In this live session, we explored how social media and AI are reshaping the way travellers discover and book their journeys. The discussion unpacked why social is now the first stop for discovery, with AI stepping in as the finisher — and what that means for visibility, traffic, and trust. We covered the messy, non-linear nature of today’s traveller journey, the rising role of AI overviews in search, and the practical quick wins brands can implement right now to lift performance. Listeners will take away actionable steps on using plain language, structured content, captions, and expert visibility to close the gap and show measurable impact.

James Gray: Here we go. Okay, it is 12 o’clock on this somewhere, it’s sunny Thursday. Thank you very much for joining us. Everybody to our webinar today, which is on the future of social and AI search in travel. We’re obviously going to wait for a few of you to join before we get fully started and get into the detail. I’m joined today by Katy Howell from immediate future, who is going to be sharing lots of great insights around the social side of things. And then I will be moving on to talk around AI and search and the impact of AI on search in travel as well. Katy is going to be driving our slides today. There’s obviously going to be slides, as you would expect in any of these webinars, so hopefully we won’t kill you with our PowerPoint today, but there’s loads of really, really great information in there, loads of great insights, and we’re looking forward to sharing those with all of you guys. If you do want any further resources, you’ll see a little link scrolling along the bottom there for both Remarkable’s website and immediate future’s website, loads of great stuff on there, around these topics on those websites. And we’re also encouraging you guys to get involved as well. So, if you could please drop any questions comments and things like that in the chat or in the comments on LinkedIn, then that would be awesome, and we can start to answer those as we go through as well and hopefully have a bit of a round up in a Q&A at the end. So, Katy, if you want to fire up, fire up our slides, and we can get into some quick introductions as to who we are and what we do and why we’re talking about these topics. So, if we move on to the next slide, Katy, first of all, I’m James Grey. I’m VP of Digital Marketing here at Remarkable 20 plus years, which shows my age every time I say it, in digital strategy across a range of trusted brands, particularly in the travel sector, we’re working with a number of travel clients at the moment. We specialise, really, in creating these omni channel experiences that drive visibility, engagement and performance, and that’s working across a multitude of channels and a multitude of touch points that customers engage with. And I’m very much here to drive the agency strategy on the, I guess, the optimisation in this current world of AI powered search as well, and the changing customer behaviours. So that’s kind of where I’m coming from. Katy, I’ll let you introduce yourself.

Katy Howell: Certainly. Well, I’m a lot older. I’ve got nearly 40 years marketing experience, but I’ve spent the last 21 years running immediate future, which is a social media only agency, working with a number of brands, including, obviously, a number of travel brands and I think I just have a very deep and weird love for social media and a passion for what we do in social because it reflects the behaviours we have in our society. And I just love it amazing.

James Grey: Thank you. Katy, yeah, so you’re going to get a mix of both flavours today, social and AI are both impacting search and discovery in travel, and I’m going to let Katy crack on first with the really exciting stuff around social just before that quick nod to just some of our travel experience really here at the agency and I know Katy has got similar we’ve done lots and lots of studies on this, lots and lots of reports. We’ve got lots of case studies and research as well, everything from airlines to hotel groups, which are some of the brands that we work with in this space as well. And obviously these topics are impacting all of those our current live clients, but also brands that we don’t necessarily work with, but we’ve obviously kept an eye on the market and studied as well. So there’s lots of reports and things like that that you can download at Remarkable. global. Should any of this pique your interest, feel free to go and find those right. Let’s get into it then. Katy.

Katy Howell: Super, duper. Thank you. Oh, right, okay, let’s get straight into it, because I’ve got lots, lots to tell you. So, the brilliant thing, I think, James, you touched on it, is a brilliant thing about how such works now, is, is they see your customers already there. They’ve been quietly shifting the way that they look for you as a brand. And they’re asking those questions on Tiktok, Chat GPT on Reddit and on LinkedIn, and they want useful, human, trustworthy content that shows up when they need it most. So, what does that actually mean for the travel industry? So, there is the shift week. Can’t Ignore is that people start their travel planning journey within social that discovery element and AI really sits in the passenger seat. There isn’t just Gen Z. It’s a real misnomer that that idea that it’s Gen Z or Gen alpha, or whatever youngling it is looking for sunset spots on Tiktok. It’s actually travel managers, loyalty card warriors, family holiday planners, the people who control the real budgets, and they’re already using social and AI as their sort of research end engine. And we can see that, you know, 57% of leisure travellers now open Tiktok, Instagram or YouTube before they even go to a search engine, nearly 30% of Google travel queries already trigger that AI overview, and I’ll let James talk a little bit more about that. But 37% of travellers use Chat GPT already when you know, it feels very new, but they are already there, and 83% said that they’d use Chat GPT again, which means that they’re bypassing all the usual places that they go, and they’re certainly making decisions before they even get there. So, what are they doing? Well, they’re asking really specific, almost conversational questions, like, you know, hidden gem hotels near Kyoto Station or but not, they’re not asking Kyoto hotel. Do you see what I mean? It’s much more natural language, and they’re trusting social proof and peer videos before they will trust your brand brochures, letting, kind of AI weigh the options and build shortlist. So, if you’re not in that data, you’re just not seen. And I mean, I’m making it sound really terrifying. It isn’t terrifying. It just requires a little change, certainly on social in the way that you adapt what you’re doing. So, I don’t want to terrify anybody out there. And it’s not a trend. It’s not a weird little blip. This is the way it’s going now. Social in today’s kind of journey. It’s been beginning in feed for a long time, and we’re seeing places like TikTok and Instagram being the guidebooks and people looking for, you know, rain safe hikes near Lake Bled or whatever it is, and actually pushing the algorithm. It’s why we’re seeing the demise of the hashtag in favour of natural language. So, and it’s, it’s such a hot from social to AI, it just makes an awful lot of sense, doesn’t it? And I want to, before we I tell you how you can solve this and what you need to change. And you know, again, don’t panic. It’s not difficult. I do want to also say we are I do understand that most of the travel brands that we speak to are under real pressure at the moment. We know that there’s the travellers really want

personalisation. They want tailored results. We know that trust is very, very fragile. It doesn’t take much for suddenly there to be waves of people don’t do this, don’t do that. We also know that, you know, budgets are being squeezed like crazy at the moment. We’re all still, no matter what’s being said, still recovering from those Covid years. And

I also know that measurement can be much more of a headache when I’m talking about this sort of very messy funnel. So, I don’t want you to think I’m being very Oh, this is the new way. I also want to say, look, I recognise that your customers, you are all under an increasing load and pressure. But when I mean it’s quite a simple change, is that it’s we’re moving a little bit in a different direction. It’s almost like we’re not jumping in a new direction. We’re kind of shifting ever so slightly in what we need to do as marketeers. So, we know that travel discovery is not no longer a tidy funnel. We know that we need to work out how we reach our customers as quickly as possible. So, one of the things is, is always on, not just peak season. I know it’s really tempting to go with peak season, but actually always on will benefit you on both social search and AI. And we know 37% of travellers used AI tools to plan trips. So, if you’re not constantly on social which gets picked up as a major signal in AI, you’re not being seen. We also know that expert voices tend to play more into social search. So, a sommelier on real builds more trust than a faceless ad. So, you need to start thinking about This builds more trust than a faceless ad. So, you need to start thinking about who you can use within your organisation, that can be ambassadors for your brand. It’s also very clear that people come to social with intent, which is a real that’s the behavioural change, as opposed to, I’m coming for a bit of entertainment, they’re now going to search with a going to say, Instagram with an intent. What are the restaurants near me in blah, blah, blah, that they’re actually looking for those things because they feel they’re not being served. They’re not trusting quite what’s going on in the bigger search engine. So, they want people they recognise that are like them within social that they feel have that trust. And they want practical help. They want baggage hacks and visa tips and the jargon stripped, basically. So, I think we need to understand that, you know, SEO has not gone away. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing this with James and there’s a massive amount of other content, but I’m talking about the signal that is specifically search because and the reason I mentioned, you know, none of the other stuff has gone away in terms of making sure you’re optimised is that that funnel, that traveller purchase journey, whatever you want to call it, it was always a mess. It was never what we really hoped it’d be nice and linear and tidy. It’s now faster, messy and worse still, mostly invisible. You know, Sky Scanner did a really interesting study, which showed that Gen Zen toggled between six platforms before purchase and the order differed every single time. So, it might be that zero click search private channels, they might jump onto WhatsApp and ask mates what they think and then go back to Instagram to ask specific questions. And then you get the gist of this. If we wait for travellers to reach our website, we’ve kind of already seeded the sale to the platform that answers them first, so we have to get to that place where they’re seeing us, where they are, where they’re playing. So, the opportunity is massive, because at the moment, the latest study by Rival IQ shows that only one in four travel and hospitality brands that build posts with searchable alt text and alt text, and intent led captions are going to be the way forward. And that is really interesting because right now, those people that are on this webinar are the people that can go snaffle that opportunity. Right now, it’s like being at the beginning. You know how sometimes you always wished you had the legacy of being on Facebook from the start, building those profiles, when you could say, follow me back in the day, and you just got millions and millions of followers. This is that. This is now. Don’t know if it will be here in a couple of month’s time, but this is now the real opportunity is here, and we know we need to stop treating social as a broadcast channel. Stop showing the lovely sunsets and the sea views and the beaches, and actually start talking to what people are really looking for. So what are the ways in which you can do this? So, let’s get really pragmatic and practical. So, first thing is we want to make sure that we get a speedy win. So quick win number one is about taking, say your best ten posts and just reworking them. What you want to be doing is we know that looking for what things like Tiktok are highly searched for (getting teeth in this morning), for instance, how can you re-engineer that bit of content into best hidden beaches in Crete and then tie that to blog articles, which you then reference back in social making sure you’re captioned on screen, the text that mentions it is the exact phrase best hidden beaches in Crete when someone types. So, we know that AI is a big kind of want of a better word. And I’m sure James, you have a better word for this is kind of the new meta search when someone types, plan me a three-day foodie break in Bologna into Chat GPT, it’s pulling words from YouTube, subtitles, LinkedIn, PDFs and reels, captions, not metadata. So, it’s, it’s, that’s where it’s coming from. So, you need to make sure you’re there. So how can you rewrite and repost and put those things within alt text, tags, within the nomenclature, the naming of your files and really, what you’re trying to do is swap that copywriter flare for traveller language and your language might change depending on the kind of person you’re targeting. So, you know, my language is a Gen X might be as you’re seeing it today. The examples I’m giving you today are very Gen X kind of this is what I want. I want a foodie holiday. But your Gen Z, might be looking for something else. Might use different words, different language, more trendy, definitely trendier. And then pick your what I would suggest is pick your 10 highest traffic or highest lifetime value posts, rename the files, and it’s very straightforward. Instead of like image Crete.png, you’re now looking at Barcelona 48-hour itinerary.png. So, you’re actually being really clear in a language that your audience will use to search to have a conversation with you. And make sure you add alt text, obviously, for those that are partially sighted, but make your alt text more detailed and include those kind of how do I get to Barcelona? Type questions, and make sure that you always include a 50-word summary and making it really rich. And you know, it’s the old-fashioned word. I hate using it keyword rich, because you’re actually using natural languages rather than key words. So, you want whole sentences. The tools that are reading these things can see the whole sentence. So that’s quick win number one, get that done now. Quite nice now that we’re, we’re busy, but there is time at the moment to sit back and spend a day doing this, and that will actually help set you up.

Katy Howell: Quick number two is your brand probably already has this expertise, and you have the expertise in house as well, which is, you know, destination managers, pilots, sommeliers, location reps, the trick is to package their knowledge how, so humans and AI can recognise it. So, what, what I think is really worth looking at is making sure that whilst you have the big branding, I’m not suggesting you take that away, but you also make it very clear so, you have plain language, like, do I need a visa for Bali? Or what’s the fee for a visa? Can I pay by credit card? That kind of, do you know, the sort of questions people ask basically. So plain always beats poetic. Named experts build trust. You know a clip titled head concierge Maria best three tapas bars near our hotel tells the algorithm that it’s a credible source. So that’s really important in social and then make sure you write every answer as neat, 50-word blocks. So if you are going for slightly longer, stuff within social which you can make sure you’re always doing it within blocks, because those become the snippets that show up within AI, and they also become the return bit in social, I say people aren’t even just going to AI, they are searching within social so I would audit your top sort of, I don’t know, 20 Help Desk questions, your FAQs, things like luggage limits, late checkout details, pet rules, all that kind of stuff, and rewrite a number of your social posts so that you begin to start to get picked up by the engines. The final bit is that while you’re doing all this more administrative stuff, you also need to write for humans. And I know this sounds tough, but you’re going to have this weird sort of tautology between I need just get all this stuff in here, but I also needed it to make sense and represent my brand. So, I will remind you that social is also a pleasurable, enjoyable entertainment platform for many. So, you don’t want to take away from that and end up being, you know, boring. Nobody wants a boring holiday brand, travel brand. There are some traps that you need to think about, and that is, you, you do need to think about what you’re doing and what you’re saying. There have been a number of fines, for instance, for misleading content and travel content. So, don’t shoehorn what you’re trying to say so that the social search picks you up so far that you’re telling Porky buys, you know? I mean, it’s very obvious, but you can see people are getting caught out and I suspect, while some of these are on purpose, there will be a small proportion of people who do it by accident. So do make sure that if you’re using the word sustainable, you are verifiable that you’re not just shoving it in there because you think people are searching for it. And don’t lose power. So, the biggest challenge of social is people lose power because they believe all the hype that sits around social. So, you know, post going viral. I mean, it’s just not the thing people think it is, and actually they it can often detract so far and also get caught up in all sorts of political mess that you actually end up not benefiting from it. Hashtags are definitely in decline. They’re still useful occasionally, maybe one. But that hashtag stuffing doesn’t work, and it actually can stand against you. Clarity, but polish clarity like I said. Don’t make it sound like you’ve tried to shove all the words into a post. And don’t ignore the kind of AI, kind of cannibalism, which kind of you know, AI we know will steal clicks from with its AI results from things like the Google front page. But if you keep feeding that machine with concise fact, with fact rich paragraphs, and making sure you do all of this in conjunction with what James is going to talk about, you will then develop the right framework to make sure that you are being included as people discover their holidays. We’ve made life really easy for you. I should have probably said this at first in case you were scribbling notes down like a crazy person. But if you go to this, if you I put a link in, and I’ve also put a QR code. If you go here, you can download a framework which just says, do that, and it’s, I’ve done it by platform as well. So, you can go, this is what I need to do on Instagram, this is what I need to do on Threads, and this is what I need to do on Tiktok. And it just says, you know, this is what you do your alt tag here, and don’t forget this. And you know, it’s a really nice reminder. So you can definitely pass that around your organisation. Have no problem with that, and I think it’s really useful because it’s one of those things. I’ve put a little checklist at the back while we get into the rhythm of doing this, the operational structure. Finally, just a quick round up so quick wins that you can do right now. Refresh your hero posts. The things that are doing really well. Make sure that you upgrade your alt texts, update your titles, write search first captions, make sure you always have captions on your video, balance your bots with hosts. So let AI handle some of the FAQs but also start putting those out in social and track, which I haven’t gone into much detail, but I have in the framework track what actually moves those bookings, so you can begin to see where those results are coming from. That is me. Thank you very much.

James Gray: Brilliant. Thank you. Katy. Yeah, so loads of, loads of really, really interesting points there around social. And social really does feed a lot of the points that I’m about to make as well. So, it’s all connected. Quick, couple of mentions. So, Chris Branch just said, I beat the final boss. GPT, we know the I beat the final boss. I beat the final bot, maybe Chris, absolutely, we know that. We know the impact of social right now with the there’s nothing like a jet2holiday and the Ibiza final cross. And, I mean, that’s a whole cultural zeitgeist thing. And, yeah, Jan Sevcik actually just highlighting that huge AI adoption, as your stats earlier showed, clearly, the adoption of AI as a search tool and the impact of social on that is we were only at the beginning as well, right? But it is huge.

Katy Howell: Yeah, but I think if you ignore Social Search, you’re missing the trick, because not only does it fit in with AI, but it is part of that research bit which gives people the feeling that the trust, so AI is not the only place they’re going. That’s the bit I would emphasise. It’s very tempting to run to it because everybody’s really excited about it. But social search is, you know, Google is now picking up Instagram, you know. So go in all honesty, Social Search is a bigger thing, bigger thing right now for your brand, as well as obviously, discovery.

James Gray: Absolutely 100%, we’ve we’re just working with one of our current clients on the need to really, really bolster that social impact and that social influence, and just the sheer volume of people that are looking for, as you mentioned, whether it’s hotels, whether it’s restaurants, whether it’s experiences in those travel destinations, they are going to social first, and they are asking the public at large through social to try and discover those opportunities. So, absolutely being present there is super important for that, and it also does feed the AI piece as well, which we’re going to come on to now. So yeah, customers are now definitely AI powered. I don’t think there are many who haven’t, at least come into contact with AI in some part of their discovery journey and in perhaps a travel experience in particular, if we move on to the next slide, Katy. So traditional search has definitely changed. So LLMs (large language models) are certainly reshaping user intent and behaviour. So, a little bit similar to Katy stat earlier, 40% of Gen Z, not just Gen Z, but 40% of Gen Z. Gen Z are using AI tools like Chat GPT before going to Google or over going to Google. Ai overviews within Google are now triggered in 25% of queries in eligible markets. There’s actually some data that shows that’s 30% in travel, for example. So, some studies there from Bright edge and Seven atoms really backing up the fact that there’s AI. Overviews are really starting to take precedent in Google’s results when it comes to travel queries. They’re also here to steal your traffic, as Katy sort of nodded to earlier, some major brands have seen a 30 to 40% drop in visitors due to AI answering the query upfront. So, in those search results pages, you’re getting the answer you need. You don’t need to click one of those 10 blue links anymore, which is really starting to have an impact. And it means you’re not having that opportunity to drag that user into your ecosystem, into your space. You need to be surfacing that content so AI can take it and present it up front. We then have the fact that the 10 blue links, as I just mentioned, there are dying. So, you know, those 10 blue links results are in decline. I don’t know if many of you have seen the screenshot that’s been going around online of the typical search results page now, but the 10 blue links are almost not on there at all, certainly not above the fold, certainly not below the first couple of scrolls. You have ads, you have AI overviews. You may have local listings, etc, etc, taking up really prime real estate, where previously that link that you’d fought so hard for in the top 10, it’s no longer being shown, and the AI summaries are obviously then stealing your visibility and your traffic there as well. In terms of next stat which should come up now the I want it now economy. So right now, we’re in a world where the user demands concise, direct answers. Right now, they don’t want to click a link. They don’t want to search see 10 results, maybe click the first one. Oh no, that’s not right. Go back, click the second one, and bounce around anymore that customer expectation has been accelerated really. We’ve got we’ve got instant answers whenever we want. We can ask a spot smart speaker. We can do a quick Chat GPT conversation. We can listen to whatever song we want right now on Spotify, we’re no longer going back, trawling through our CDs and finding track 13 on disc 2 of now 47 anything we want is right in the moment and right now. We can also say goodbye to clicks, as I mentioned. We’re saying hello to the crocodile, as it’s being called. So, some of you may have a look in your Google Search Console right now and start to see that you know, your visibility is sort of steady, your impressions chart is kind of maybe going up even right. You’re starting to be shown more and reference more, but actually the click through rates are dropping, so your click line is going down on your chart there. And we’re starting to see that on mobile, and it’s starting to be called the Crocodile Effect, as it starts to sort of zigzag and open its scary mouth. We need to be present in those impressions and in those AI results to now get that brand mentioned and that brand sort of commission in the in the customer’s mind really, if we’re not going to be earning the clicks. It’s not the future, it’s the now again to Katy, is point around social search being the now AI mode and AI search as a behaviour really of users is the norm, and we’re going to be hurtling towards a future where these LLM style interfaces are the norm gone are the days of kind of keyword based searches that’s although they’re not entirely gone, definitely depleting right now. And then finally, search is messier than ever. So again, just reiterating Katy point really around social being a part of that, but the search journey is no longer as linear as we ever thought it was not that it ever was that linear, but users will bounce between Google, Tiktok, Instagram, Reddit, AI tools, Chat GPT, Copilot, etc. And also, those all represent start points in a journey, as much as they represent jump off points in the journey. So, it is as messy as it’s ever been, messier than ever. And really the opportunities now to be present and visible in all of these channels have never been, never been more important. To the next slide. So just kind of some stats, I guess, around this, this change. So, there was a conductor survey recently looked at 180 million keywords, of which 18% generated an AI overview. That’s a 29% increase from 112% increase from April. This is July’s data. I’m sure we’ll have another increase again for July when we see the August data, and 61% of those are occurring on desktop. We know that a lot of travel journeys actually might start the discovery journey might start on mobile and on social and things, but some people still see booking travel as a laptop job, a big computer job, where they’ll start their journey on their mobile, then they’ll go onto a desktop device. So, both these stats are really important. 37.5% of those AI overviews are present on mobile. So, if we look at you know that the shift that’s happening on both desktop and mobile, in travel in particular that definitely has an impact. And there’s lots of industries that are triggering AI views in differing degrees but certainly travel in general is around 30% mark. But we’re seeing here in conductors survey, the cruise vacations is a great example where 31% of queries around that are generating AI overviews now. So, are you optimising for this is the key question. And how we go about optimising for that will come on to So some examples of where I guess behaviours in the industry are starting to change. So, we mentioned there 30% of travel searches are now generating AI overviews, which is a 700% increase in exposure back in so that was back in December. So that that curve really is ramping. There’s some Skiff research that shows that visibility for travel content via AI tools has quadrupled over the last six months. So that’s in things like LLMs beyond AI mode. The idea of AI mode offering these conversational, multi-step answers means it’s super important that your content answers multiple questions and talks to the next logical question in a customer’s journey. And this is where things like customer journey mapping really, really do become important to help layer over the sort of content you’re producing at different stages of this, this messy customer journey and yeah, just talking to the point of people kind of acting on AI, starting to come into this game now, Expedia SMO, to the right here we can see, once, exp, Expedia to be the leader in AI integration within travel, and there’s some executions of that already, things like visual based search, so using users, social photos, inspiration, there’s AI powered trip planning tools which are using operator and open AI and they’re redefining a journey based marketing, rather than this kind of funnel based approach. So the idea of integrating with social media, integrating with these AI tools to help itinerise AI real experience within the travel space, the fact that one of the Goliaths, if you like, at Expedia, is really, really putting their energy into this as kind of a first mover really, is always a strong indication that this is the way that it’s all going. So, on to the next slide. Some considerations here, really. So, so it’s important that we’re looking at this now, rather than a search journey where it’s I type in a keyword, I’m going to get a thing, I’m going to click, and off I go. This is starting to become much more conversational. We’re starting to see that Google Search Queries now exceed six plus words, so that that behaviour of before maybe typing in, you know, location, and then a thing like beaches in Corfu or beach holidays in Corfu, that’s kind of changing these, these, these queries are now starting to become more conversational, as they do in Chat GPT. So, research shows that Chat GPT prompts average 37.1 characters plus, which is two times longer than the standard Google search. So, we’re really starting to see these longer form question-based prompts, AI driven platforms like Chat GPT, Gemini and copilot reward, natural, nuanced, multi part questions. So again, to my point, creating content that answers those multiple questions that a customer will be asking about an experience about travel experience is really vital. And users are no longer typing keywords. They are asking things as conversations or starting conversations. And travel brands have got structure that content that works for traditional crawlers and AI interfaces and users. So, this, this echoes Katy point really about writing for the bots. Yes, but writing for humans because actually, with AI, arguably, the language and the understanding of language is getting more human than the old keyword, x, y, z and so forth. So, it’s really important that we’re focusing on talking to that. Now in here there’s a video which should hopefully play on the right-hand side, it may not, which is just a demo, actually, of the fact that agent mode is now here. So, if you put an LLM into agent mode, you can actually ask it to plan you a holiday and to go and find it, and to go and browse around the internet for you. And to do this, we’re not just Googling destinations anymore. We’re asking for full blown itineraries. So, agent mode in platforms like Chat GPT and copilot take searching for holiday even further. So, it’s no longer we’ve gone so far from those three Google keywords in a query to actually asking it to go and action and search and find a detailed holiday. So here I’ve asked for a holiday near a water park somewhere hot in October for me and two kids and so on and so forth. I’ve given it what I would give a travel agent, right? And the AI agent is now going out there. It’s browsing loads and loads of different websites. You can see here, nothing beats a jet2holiday according to these screenshot flashes you’re seeing on the right. It’s looking on the various websites. It’s finding me the best deal. I actually asked it in the prompt to find me three price points as well, you know, find me a top, middle and bottom, a premium, a minimum, an economy option. And it goes away, and it does all this searching and this and this hard work and this heavy lifting for me. And the ability to do that right the way to the point where I can transact is a monumental shift. And this is new this, is new. This agent mode really has only just got released to the wider public. Recently, there’s been lots of agent movements, but, but we’re in this kind of agent space now, and it starts to surface me. It gives me a table with a results and with some insights, and it even looks at reviews and all these, you know, it looks at, so we’ll look at social proof, all these different elements that add up to these three recommendations this Chat GPT agent is giving me. And over time, agents will learn users, wants, needs, parameters, if you like, so that these actions will become even less friction filled, you know, more frictionless and even easier and  here on this example, on the right, as you see, I ask it to add the cheapest option to my basket, ready for me to check out, gives me a little black button there that says, take over that holiday is in a car ready for me to transact. And that is kind of mind blowing, right? It’s you would never have expected that even six months ago. So it’s a really interesting shift, and we if we’re not in that mix of websites that you just saw the AI going and browsing as a human would, and we’re not showing up, and we’ve not got that social proof to validate that, it answers maybe some of my queries about being near a good water park or a beach or whatever it might be, then we’re missing, missing a trick, and we’re not going to be visible. Just onto the next one, Katy. So it’s not just Chat GPT, Perplexity has actually recently partnered with Open Table, for example, to enable this agentic assistant-based kind of behaviour. So here, Perplexity has always said that it’s not about giving answers. So, it’s about getting answers. It’s not just about flooding you with links. So, if you’re looking for an Italian spot in San Francisco with romantic ambiance and great cacio pepe, I think I pronounced that right, you can ask it for that, and it will go and find that, and it will surface the results. And there’ll be rich results. They’ll have images. They’ll have social images as well, images from people’s social posts. Again, another reason to be present on social and their aim is to go from where should I go, which is the old style of searching, to just going. It will do all of that for you, and book you a table. You can ask it just book me a table at a great place that does this. And it will do that for you. Hands off. And unless you’re in that mix again, you’re going to be missing out on bookings. So, yeah, what can we do? What can we do? Katy has got a great cheat sheet, and she had some great takeaways there from the social side. We’re going to look at AEO and Geo basics. So you’ll hear a lot of this at the moment, SEO, AEO, Geo, effectively, this is all optimising for these sorts of engines. So, whether it’s search, traditional search answer engines or generative engines. Then you know, getting everything in order is really, really important. And the first thing there is around the technical side of things, ensuring that your websites are fast and crawlable and have strong core web vitals, which is your site performance, your technical underpinnings, is really, really key, and it’s often overlooked, implementing schema. That’s a real key one. There’s lots of very travel specific schema you can implement on your site, from hotel to tourist attraction to its destination, event, FAQ. Schema is really, really key as well when we’re answering those semantics, those real question conversation style queries, but also making the content machine readable. And I’ll show you a screenshot in a sec, which is a brief snapshot of that video I just showed you when we went into the agential AI. On the beach actually didn’t allow Chat GPT to browse its site. It blocked it with a capture element. It was like a puzzle to make sure that it was blocking bots. Now there’s loads of reasons why websites will do that, and particularly with holiday and travel. There’s a lot of scraper sites out there. There’s aggregator sites out there that look for the cheapest deal, and if you don’t have a relationship between the brands, that causes a problem. However, are these sites, like on the beach, actually going to be missing out on these agential ai booked visits as a result of blocking it. So, making your content machine readable, but also making it accessible, is a real key consideration right now, rightly or wrongly. There’s also the importance around building real authority, and that’s human plus brand. So that’s focusing on the classic SEO principles of experience, expertise, authoritative and trust. Generating third party validation, so that’s awards, reviews and, of course, citations on social, really, really, you know, pushing for even when people leave a review on a review site, yes, but can we also encourage user generated content from social while their work, while they’re with us, while they’re visiting us, or while they’re flying with us, including things like author bios, credentials and first party perspectives as well. So looking at some of our travel clients, some of our hotel clients, for example, and our hospitality clients, they have sections on there where they actually have content on the website that is from the staff, from the key members of the team who will be interacting with you on your stay from chefs, and as Katy mentioned, it could be sommeliers. It could be any element of that experience really builds credibility and builds trust as well. Onto the next slide. So structuring your content for context and continuity, try saying that five times fast, writing content that answers the current question but anticipates the next. So really taking that customer on a journey but also taking that LLM on a journey where it shows that you understand those sequential conversations that you’re going to be having with an LLM as well. So, answer the first question, answer the next, and pre-empt and optimise for that next question as well, using internal linking and navigation and summary sections to guide user journeys as well. That guides user journeys. It will also guide traditional search bot journeys. It will also guide LLMs as well. And think in terms of creating topic clusters, not isolated keywords. That’s nothing new, that’s SEO 101, really, but actually building authority in a topic, talking about natural language, is really important as well. So onto number four, audit and rationalise your content as well. If we could just go back one, Katy, I think the clicks have gone wild. Conducting, keep, kill and combine and refresh audits on your content regularly is really important. And actually, now is a really good time to do that with this shift. Can we combine content to answer these multi query prompts? Is there actually a case where three or four bits of content before that you may be spun up to answer old school SEO queries, old school search queries? Would they be better combined into really painting a picture and a narrative that an LLM can surface as the One Stop Shop answer to a series of questions. Removing outdated pages, consolidating weak content, and refreshing those high performers. Little bits to Katy’s point around social refreshing some of those social posts with more better, better, optimised captions and alt text and things like that, optimising all of those for this new world and avoiding duplication as well. We should be doing that anyway. From an SEO perspective, you don’t want your content to be cannibalising itself, but LLMs really do reward that clarity and that consolidation this piece of content here answers my question. Just make sure that you’re not kind of doing that in multiple different places. Onto the next one. So finally, rethinking your site architecture for discoverability, really clear folder structures, URL structures, thematic tagging of your content, using taxonomies and hierarchies to really group your content into clusters that make sense for users and reflect reflects how LLMs will build content as well, grouping that grouping that content semantically, so really helping your AI understand how your ideas connect as well. So, when we’re talking about some of these new behaviours, people are almost looking for itineraries. And they’re not just looking to book a flight here, book a room there, maybe book experiences when they get there by talking to a rep at a desk anymore, they almost want to plan that whole thing out. So can you actually guide a user through that experience by having content on your site that talks about the whole travel experience of staying at your hotel and being able to go and visit a certain attraction or certain experience nearby and based on the timeframes and all these sorts of things. How do we build content that as well. So AEO and GEO, they still require good SEO, right? So answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation, really hot topics right now. But you know, in general, SEO, good SEO, should get you kind of 75% of the way layer that on with the social proof and the social optimised social presence, and these five key points that I’ve just given you there, and you’re really going to start turning the dial. Crawlability, content, clarity, structured data. Trust signals really are still the foundation, and now you’re not optimising for just ranking, but for representation inside those AI tools, so your ability to answer those questions succinctly, thematically and to be referenced elsewhere by encouraging things like social proof, again, really will help you demonstrate authority and hopefully make sure that you’re visible in in these new AI tools. So just an example here of when you can get it wrong. So a couple of screenshots here where you might be blocking AI and LLMs and bots through things like robots’ dot text and other directives. And that might be deliberate, it might be accidental, but certainly things like these capture functionalities and putting in tests almost for a user to pass before they can take the simplest of actions can work against you as well. And there’s a screenshot here, as I mentioned earlier, about on the beach not being able to surface a result. Move on to the next slide.

James Gray: Yeah, so that’s kind of it. We’re on to questions and answers. So far, we’ve had some great comments in the chat. Not so much questions, but Rob has just said search queries getting longer and more like AI prompts is a very interesting one. It absolutely is, and that doesn’t just live in, I guess, my world in terms of search, more traditional search and kind of AI and LLM search, it’s also how people will be looking on social right? People aren’t just typing in a couple of keywords on social search. They’re actually asking questions. Asking questions, aren’t they, Katy.

Katy Howell: Yes, yes. And I think the big challenge right now, and we were talking about this before, is that there isn’t quite one tool to help you do this in the way that there might be with some of our more traditional things. We’ve got Brandwatch and Global Web Index, and you guys have, I guess, SEO Moz, I don’t know much about search on your side of the you know? I mean, we have all these tools. There are some coming out. Some of them are need a lot of budget, and some of them are difficult to balance. But I know you’re experimenting with them, aren’t you, James? You’re testing all of these out?

James Gray: Yeah, so LLM visibility, so all of this that we’ve just been talking about, and it’s the same for search as well. Having an understanding of where you are now to understand how and where you need to optimise is, is probably the main challenge that I imagine most people that have joined us today will face after we flagged this as a challenge or an opportunity, depending on which way you look at it, and we’re currently testing a number of tools and actually a number of methodologies ourselves that will enable us to ascertain that kind of future search visibility, right, the ability to be seen and found In this new world, and some tools, as you rightly say, some platforms, and actually these might be some tools and platforms that people are on right now will be using are some are adding AI modules and components that claim to be able to show you when you’re cited by LLMs and things, and they can cost a lot of money, which is why we’re looking at developing our own methodologies and things as well, to really help clients just get a handle on where they’re at right now with this. And it’s the same for social you know that social presence, there’s a lot of brand listening tools and social listening tools out there that can give you, even if you get an idea of where you’re at right now, it helps you have a bit of a benchmark and a baseline of where to go next. And we saw this with SEO before, where tools, they all vary really, in telling you how you rank and where you perform in your you know, or you’re ranking in one positions one to three for these keywords, and then another tool will say; Oh no, you’re ranking in positions one to 10 for these keywords and things like that. As you’re getting a handle on some of that, getting a bit of a visibility, setting yourself a benchmark, and making changes to optimise and measure performance moving forwards, then I think that’s a really strong and important place for people to start.

Katy Howell: I’d also add, I think AI is moving so fast. I mean, every time I open it up is like, whoa, what the hell is this? So, I think it’s moving so fast that we will see so much change that the reality is. I think getting some of the basics that you and I have talked about today in in your operational structure right now is a good place to start. Rather than trying to get to the kind of level of sophistication that we maybe are in terms of our search engine optimisation and our social activity, those are, those are kind of almost slightly more established, so they have a rhythm to them already and allow yourself to flex, because I suspect things will keep changing for the next year or so, if not beyond,

James Gray: Yeah, and beyond, I’m sure it’s going to change again and again and again.

Katy Howell: I love it for us.

James Gray: So, we have had a question in on the chat from Rossano Deal, do you think this evolution of the way we plan travel slowly pushes the reliance or use of travel agencies, similar to the migration of using Chat GPT vs. search engines like Google etc. So, I guess it’s kind of well, the question really, in terms of the shift in the reliance on the traditional travel agency. How have you seen, I mean, obviously travel agents use social now as well, right? I’d imagine maybe you’ve summary your clients. Katy, so how would you say socials impacted, maybe the more traditional travel agencies.

Katy Howell: So, I would say, I mean, social has been touted since, since I started in 2004 when it first sort of came onto the scene as the thing that’s going to be the death of TV and the death of radio and the death of travel agents, so to speak oh, it’s a load of rubbish. Okay, so I think there will be a need for both, certainly for the foreseeable future, there is still a large portion of the public that would rather go to travel agent to get this resolved. You’re absolutely right. Travel Agents are also building in social search as part of what they’re doing, and their tools and technology that they use are beginning to build AI and these elements in to make their jobs easier. And there will always be people who would prefer to go to a travel agent, not just older people, just people who are trying to book something a bit special or a bit different. And I think travel agents themselves will have to evolve, just like we all have had to evolve in different ways. You know, when I started in this industry, there was no internet. When I started, you know, in the 90s, there was no internet and there was no way of going to a website. There was only brochures. We’ve all had to evolve in this industry, so I think they will have to find that niche. That means that they offer more, something different. So, I don’t think it’s quite the death of because I’m not a great believer in these things. I think, almost the weirdest thing about what’s happening is we as consumers are going all over the place to make our decisions. So we may go to GPT and we may go to Instagram, and then we go to the agent and go, these are my top three. What do you know about it? As an expert. How can you get me a better deal as an expert? How can you take the headache away as an expert? So, I think, I think we have to remember it’s there’s not going to be one thing that champions everything. And the way I look at social, it, and I said this the other day on a podcast, actually, which is social is the oil in the engine, so it makes everything else work better. It makes your AI work better for you. It makes your search work better for you, because creates desire and intent. And of course, it’s the element that adds the humanity into your agents. So, think of it like the oil and engine. And always, you’re always looking at how you can make it more robust.

James Gray: Absolutely. And I think, I think your point, I was, was quite interested around that there’s always going to need to be a human element when there is that paradox of choice, right, that that you’ve just got so much choice, perhaps being bombarded to you as so many different sources of information now, as we said, you know that discovery thing is so messy, it’s like spaghetti. Now it’s no longer in any way, shape or form linear, not that it ever was. So it could be that actually, a little bit like they’re trying to do in retail in general, right in the High Street, is that part of the travel experience is the booking of the travel. So, there’s absolutely no getting away from the fact that this is the future of how people are going to  search for, for travel, for anything really moving forward, that it’s a big part of that. But there’s still going to be a place for the human touch and the human that personal experience that an AI agent, realistically is never going to sit you down, maybe get you a cup of coffee, and really spend their time to get to know you, and unless you prompt an LLM with the information it needs, every little bit of stuff that it needs to know about you as a human, which a travel agent will draw out, you know, through needs analysis and kind of classic sales stuff. Stuff, yeah, unless, unless AI is going to get to that point where it can do that, the travel agent will probably always have a have a place, I would imagine, and will actually maybe become augmented by AI augmented travel agents who can actually use AI to accelerate your experience when you’re in there. You’re not waiting so long for them to trawl through 15 websites anymore, or portals as travel agents have, and they can just accelerate that experience of getting to the answer you want, but make you feel a little bit more human. Maybe that’s maybe that’s the way it will go.

Katy Howell: It does make me think, though we’re moving to the cyborg.

James Gray: Yeah, exactly that. That’s just replied that, unless they have a service bot. Yeah, exactly we might. We actually work with a client who are one of the world leaders in in robotics and AI powered robotics. So maybe we can, you know, partner that with our travel industry expertise, and we can create the next AI robotic travel agent. Let’s see. Let’s see what happens. So yeah, mindful of time, we’ve only got a couple of minutes left, so just want to leave people with a couple of points, really. So thank you to everyone who’s fired in a comment or a question, Chris, Jan, Rob, Prasana, etc, and thanks to those of you that have watched live, this will obviously be available on LinkedIn for the foreseeable for a bit of a duration of time, so you can always come back and watch this. We’ll also be taking this video and some of the key headlines from it, and they will be available to watch back on our website and immediate future as well, as Katy pointed out here, we have this download for the checklist and the check guide which will really help accelerate, optimise your social presence. And we’ve also got a number of content pieces, market research. We’ve got the world’s top 10, sorry, the world’s top hotel groups, the world’s top airlines, etc, etc. We’ve done kind of customer experience and digital experience reports for these, these industries as well. So, feel free to go and browse those. Download those and also feel free to get in touch if any of the stuff that Katy or I have spoken about today has really piqued your interest. You’ve got questions. You want to go into more detail on any of these elements, then obviously, please feel free to reach out to either or both of us. You can obviously find us on all the usual channels, through the agency websites and on LinkedIn as well. So ,thank you very much for joining us. Everybody. Katy, thank you so much for your question.

Katy Howell: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

James Gray: Fantastic and we hope to see you all soon in the next one. Cheers.