Report
World’s Best at AI 2025 Index
AI is reshaping hotel discovery faster than any previous distribution shift. Travellers no longer scroll through ten blue links — they ask AI and receive a shortlist. This report measures how often hotels appear in AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Google AI, and Perplexity, uncovering who leads, who lags, and why AI visibility is becoming the industry’s next competitive battleground.
What’s inside This Report?
2.36 million data points. One question: is your hotel visible to AI?
Executive Summary
Holiday Inn Express leads rankings globally. 84% of the world’s hotels are invisible to AI. There is a big brand perception gap. The numbers that matter and why they should concern every hotelWhy AI Search Matters for Hotels
Travellers no longer scroll through ten blue links. They ask ChatGPT for a hotel and get three names back. If yours isn’t in that answer, you don’t exist. How AI compressed the discovery funnel and why the hotels left out are losing bookings they never see.Methodology and Data Sources
We queried ChatGPT, Google AI, and Perplexity with prompts during 2025 that mirror how real travellers search generating 2.36 million data points across 2,105 brands, 130,884 properties, and 30 countries. The scoring model, prompt design, and normalisation behind the largest AI visibility study of hotels ever conducted.Global AI Visibility Rankings of Hotels
Global top 25 rankings, segment breakdowns (Luxury, Upscale, Midscale, Economy), the brand perception gap that is costing operators RevPAR, regional deep dives across Europe, Americas, APAC, and MEA, top flagship properties, and how the type of question a traveller asks completely reshuffles who winsWhat the AI Engines Are “Seeing”
AI doesn’t accept your brand classification it builds its own from reviews, pricing, and content signals. How the perception engine works, the AEO and GEO frameworks, why visibility compounds through a flywheel effect, and the uncomfortable truth that 46% of brands are being misrepresented at property level.Strategic Insights for Hotel Leaders
From data to action. What to do first, what to do next, and what to stop doing. Segment-specific playbooks for chains, independents, luxury properties, and emerging markets. The CMO agenda for the AI era and why the cost of waiting compounds every month.World’s Best at AI 2025 Index - Highlights
- Only 1/6 of the world’s hotel properties (130,884 of ~810,000) are currently visible in AI-generated search responses.
- Holiday Inn Express leads globally followed by Ibis Hotels and Hilton.
- Almost half of brands are misaligned between their desired brand category and AI's perception. This might result in a decrease per REVPAR if not addressed soon.
- Regional dynamics vary dramatically: The Ritz-Carlton scores 37.58 globally but 96.63 in MEA.
- The window for AI search optimisation mirrors the early SEO era. Hotels that act in the first half of 2026 will shape what AI learns to recommend for years to come. The first movers are building structural advantages that will compound just as early SEO adopters dominated organic search for a decade.
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