The way travelers find hotels online is changing. Instead of relying solely on traditional search engines, more consumers are turning to artificial intelligence platforms for travel recommendations, creating a new challenge for hotel operators eager to remain visible to potential guests.

As tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini become part of the travel planning process, hotels are seeking better ways to understand how their properties are ranked, recommended and presented across AI-powered channels.

Lighthouse is moving to address that shift through the acquisition of Hotelrank.ai, a platform that helps hotels measure and improve their visibility across AI-driven travel searches.

The deal strengthens Lighthouse’s Connect AI platform, which was developed to help hotels become more discoverable and bookable through AI assistants.

The addition of Hotelrank.ai brings new analytics capabilities that allow hotels to track how they perform across major AI platforms.

A new challenge for hotel operators

For years, hotels focused on improving their visibility on search engines and online travel agencies.

The rise of AI-generated recommendations is introducing a new layer of competition, one that many operators are still learning to navigate.

“Hoteliers have spent years optimizing for discovery and conversion funnels,” Lighthouse CEO Sean Fitzpatrick said.

“The next wave of innovation is about agentic discovery and conversion, where hotels can reshape their growth strategy.”

Measuring visibility across AI platforms

Hotelrank.ai helps hotels understand how AI systems recommend properties to travelers.

The platform conducts structured searches across AI models, monitors hotel rankings and citations, and evaluates how properties compare with competitors.

It also provides visibility scores and perception insights while showing how booking links are distributed between hotel websites and online travel agencies.

The data is designed to help operators better understand their digital presence and identify opportunities to increase direct bookings.

Building tools for the AI travel era

The combined offering will allow hotels to benchmark their performance, monitor how they appear across AI-powered travel platforms and make adjustments to improve visibility.

“AI is becoming one of the most important discovery channels in hospitality, and hotels need the same level of analytics and optimization they have for every other channel,” said Nicolas Sitter, co-founder of Hotelrank.ai.

The acquisition comes months after Lighthouse launched Review Agent, a tool that brings together guest reviews from Booking.com and Expedia into a single dashboard, underscoring the company’s push to expand its AI-focused hospitality technology portfolio.