Small ships drive luxurious journey into low-volume progress with Aqua Expeditions CEO Francesco Galli Zugaro
Hotels, cruise strains, and tourism locations danger shedding bookings as AI-powered journey discovery reshapes how travellers seek for experiences on-line, growing stress on hospitality brands to produce content material that each customers and machines can perceive.
discovered that 57% of travellers use social media throughout some a part of the journey journey, making digital visibility more and more tied to buyer acquisition and income era.
Hospitality influencer Scott Eddy stated many journey brands are nonetheless counting on polished pictures as a substitute of manufacturing content material that explains their id and experiences clearly sufficient for AI-driven suggestion programs.
“Most hospitality brands aren’t actually marketing,” Eddy stated. “They’re documenting, but they’re documenting the wrong way.”
He criticised lodges and locations for posting “photos of rooms, pools, and food” with out creating emotional connection or differentiation. “That’s not a strategy; that’s an inventory display,” he stated.
The dialogue highlighted rising stress on hospitality operators to cut back dependence on paid promoting and on-line journey companies by enhancing direct discovery by AI search and social platforms.
Eddy stated storytelling has shifted from a branding train right into a industrial requirement tied immediately to visibility and bookings.
“Storytelling used to sit at the top of the funnel as a nice-to-have for awareness,” he stated. “Now storytelling is the distribution. If your story isn’t strong, you don’t even get seen, and if you don’t get seen, you don’t get booked.”
He warned that many hospitality brands nonetheless create content material “for humans scrolling, not for machines interpreting,” regardless of suggestion engines more and more shaping journey discovery.
“The game is no longer about ranking pages. It’s being understood by AI,” Eddy stated.
According to Eddy, AI programs prioritise “structured, story-driven human content” similar to detailed journey guides, searchable long-form articles, and experience-based storytelling relatively than aesthetic-focused campaigns.
“AI doesn’t care about your pretty photos,” he stated. “It pulls from structured, story-driven human content.”
He added that hospitality teams ought to put money into long-form content material explaining experiences intimately as a substitute of counting on quick captions or image-led campaigns.
“You need long-form content that actually explains your experience in detail, not surface-level captions—real substance,” Eddy stated.
As AI-generated suggestions change into extra influential in journey planning, lodges, cruise operators, and tourism boards face mounting stress to make content material searchable, explainable, and visual throughout each social and AI-driven discovery channels.
