AI in Travel Planning: If Someone Is Missing, the Reservation Won't Be Made
One in five people in Switzerland already uses ChatGPT or other AI tools to plan their trips. A YouGov study shows that the decision-making process has shifted to chatbots—with concrete consequences for tourism providers who aren’t visible there.
AI in Travel Planning: The Decision Is Made by the Chatbot
One in five people in Switzerland already uses ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot for AI-powered travel planning. Among those under 45, the figure is nearly one in three—and 71 percent of current users plan to use AI even more frequently in the future. This is shown by a representative YouGov study from January 2026. As Dominik Habermacher, Managing Director at Jung von Matt Impact, explains, this has far-reaching consequences for tourism providers.
The inspiration phase—which used to be the domain of travel blogs, magazines, and tourism websites—is increasingly taking place in chatbots. Activities, destinations, directions—travelers ask the AI about all of these things first. Booking sites don’t open until the decision has long since been made. If a place doesn’t appear in the chatbot, it simply doesn’t exist for that person.
Three Theses That Are Now Valid
The first premise: Anyone not mentioned in the AI’s response is out of the running. The decision to choose a hotel, a destination, or an activity is made during the conversation with the chatbot—and no longer on the provider’s website.
The second point: A hotel’s own website isn’t enough. ChatGPT tends to cite travel magazines, comparison sites, and editorial lists. A mountain hotel in Zermatt that offers outdoor activities but doesn’t appear on any relevant «Top Hotels for Hikers» list is also missing from ChatGPT’s response. According to Habermacher, this is the new form of backlink building—not for Google, but for mentions in the right sources.
The third point: SEO remains essential, but it’s no longer enough. A good Google ranking alone does not guarantee visibility to AI. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude have their own source preferences and sometimes retrieve pages in real time. If a server responds too slowly, the website is simply omitted.
AI in Travel Planning: Three Steps to Visibility
Habermacher recommends a specific three-step approach for tourism providers. The first step is to measure their own visibility: If you don’t know whether and how your brand appears in AI responses, you can’t optimize anything. Specialized tools show which questions your brand appears in and where it’s missing. At the same time, it’s worth taking a look at the server logs: A high percentage of aborted connections caused by AI bots (status code 499) means a direct loss of visibility.
The second step involves strategically building a media presence. Travel media, comparison sites, and editorial rankings are the key levers—not because they drive traffic, but because they are the sources that ChatGPT cites. A mention on htr.ch or an activity portal is now measurably valuable for AI visibility.
Third, the content should be tailored to real user questions. It is not search volume that matters, but the actual questions generated by chatbots and prompt-monitoring tools. This would result in FAQ sections and topic pages that AI systems would use as sources.
The time advantage is now
ChatGPT advertising is already live in some markets. The paid funnel is shifting toward large language models, in parallel with organic visibility. Those who start monitoring today will have reliable data in just a few weeks—and will be able to make better budget decisions next year. The shift is happening right now; it’s measurable, and it won’t wait.
Author: Dominik Habermacher, Managing Director, Jung von Matt IMPACT
