Frequently Asked Questions

Kismet is the AI demand-channel platform for hotels: we provide the storefront, catalog, and booking path that makes your property discoverable in AI search and helps guests book direct when they plan trips in assistants like ChatGPT and other AI systems.

In practice, Kismet gives you AI-ready surfaces on your own domain (so assistants can reliably read and cite your hotel facts, content, and offers), plus tracking that connects AI discovery to measurable performance.

On higher tiers, Kismet expands from "storefront" into full catalog + commerce: assistants can access a structured catalog (served via MCP/ACP), fetch live rates and availability, and generate booking links—so the path from "recommendation" to "reservation" stays first-party.

When social media advertising came along, it unleashed a wave of "direct-to-consumer" (DTC) brands that took advantage of the new demand channel to reach retail customers directly. For a variety of reasons, travel suppliers weren't able to capitalize on the social media explosion to sell directly to guests—and if anything, the middlemen and OTAs became more entrenched as a result.

AI Search and chat-based applications promise a similar opportunity for hoteliers. And we believe it will unleash a direct-to-guest revolution, where hotels use this new channel to reach guests directly and help them book—without defaulting to an OTA.

AI Search is the new way guests discover hotels through conversational assistants—like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Mode—instead of typing short keywords into a traditional search box. Guests ask specific, natural-language questions (e.g., "a boutique hotel with a rooftop pool and great coffee nearby"), and the assistant synthesizes an answer and routes the guest toward a booking path.

In traditional search, guests see "10 blue links" and decide what to click. In AI Search, guests often see a single synthesized answer. That shifts the optimization problem from "ranking pages" to "being a trusted source the model can parse reliably," with clear structured data, citations, and an obvious path from "hotel info" to "rates" to "booking."

Read more: How to Beat the OTAs at AI Search →

Hotels show up when AI systems can quickly and confidently retrieve the information needed to (1) recommend the property and (2) send the guest to a direct booking path. In practice, that means:

• Authoritative content on your domain with clear citations and structured data
• Machine-readable versions of key hotel information (rooms, amenities, offers, policies)
• A direct booking path that points to your booking engine—not an OTA
• Accurate pricing and availability when the user is ready to check dates

Because OTAs are easier for AI to understand and complete a transaction with: they publish standardized, machine-readable catalogs and provide predictable routes from property info to rates to checkout. Many hotel sites, by contrast, hide rates and availability behind complex booking flows designed for humans, and present key facts in formats that are slower and harder for AI systems to parse reliably.

Read more: Why Your Hotel Needs to Publish OTA-Level Data →

AI assistants tend to perform best when they have:

• Structured hotel/room/offer data (a "catalog")
• Compelling content and proof (stories, imagery, press/awards, niche details guests care about)
• Live rates and availability (so the assistant can "anchor" the recommendation in accurate pricing)
• A clear, first-party booking action (so the guest can book direct)

Start with three fundamentals:

1. Make your content AI-readable (structured, citation-friendly endpoints alongside your site)
2. Publish OTA-level data and keep it aligned across your feed, on-site structured data, and what guests actually see in checkout (accuracy builds trust; mismatches break it)
3. Measure the AI funnel (indexing → consideration in answers → AI click-throughs → guest visits → bookings) so you can iterate based on what's actually driving revenue.

Read: How to Beat the OTAs at AI Search →

Kismet is a platform for managing your hotel's Storefront, Catalog, Checkout, and Tracking for guests using AI to search and book hotels.

Think of it as your infrastructure for the AI demand channel:

• Storefront – Where AI assistants discover and understand your property
• Catalog – Your rooms, packages, amenities, and experiences in machine-readable format
• Checkout – Live rates, availability, and booking paths AI can access
• Tracking – Measure how AI discovery translates to bookings and revenue

Kismet is designed to help hotels get started today with a simple AI presence, then grow into more powerful features as the AI demand channel matures—without replatforming your website or replacing your existing booking engine.

Kismet offers four tiers designed to match where you are in your AI journey:

View detailed pricing and features →

Kismet tracks how AI systems discover your hotel and how that discovery translates into measurable outcomes—so you can see how your content turns into real traffic and bookings.

This includes signals like:

• AI crawler activity
• When assistants fetch your AI-ready pages
• How that traffic performs on your site

No. Kismet's tracking is designed to measure performance and attribution without collecting or relying on sensitive guest personal data. We focus on aggregated, event-based analytics (e.g., assistant referrals, page fetches, and conversion events) rather than identifying individual guests.

Kismet tracks performance across major AI discovery surfaces. Starter includes detailed tracking of ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and more, so you can see where demand is coming from and what's converting.

Yes—on Pro and above. Pro includes site-wide tracking with conversion and ROI metrics, so you can connect AI-originated demand to outcomes like direct bookings and revenue performance.

AEO insights are Kismet's recommendations and reporting loop for improving how you show up in AI answers—and how effectively you turn that visibility into direct traffic and bookings. Starter includes weekly AEO insights, and Pro includes real-time AEO insights for faster iteration.

Yes. Kismet's blog describes an AI Visibility tool (beta) that helps you test how assistants respond to travel prompts—so you can see when your hotel is cited, what sources are being used, and what kinds of queries assistants appear to run.

Meet with us and we'll get you set up and on your way. But we also allow self-service so you can start experimenting with your own storefront in as little as 15 minutes.

For those that want to get started, it's as simple as creating an account and following the quickstart instructions that will help you set up your AI storefront and telling AI how to find it. Start free; upgrade when ready.

Get started for free →

Same day for Free and Starter accounts. For a Pro account, we can usually get you set with a powerful AI Storefront and catalog in 2-3 weeks. Enterprise integrations can take anywhere from a month to several months, so let's meet and discuss.

In most cases:

• DNS access (to create ai.yourdomain.com) OR
• CMS access to install your kismet.travel index listing on your homepage.
• GTM access (if you want to install tracking)

No. Kismet's platform is designed to work alongside your existing website publishing systems and booking engines, with no replatforming required.

No. Kismet simply adds AI-only endpoints alongside your site while keeping guest pages exactly the same.

We need simple DNS records for Free and Starter plans. Hotels upgrading to Pro looking to support a full Catalog and Checkout experience will need to plug-in a source of Availability, Rates, and Inventory.

Currently we support Oracle, Mews, Cloudbeds, and Stayntouch as direct Property Management System integrations and are actively working on additional PMS providers. We can access most leading CRS providers through our Shiji partnership.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a technology that allows AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, and other language models to directly access real-time travel data. MCP integration enables seamless AI operability, allowing users to search, compare, and book travel through their preferred AI assistant with live availability and pricing.

AEO (AI Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing content and websites for AI search engines and language models. Also known as AI Search Optimization or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AEO ensures your content is discoverable and properly understood by AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and other AI agents.

Kismet specializes in comprehensive AEO strategies for travel businesses, helping hotels and travel providers maximize their visibility in AI search results.

Learn more: Complete AEO Guide & Implementation Strategies →

OpenAI announced it plans to test ads in ChatGPT for adult users in the U.S. on the Free and Go tiers, starting "in the coming weeks." Ads are not live yet. Source

They also announced ChatGPT Go is now available in the U.S. for $8/month.

OpenAI says the initial test is expected to place clearly labeled ads at the bottom of answers, separated from the organic response. Source

OpenAI's stated principle is "answer independence": ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives. Source

OpenAI says Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu will not include ads. Source

OpenAI says it will test ads for logged-in adults in the U.S. on Free and Go; it will not show ads to users under 18 (self-reported or predicted) and will avoid sensitive topics like health, mental health, and politics. Source

It means the "assistant results page" is becoming a real distribution surface:

• Organic: being recommended in the answer still matters.
• Sponsored: new paid placements will likely capture meaningful attention, especially for high-intent travel queries.
• Hotels that want to protect direct share should make sure assistant-driven traffic can land on a first-party, booking-ready experience rather than defaulting to an OTA listing.

Not necessarily. OpenAI is explicitly saying ads are separate from answers and don't influence them.

In practice, the market will likely become "organic + paid," similar to traditional search. The winning approach is to build a strong organic foundation and be ready to convert paid traffic efficiently when it makes sense.

While no one can predict exact tactics, OTAs have strong incentives to buy visibility wherever travel intent concentrates. Kismet's view (and what we help hotels do) is to build OTA-level AI readiness on your own domain, so assistant-driven guests can book direct.

All Kismet plans include an AI storefront and tracking. Depending on your plan, Kismet can help you:

• Launch AI-ready surfaces on your domain to support direct booking.
• Track assistant activity (including ChatGPT) and understand how it translates into revenue.
• Enable a fuller machine-readable catalog (Pro: "Full Catalog enabled, served via MCP and ACP," with "Live rates & availability").

Today, OpenAI has not published a public advertiser product with specs, and their Help Center indicates ads are not live externally yet.

Kismet is preparing hotels to be ready regardless of the eventual ad mechanics (landing pages, tracking, inventory access, and conversion confirmation).

Three high-leverage steps:

1. Stand up your AI surface (ai.yourdomain.com) so assistants can reliably access your canonical facts and offers.
2. Make your catalog complete and consistent: rooms, packages, policies, amenities, experiences—structured and citation-friendly.
3. Turn on measurement (sitewide tracking + booking confirmation signal when possible) so you can quantify assistant-driven ROI.

No. Kismet's AEO approach is to add fast, structured AI-only endpoints alongside your site, while your guest-facing pages remain the same.

Kismet's published stance is that it should not: the human pages stay the same, everything remains on your domain, and AI endpoints are cached/rate-limited with no script injection into human pages.

Best practice is a first-party landing experience that is:

• availability-forward,
• fast (low friction),
• and measurable end-to-end.

This is exactly the gap that causes hotels to lose value when traffic is routed to marketplaces.

A simple framing:

• ChatGPT is evolving into a major travel discovery channel with both organic and paid distribution.
• The defensive move is to ensure the hotel can be understood by AI systems and can convert assistant-driven traffic on the hotel's own domain with measurement.