How to get your hotel recommended by ChatGPT

When a traveler asks ChatGPT where to stay, the answer draws on two things: what the model already learned about hotels from the web, and, when it searches, the pages it finds in that moment. ChatGPT's search uses third-party search providers, including Bing.

From those sources, the assistant builds a short list of hotels that seem to match the question. It favors properties it can identify clearly, whose facts it can confirm, and which several trustworthy sources describe in a way that fits what the traveler asked for. Every step below strengthens one of those three things.

If an assistant's crawler is blocked, nothing else on this list matters for that assistant. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and check that these are not disallowed:

• OAI-SearchBot, which ChatGPT uses to find pages for search answers
• GPTBot, which OpenAI uses to collect public web content
• ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended, for the other major assistants
• Bingbot, because of ChatGPT's use of Bing

Blocks often come from places other than robots.txt. Security settings at your hosting provider or CDN, or bot protection added by a plugin, can turn crawlers away without anyone noticing. Ask your developer to confirm that these crawlers receive your normal pages, not an error or a challenge screen.

Because ChatGPT search uses Bing among its sources, a hotel that is missing from Bing's index is harder for ChatGPT to find when it searches.

1. Set up Bing Webmaster Tools for your domain. It is free, and you can import your settings from Google Search Console.
2. Submit your sitemap, the file that lists every page on your site.
3. Use URL Inspection to check your most important pages: home, rooms, location and any guides. If a page says "Discovered but not crawled", request indexing.
4. If your platform supports IndexNow, turn it on. It notifies Bing whenever a page is added or updated, instead of waiting for Bing to come back on its own.

An assistant should not have to guess your address, your room count or whether you have parking. Hotel structured data, written in a format called JSON-LD, states these facts in a form machines read reliably. Without it, assistants fall back on what OTA listings say about you.

At a minimum, it should cover your exact name, full address and map coordinates, number of rooms, price range, check-in and check-out times, and the amenities guests ask about most, such as breakfast, parking, a pool or whether pets are allowed. It usually sits on your home page, where your developer adds it once.

Two things matter as much as having it. It must match what your pages actually say, because structured data that contradicts the visible page does more harm than good. And it must be valid, because an assistant ignores markup it cannot read.

If your site has no Hotel structured data, a full Stay Indexed report includes a starting block with your property's name, city and website filled in, for your developer to complete and add.

Travelers rarely ask for "a hotel in Lisbon". They ask for a quiet hotel for a couple, a family hotel near the beach, or somewhere walkable for a first visit. The assistant can only match you to that question if your website says, in plain words, that this is what you offer.

Compare these two sentences.

• "An exceptional experience in the heart of the city."
• "An 18-room boutique hotel in Chiado, a five-minute walk from Baixa-Chiado metro, popular with couples on a first visit to Lisbon."

The first could describe any hotel. The second tells an assistant exactly which questions you answer. Put sentences like the second on your home page and your location page: the neighborhood, what is within walking distance, what staying there is like, and which guests you suit best.

Assistants are often asked practical questions before they recommend anything: Is there parking? Is breakfast included? Is it suitable for children? Can I check in late? If your website does not answer, the assistant takes the answer from a review site or an OTA, or leaves you out.

Publish a clear FAQ page and a detailed rooms page. Use real answers, written as full sentences, not icons alone. Cover parking, breakfast, check-in and check-out, accessibility, children, pets, transport from the airport and anything guests ask your reception every week.

Assistants combine information from many places. If your hotel is "Casa Loureanax" on your website, "Casa Loureanax Boutique Hotel Lisboa" on one OTA and "Hotel Loureanax" on another, it becomes harder to recognize them as one property.

Choose one exact name, address and phone number. Use them on your website, your Google Business Profile, your Bing Places listing, every OTA and every directory you control.

Assistants lean heavily on third-party sources. A hotel described by the local tourism board, a respected city guide or travel press is easier for an assistant to recommend with confidence than one that only describes itself.

• Make sure you are listed, with accurate details, on your official local tourism website.
• Reach out to local and travel writers with something specific to say, such as a new opening, a neighborhood story or a seasonal offer.
• Encourage reviews that mention specifics. "Perfect for a quiet anniversary weekend" helps an assistant match you to that question far more than "great stay".

This step takes the longest. It also tends to have the most lasting effect.

When an assistant shows sources, you want the link to point to your website, not to an OTA listing written by someone else. That happens more often when your own site has the most useful page on the subject.

A detailed rooms page, a neighborhood guide written by your team and a clear page on how to get there all give the assistant a reason to cite you directly.

An llms.txt is a short plain-text file at yourdomain.com/llms.txt that summarizes your property for AI systems: what it is, where it is, who it suits, and links to your key pages. It is not a requirement, and not every assistant reads it. It is quick to write and gives a clean, accurate summary to those that do.

• Keyword stuffing. Repeating "best hotel in Lisbon" across your pages does not convince an assistant. Clear, specific facts do.
• Hidden text written for AI. Content that visitors cannot see but machines can is treated as manipulation by search engines.
• Fake or incentivized reviews. They violate platform rules and can remove you from listings altogether.
• Services that guarantee a ChatGPT placement. No one controls what an assistant recommends. Be wary of anyone who promises it.

Make one round of measurement before you change anything, then repeat it a few weeks after each change. Otherwise you cannot tell what worked. Our tracking guide explains how to do this by hand, and our sample report shows what a complete measurement and fix plan looks like, using a demo property.