relation to them.

With AI Visibility, you can expand your view beyond Google to include ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Mode: see how your brand is represented across different generative engines, and monitor URLs, prompts, and competitors across platforms.

For the most specific and recurring prompts in your industry—those requiring continuous monitoring—the AI Prompt Tracker comes into play, allowing you to track your domain’s presence over time in response to specific questions and see how your position and that of your competitors evolves.

With AI Overview Gap, you can identify keywords where competitors appear in AI Overviews but your site does not. In the travel sector, this means identifying destinations, itineraries, guides, experiences, and seasonal trends that are already driving Google’s responses.

With AI Engine and Editorial Assistant, you can verify the relevance of a landing page, a local guide, or an itinerary, and transform that analysis into stronger content for Google and AI responses.

The value lies in the intersection: organic ranking, AI citations, exploratory prompts, destination content, and gaps relative to competitors. Generative visibility becomes an independent variable to measure, not an automatic consequence of the first page.

The SERP still works. It’s just no longer enough

Page 1 of Google, in travel, still matters. It drives traffic, captures commercial searches, supports bookings, and bolsters major domains that have built authority, brand, and structure over the years.

AI Overview adds another space, above or alongside the SERP, where Google can retrieve specific pages, guides, destination content, verticals, and editorial materials outside the first page. It doesn’t replace the SERP: it complements it with a different selection.

For digital tourism, this is the shift to focus on. Winning the SERP remains essential, especially for queries close to booking. But the visibility that guides the choice is also shaped by AI responses, guides, destination content, experiences, verticals, social media, and the sources Google retrieves beyond the first page.

Today, winning the SERP remains the starting point. The AI response is the new competitive space.