BrightEdge: big travel brands own AI answers, except inspiration questions

A small travel site writing category pages for airlines or hotels is competing on ground the big brands already own. BrightEdge measured US holiday-travel prompts in Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT. In its sample, American Airlines, Royal Caribbean and Expedia lead their categories on both engines.

Search Engine Journal's Roger Montti wrote up the report on 31 October. BrightEdge calls the measure a share of voice. AI answers do not use ranked links the way classical search does.

What BrightEdge measured

BrightEdge analysed US English holiday-travel prompts from August and September 2026 across Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT. It compared airlines, hotels, cruise lines and booking platforms against direct rivals in the same category. The two engines were tested with different prompt sets, BrightEdge says, so the engine-to-engine numbers are not strict pairs. The method measures "observed visibility, not bookings or market share".

BrightEdge's own highlights, each attributed to its sample:

• Airlines. American Airlines leads Google AI Overviews at 26.6% and ChatGPT at 25.3%. Its margin over United is 6.1 points on Google AI Overviews and 9.1 points on ChatGPT.
• Cruise lines. Royal Caribbean leads both engines, at 24.8% and 28.8%. BrightEdge notes Royal Caribbean and Carnival show higher in its ChatGPT sample, Viking lower.
• Hotels. The lead flips between engines. Hilton leads Google AI Overviews at 28.3%. Marriott leads ChatGPT at 29.4%.
• Booking platforms. Expedia leads Google AI Overviews at 31.3%, with Kayak at 14.4%, a 2.2x gap. The gap on ChatGPT narrows to 1.4x.

Where smaller sites still appear

BrightEdge divided prompts by intent. Only 9% of its tracked Google AI Overviews prompts were booking-intent. Booking platforms appeared in 12% of inspiration prompts, 25% of comparison prompts, and 38% of booking-intent prompts. The engines want a booking site when the asker is ready to book. They open the answer up to other sources when the asker is still looking.

Price-focused language shifts the mix further. Prompts with "cheap", "deal", "budget" or "last-minute" pulled a booking platform into 78% of tracked Google AI Overviews answers. Other prompts pulled one in 17%. Expedia appeared in 44% of those budget-related answers. BrightEdge calls this "an observed association, not evidence that using these words causes a brand to appear".

The gap for smaller publishers is in inspiration and comparison prompts. BrightEdge writes that platforms and organisations such as YouTube, Reddit and AAA show more in inspiration questions. Hotels and cruise lines show more in comparison questions. Montti adds that this is also where a travel blog can still break in. First-hand experience and a clear point of view help. Big travel brands do not write that kind of content.

What to try

For a travel site planning what to write next, the direction follows the numbers. A "best airlines" page competes with American Airlines on terms it already dominates. A page about a trip someone actually took sits on open ground. So does a comparison between two specific hotels, or a guide to one destination. A page a model can quote for "what to do in Lisbon in December" is open. "Best hotel chains in the US" is not.

A note on method. BrightEdge sells AI-search tracking. The sample is one two-month window, in one country, in one language. The engines were measured with different prompt sets. These are the vendor's own figures. They are directional. Nothing here is a bookings number.

Source

Search Engine Journal: Big Brands Dominate AI Search But Leave Openings For Smaller Sites, by Roger Montti, reporting on BrightEdge: Holiday Travel in AI Search.