The most useful advice about AI at VISIT Summit 2026 had very little to do with AI. It was about getting the basics right, everywhere, all the time.
Visible and wrong is worse than invisible
Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia Group and Beds24 shared one stage and were asked what operators should actually do. All four gave the same answer, and none of them said “buy an AI tool”.
Neil Chatterjee from Expedia Group explained why with a simple example. A guest asks an assistant for a pet friendly room with fast Wi-Fi within a budget. The assistant recommends you. The guest clicks through and finds a higher price than promised. Now the guest is unhappy with you and with the assistant, and the assistant learns not to recommend you again. His summary: accuracy is the currency of algorithmic trust.
Connected properties are more confident
Expedia’s research showed how far apart connected and unconnected properties are. Among fully connected properties, 75% are confident that their rates and availability are correct everywhere within 15 minutes. Among basic or unconnected properties it is 35%. That leaves most unconnected operators unsure that the price a guest sees online is the price they set.
Machines read words, not pictures
The second half of the answer is content. A photo of your pool tells a guest it is perfect for children. It tells an AI nothing unless the words “kid friendly pool” appear somewhere in your listing. Neil’s test was to describe each photo as if to someone with their eyes closed. That is the level of detail an agent needs. CJ Holmén put it more briefly: do not just tag “pool”. Write “pool, kid friendly”. Add context to everything.
The VISIT web team added the technical layer. Many businesses block the newer AI crawlers without knowing it. 82% of the domains ChatGPT cites use schema markup, the structured data that tells a machine what a page is about. And questions followed by answers, the classic FAQ, are one of the easiest formats for an agent to understand.
A plan that fits a small team
Ricarda Kies from Beds24 turned all of this into an order of work for operators who cannot fix everything at once. Start with photos, because they are the biggest lever for conversion and the cheapest to improve. Then rates and availability, synchronized and clean across every channel, including your own. Then reply to every review, including the lukewarm ones. Twenty to thirty minutes a week, done consistently, is enough.
What to do
- Connect your channels so rates and availability update everywhere at once.
- Describe in words what your pictures show, room by room and facility by facility.
- Check that AI crawlers can reach your site, and add schema markup and an FAQ.
- Set aside half an hour a week for photos, rates and review replies.
Heard in: Winning the Nordic Guest (Christina Jacobsen, Booking.com · Jordi Suárez, Airbnb · Neil Chatterjee, Expedia Group · Ricarda Kies, Beds24 · hosted by CJ Holmén, VISIT) · Your Website in the Age of AI (Elliot Csikasz and Elias Jadidi, VISIT)