The way travellers choose hotels is beginning to change, and Ibiza's hotel sector is preparing for a new challenge: becoming visible not only on Google and booking platforms, but inside the recommendations generated by artificial intelligence.

La Voz de Ibiza reports that hotels and tourism businesses on the island are increasingly paying attention to how tools such as ChatGPT interpret and recommend accommodation, even though the impact on actual bookings remains difficult to measure at this early stage.

From Google Search to AI Recommendations

Traditionally, travellers looking for a hotel would enter keywords into Google and compare the resulting websites and booking platforms.

Artificial intelligence introduces a different type of search.

A traveller can describe a holiday in natural language, asking for a hotel in a particular area, within a certain budget and suited to a specific type of trip.

Instead of returning a long list of links, an AI assistant can interpret those preferences and produce a smaller selection of recommendations.

For Ibiza hotels, that creates a new form of competition: being included in the answer rather than simply appearing near the top of a search page.

The Numbers Are Still Emerging

The change is still relatively new, and there is currently no precise Ibiza-specific figure showing how many hotel bookings are generated through AI.

However, national data suggest the behaviour is growing.

According to the NTT Data report "Check-in al hotel del futuro", seven out of ten travellers are already making decisions based on summaries generated by artificial intelligence, while online travel agencies have overtaken traditional search engines as the first step for finding accommodation.

The same report estimates that AI agents could directly manage up to 30% of bookings by 2030.

Spanish Travellers Are Already Using AI

Booking.com has also identified growing use of artificial intelligence in travel planning.

According to figures cited by La Voz de Ibiza, 38% of Spanish travellers say they use AI tools to plan their trips in 2026.

Globally, almost eight in ten travellers say they would be open to receiving recommendations based on artificial intelligence.

For a destination such as Ibiza, where international awareness is already extremely high, the importance may therefore lie less in generating demand and more in directing existing demand towards particular hotels and experiences.

The Hotel Sector Is Taking Notice

Alicia Reina, president of the Association of Hotel Directors and Managers of Spain in the Balearic Islands, told La Voz de Ibiza that there is already a clear change in how customers search for accommodation.

Google remains highly important, she said, but tools such as ChatGPT are increasingly entering the decision-making process at an early stage, when travellers are deciding where to stay and which area best suits their plans.

That means hotels are now beginning to consider not only their traditional search ranking, but also how clearly their information can be understood by AI systems.

FEHIF Sees a New Stage of Search

Santiago García Ramón, manager of the Federation of Hotel Business Associations of Ibiza and Formentera, places the greatest current impact in the inspiration, comparison and information stages of the booking journey.

He also stresses that it is still too early to quantify precisely how much AI contributes to final hotel reservations.

Some establishments can already identify website traffic, and in certain cases conversions, originating from ChatGPT and other AI environments.

The evidence therefore suggests that the channel exists, but remains at an early stage.

GEO Enters the Hotel Industry

The emerging discipline is increasingly known as GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation.

It is broadly comparable to SEO, but instead of trying to appear prominently in conventional search results, the objective is to make a business more likely to be understood, referenced and recommended by generative AI systems.

Ibiza Travel's website has already been redesigned with these considerations in mind, according to García Ramón.

The aim is to anticipate a trend that the sector expects to become increasingly important.

Reputation Could Matter to AI

Another developing area is what businesses describe as algorithmic reputation.

A ranking known as the Monitor de Reputación Algorítmica, or MoRA, analyses how several generative AI platforms perceive and recommend major hotel groups.

Meliá topped the classification, while Palladium Hotel Group, an Ibiza-based hotel group with a major presence on the island, was ranked seventh.

The significance is still emerging, but the concept suggests that a hotel's digital reputation could influence not only human travellers but also the systems helping them make decisions.

AI Could Eventually Make the Reservation

The next stage may go beyond recommendations.

Hotel technology company Neobookings has already developed systems designed to connect hotel booking infrastructure with AI models, including ChatGPT and Claude.

The company has also developed a chatbot capable of completing a hotel reservation directly through a property's website.

For now, the volume generated through these channels remains very small.

The technology, however, points towards a future in which the traveller may ask an AI assistant for a hotel, receive a recommendation and complete the booking without leaving the conversation.

Hotels Need Better Data

That possibility creates another challenge for Ibiza's hotel industry.

Artificial intelligence can only make useful recommendations when the information it receives is clear, accurate and accessible.

Hotel descriptions, room information, facilities, prices, locations, policies and other details need to be consistently structured across the digital ecosystem.

For García Ramón, maintaining control over a hotel's information and its relationship with the customer will remain important as distribution evolves.

This Is Not the End of Booking Platforms

The rise of AI does not necessarily mean traditional booking platforms will disappear.

Booking.com, for example, views artificial intelligence as changing the point at which travellers enter the booking journey rather than automatically replacing intermediaries with direct sales.

Traditional booking platforms and direct hotel websites can therefore continue to coexist, while AI becomes another layer through which travellers discover and compare options.

A New Digital Competition for Ibiza

The significance for Ibiza is particularly interesting because the island does not suffer from a lack of international visibility.

Millions of travellers already know the destination.

The new battle is increasingly about matching the right traveller with the right property.

A person looking for a quiet luxury hotel, a family resort, a beachside property or a nightlife-focused stay may ask an AI system a highly specific question.

Hotels that clearly communicate what makes them suitable for those different audiences may have a better chance of appearing in the resulting recommendations.

The Next Step in Hotel Marketing

For Ibiza's hotels, artificial intelligence is therefore becoming another part of the digital marketing landscape.

The sector is still learning how these systems choose and interpret information, and there is no established formula guaranteeing that a particular hotel will be recommended.

But the direction of travel is becoming clearer.

SEO helped hotels compete for visibility in search engines. GEO is now emerging as a way to compete for visibility inside AI-generated answers.

For an island whose tourism industry already operates in one of the world's most competitive hospitality markets, that could become the next major digital battleground.