44% of AI citations look here. Is your hotel showing up?
Remember the fanny pack?
Remember when everyone declared the fanny pack was dead?
Too dated. Too dorky. Nobody wants that anymore.
Then it came back as a belt bag, and suddenly it was everyone's must-have accessory.
Same concept. Completely repositioned.
Blogs took the same journey.
For years, the conventional wisdom was that blogs were over.
Too slow. Too old school. Not worth the effort.
Mostly used for excessively long online recipes.
(praise for the "jump to recipe" button, right?)
Many hotels that did have a blog stopped because social media took over, and made content feel easy.
Quick to post, easy to measure, done by lunch.
Blogs felt like the slow, expensive option.
The issue was never the format; it was that the posts weren't built with any strategy behind them.
A purposeful blog can be a strong asset for hotel marketers. By selecting the right topic, structure, and language, it becomes a top tool in the direct bookings playbook.
Blogs are now among the top content sources that AI search loves.
Here's what I am seeing:
Many properties don't have a blog, have stopped posting to one, or rely on ChatGPT and call it done.
All are problematic.
When your team uses AI to pump out blog posts without a plan, the content gets lost online.
It doesn't build trust. It doesn't drive bookings. It just adds to the pile of words on the web.
And the pile is very large right now.
More travelers are using AI tools like ChatGPT, Google's AI overviews, and Perplexity to choose their hotel.
These tools draw on credible, well-structured, and genuinely useful content.
Blog-style articles make up 44% of all Google AI Overview citations. That's more than any other type of content.
Social posts, news articles, and YouTube, none of them come close.
Stats show that generic, AI-generated blog articles aren't as much.
They get ignored.
The data is clear. A well-built blog earns its place in AI search — and in your marketing strategy.
Here's what a strategic blog actually does for your hotel.
Here are 5 benefits of having a strategic hotel blog.
More surface area. Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages. That's dramatically more entry points for guests to find you organically.
Fresh content. AI search prioritizes current, unique content. Blogs are one of the best ways to share genuine insights about your property and destination.
Guests stay longer on your website. A well-written article keeps readers engaged, and that time on the page signals credibility to Google.
Content that lasts longer than 24 hours. A strong blog post lasts longer than social media posts, which disappear in 24 hours or less. It can drive traffic and AI citations for months, even years. Every post is compounding return on your time.
Boosts shareable content. This one is big. A well-crafted article is the base foundation for other content types.
What does a strategic blog actually look like?
I use more than 20 touchpoints in my signature content system. These help me write high-leverage hotel blogs for my clients.
These are the key touchpoints that most content misses. And it's why they often don't perform well.
When those touchpoints are hit, a strong blog serves as the base for everything else.
4–6 social media posts with real substance behind them
A Google Business Profile update
A guest email worth opening
A source AI can find, reference, and recommend
One strategic piece of content.
A full month (or more) of marketing actually working toward revenue.
I've built a system just for hotels.
It makes marketing repeatable. Now you have a solid foundation, not just a fill-in-the-blanks content calendar.
Blogs are a strong starting point.
Getting your hotel fully visible in AI search requires a broader strategy, and blogs must be part of it. That's where the real opportunity is right now, for independent hotels.
The Boost: Is your hotel's blog absent, active, abandoned, or somewhere between? Wherever you're starting from, there's a clear path forward.
Always happy to talk about this.
