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  • Independent hotels & restaurants · GEO · France

    AI visibility for a hotel or restaurant: be cited when a customer looks for where to stay or dine

    Your future customers no longer just browse a results page: they ask ChatGPT or Google in AI mode a question, and the answer cites a few establishments. ARETA, an organic SEO and AI visibility agency specialising in hotels and restaurants, based in the Basque Country, measures how often independent hotels and restaurants are cited in ChatGPT and Gemini and works to improve it, with an AI visibility audit from €990 excl. VAT.

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    Since 2019Independent agency, founder trained in restaurant management at the Institut Paul Bocuse
    Public pricingShown on this page, AI visibility audit from €990 excl. VAT
    2 engines measuredChatGPT and Gemini, regular readings of a fixed panel of questions

  • The situation

    Your customers now ask an AI where to stay and where to dine

    “A quiet hotel with parking near the bullring”, “a good table open tonight”: these questions are increasingly asked in an answer engine. And the answer is not a page of ten links: it is a short text that cites a few establishments, with their strengths. If yours is not among them, it does not exist in that conversation. Here is what has changed, with dated facts.

    • Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode have been available in France since 22 July 2026. On a growing number of queries, the results page now answers by itself, at the top of the screen, before the classic links. The question is no longer just “what position am I in” but “am I in the answer”.Source: Google announcement, France rollout relayed by the specialist press, 22/07/2026.
    • ChatGPT is opening up to Yelp reviews, ratings and photos. The partnership between OpenAI and Yelp, announced on 23 July 2026, feeds third-party directories straight into local answers. A business with little presence on these directories starts with a handicap in the answer. Yelp coverage remains uneven in France: it is ground to be taken, not a given.Source: announcement of the OpenAI and Yelp partnership, 23/07/2026.
    • When AI does not cite you, it most often cites someone else. A platform, a guide or a competitor. The customer follows the answer, and the booking goes to an intermediary that takes its share of your revenue.
    • Nobody controls the output of an answer engine. No provider can guarantee you a citation by ChatGPT or Gemini, and we will never promise it. What can be worked on is the likelihood of being cited: what the engine reads, finds and can copy. That is exactly the purpose of this page.

    Being cited without an intermediary when a customer looks for somewhere to stay or dine means feeding your direct sales, and therefore reducing your platform commissions per euro taken.

    Take stock in 30 minutes

  • Understand before acting

    How answer engines choose whom to cite

    Each engine has its own information route, and this is the point most businesses overlook: a hotel or restaurant ranking very well on Google can be invisible to ChatGPT, because ChatGPT does not read the same sources. As we write, in August 2026, here is what each engine reads.

    What mattersChatGPTGoogle: AI Overviews, AI Mode, GeminiPerplexity
    What it relies on Its web search queries the Bing index, third-party directories (including Yelp since the partnership of 23/07/2026) and the businesses' own websites. The Google ecosystem: the search index, the business profile, Google reviews and the content of your website. Its own index and data partnerships, including Tripadvisor for travel (announced in February 2025).
    Your Google Business Profile It has no access to the data in your Google Business Profile. A perfect profile does not, on its own, improve your citation by ChatGPT (finding as of August 2026). Central. In a study of hotels in AI Mode (02/2026), 79% of hotel links pointed to the Google business profile. Indirect: the profile is not its primary source, and travel directories carry more weight.
    What to look after A website that answers in plain terms, a presence in the Bing index, third-party directories that are up to date and consistent. A complete and active profile, recent reviews with replies, a website that confirms what the profile says. Travel and restaurant directories, and the same editorial fundamentals as for the other engines.

    What this asymmetry changes for you. There is no single “AI visibility”: there are separate routes, and each one can be worked on. That is why our measurement covers two distinct engines, ChatGPT and Gemini: they rely on two different ecosystems, and they react differently to the same work. Perplexity is mentioned here as part of the landscape: we do not measure it at present.

    Sources: OpenAI and Yelp partnership announced on 23/07/2026; AI Overviews and AI Mode rolled out in France on 22/07/2026; Perplexity and Tripadvisor partnership announced in February 2025; independent study Google AI Mode Hotel Study (Nicolas Sitter, published in February 2026 and updated in June 2026, 4,000 queries across 8 major cities, 1,146 hotels, an urban sample not representative of every market).

  • The GEO method for hotels and restaurants

    Making your business citable, in four workstreams

    An answer engine only cites what it can read, understand and cross-check. Our job is to make your hotel or restaurant readable through each route, then to check that the citation follows. The same foundation serves a second goal: maximising your direct bookings, since a customer who follows a citation leading to your channels arrives with you, not on a platform.

    1. A website that answers in plain terms

      Answer engines copy sentences, not atmospheres. Your website must state in plain text what a customer asks: your prices or price ranges, your address and how to reach you, your specialities, your opening hours, your conditions. We rewrite the key pages as self-contained paragraphs that can be copied out of context, and we back them with clean structured data. What is written nowhere will be cited nowhere.

    2. Consistent directories, engine by engine

      Name, address, phone number, opening hours and description must tell the same story everywhere: on your website, in the Bing index that ChatGPT queries, on third-party directories such as Yelp, in the guides and listings of your sector, and on your Google Business Profile for the Google ecosystem, right down to optimising your restaurant's Google profile in detail: menu, photos, attributes. Contradictory sources reduce the likelihood that an engine will use the information.

    3. Living reviews, on the right platforms

      Reviews have become a raw material of answers: the OpenAI and Yelp partnership announced on 23 July 2026 brings Yelp reviews and ratings into ChatGPT's local answers, and Google reviews feed the business profile that the Google ecosystem puts forward. Volume, recency and your own replies are worked on continuously, without ever buying or faking a review.

    4. Measure the citation, then correct

      At regular intervals, we put a fixed panel of questions to the engines and record whether your business is cited, how, and alongside whom. This record drives the corrections: what is missing from an answer shows what is missing from your sources. The full method for being cited by ChatGPT and Gemini is detailed further down this page.

    Why we do not promise a citation. Nobody controls the output of a language model, and anyone who guarantees you a place in ChatGPT is selling a certainty they do not have. We work on the likelihood of being cited, and we measure it wave after wave: it is the only honest promise in this line of work.

    Let's discuss your AI visibility, 30 free minutes

  • Two trades, one shared dependency

    Hotel and restaurant: what AI does with each question

    “Where to stay” and “where to dine” do not draw on the same sources or the same intermediaries. AI visibility work is therefore tailored to each trade, with the same goal in both cases: that the answer leads to you, not to an intermediary.

    For hotels

    When a traveller looks for somewhere to stay

    • The questions are precise and local: a neighbourhood, a budget, parking, pets allowed. Answer engines reply by naming hotels and their strengths. Every attribute missing from your sources is a question on which you will not be cited.
    • In Google's AI Mode, hotel links stay overwhelmingly within the Google ecosystem. An independent study of hotels measured that 79% of hotel links pointed to the business profile, and that OTAs captured only 3.6% of clicks. The profile becomes your shop window in the answer; it must lead to your direct booking.Source: Google AI Mode Hotel Study, Nicolas Sitter, February 2026, updated June 2026, 4,000 queries, 8 major cities; urban sample, not representative of every market.
    • On ChatGPT, your Google profile does not count: the Bing index, travel directories and your website make the answer. It is a separate piece of work, often neglected, which we carry out alongside the SEO of the business as a hotel marketing agency.

    For restaurants

    When a customer looks for somewhere to dine

    • The question is often immediate: “tonight”, “open on Sunday”, “with a terrace”. Exact opening hours, a menu readable as text and up-to-date attributes, everywhere, are the entry condition for the answer.
    • Reviews weigh twice: the OpenAI and Yelp partnership announced on 23 July 2026 brings Yelp reviews and ratings into ChatGPT's local answers, and Google reviews feed the profile that the Google ecosystem puts forward. A living review profile is a citation asset, on top of being a reassurance asset. The restaurant SEO foundation remains the support for all of this work.
    • The final stake is commission-free booking: an answer that leads to your website or your phone avoids the TheFork and delivery commissions that weigh on every cover booked through an intermediary.

  • Our asset: measurement

    The ARETA citation tracking method

    GEO for hotels and restaurants without measurement is an act of faith. We apply to our clients the tracking method we apply to ourselves: a written, dated and reproducible protocol that you can audit. Here it is.

    01 · The panel

    Fixed questions, asked at regular intervals

    A panel of questions reflecting what your customers ask (where to stay, where to dine, with which constraints), put at regular intervals to ChatGPT and Gemini, the two engines we measure. The questions do not change: that is what makes the waves comparable.

    02 · The measurements

    Cited, with what weight, in what tone

    For each answer: is your business cited, what share of voice does it hold against the other names cited, what sentiment does the answer express (scored from 0 to 100), and which web searches did the engine trigger to answer. Four measurements, recorded at every wave.

    03 · The reading

    On a rolling window, never on a single point

    Answer engines vary from one run to the next. A gap on a single wave, on an isolated question, cannot be interpreted: we read results over a rolling window of several waves, and we only conclude on confirmed trends.

    04 · The control

    Questions outside the panel, to stay honest

    Measuring only the questions you optimise means optimising the thermometer. Regularly, we put new wordings by hand, never tracked, to check that the tracking reflects reality and not only our panel.

    What you receive. A dated record, before and during the engagement: on which questions your business is cited, on which it is not yet, what was corrected as a result. No screenshot picked on a good day: a measured series, wave after wave, that you can verify.

  • AI visibility and SEO

    GEO does not replace organic SEO: it adds to it

    We are sometimes asked whether to “do GEO instead of SEO”. The answer is no, and it is structural: answer engines feed on the same sources as search engines. A site that is invisible on Google and Bing has very little to offer ChatGPT or Gemini. The editorial work is shared; what changes is how it is measured and prioritised.

    What SEO brings to GEO

    Indexing (including the Bing index, which ChatGPT queries), pages that answer questions clearly, clean structured data, consistent directories: the whole foundation of organic SEO is also the raw material of citation. This is the core of our work as a hotel and restaurant marketing agency: a single editorial workstream that serves both kinds of visibility.

    What GEO adds to SEO

    Its own measurement (citation, share of voice, sentiment), its own priorities (the directories each engine reads, wordings that can be copied), and new ground: what answer engines say about you when you are not in the room. To choose who to entrust with this work, our grid the 9 criteria for choosing your agency compares the types of provider without sugar-coating.

    This page covers AI visibility for hotels and restaurants: being cited when a customer looks for somewhere to stay or dine, and nothing else. ARETA's AI Visibility service exists for all sectors: audits, brand sentiment and management are described on our AI Visibility service, all sectors. The two pages complement each other: the generic service on one side, the hotel and restaurant field on the other.

  • Public pricing

    What AI visibility costs, in plain terms

    Of the nine competing GEO agencies we audited in August 2026, none displayed a public price. We display ours: all amounts are excl. VAT, as “from” prices, and the exact scope is set together before any commitment.

    One-off

    AI Visibility Audit

    From €990 excl. VAT

    The baseline: what ChatGPT and Gemini say about your business, on which questions you are cited or absent, who is cited in your place, and your gaps on the sources each engine reads.

    Request the audit

    ⭐ Most popular

    Audit + GEO Strategy

    From €2,490 excl. VAT

    The audit, plus the prioritised action plan: what to fix on your website, directories, reviews and profile, in what order, with what expected effect on your likelihood of being cited.

    Talk to us, 30 free minutes

    Monthly

    Management Pack

    From €990 excl. VAT/month

    Ongoing citation tracking: a panel put at regular intervals, a record of the four measurements, a rolling-window reading and prioritised corrections month after month.

    Let's talk

    Intensive monthly

    Performance Pack

    From €3,790 excl. VAT/month

    Weekly management, plus editorial production: the content that gives engines something to cite, written, published and measured.

    Let's talk

    The initial diagnostic remains free. Thirty minutes to place your business and decide whether an audit is justified: it is the only starting point we offer, with no commitment. The full detail of our prices, all services combined, will be published on the page our pricing in plain terms.

  • The proof

    How the result is verified, with no grand announcements

    We publish no client figure without their written consent, and we do not dress up a favourable screenshot as a demonstration. What we document, for each engagement, comes down to two cross-checked measurements.

    The citation, before and during. The panel record sets the baseline: on which questions your business is cited by ChatGPT and Gemini before our intervention. The following waves, read over a rolling window, show what has moved, question by question. The protocol is the one described above, and it can be audited.
    The platform dependency index. The share of your revenue that goes through paid intermediaries, measured before and during the engagement. It is the final figure that gives meaning to the rest: visibility is only worth something if it feeds your direct sales per euro taken.

    Our first documented cases will be published on the page what we have measured, with the written consent of the businesses concerned, the before state, the during state and the full methodology. Until that proof is produced to the proper standard, this section contains no percentage: it is our way of earning your trust.

  • Frequently asked questions

    FAQ | AI visibility, hotels and restaurants

    The questions hoteliers and restaurateurs ask us most often about being cited in answer engines.

    What is AI visibility for a hotel or a restaurant?

    It means being cited by name in the answers of answer engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode) when a customer looks for somewhere to stay or dine. The discipline that deals with it is called GEO, for Generative Engine Optimization; it is also referred to as visibility in AI answers or, in search queries, “AI visibility for hotels and restaurants” and “GEO for hotels and restaurants”. In practice, it means making your information readable and cross-checkable by the sources each engine consults, then measuring whether the citation follows.

    How does ChatGPT choose the hotels and restaurants it cites?

    When a question is local or recent, ChatGPT triggers a web search that relies on the Bing index, on third-party directories (including Yelp, whose reviews and ratings have fed its local answers since the partnership announced on 23 July 2026) and on the businesses' own websites. It cross-checks these sources and cites the businesses that best answer the question asked. This is how it works as observed in August 2026; it changes quickly, which is also why we measure it wave after wave rather than assume it is settled.

    Is a well-filled Google profile enough to be cited by AI?

    No, and it is the most common misunderstanding. Your business profile matters a great deal on the Google side: AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini belong to the same ecosystem and put it forward. But ChatGPT has no access to the data in your Google profile: for it, what exists is your website, the Bing index and third-party directories. A perfect profile with a thin website and inconsistent directories therefore gives incomplete AI visibility.

    How do I know whether my business is cited by ChatGPT or Gemini?

    Asking a question on a given day proves nothing: answers vary from one run to the next. The only reliable measurement is a repeated record: a panel of fixed questions put at regular intervals to both engines, with, for each answer, the citation, share of voice, sentiment and searches triggered, all read over several waves. That is exactly what our AI visibility audit does: it sets your baseline, question by question.

    Does AI visibility replace organic SEO?

    No. Answer engines feed on the same sources as search engines: a site that is invisible on Google and Bing has very little to offer ChatGPT or Gemini. Organic SEO remains the foundation; AI visibility adds its own priorities (directories per engine, wordings that can be copied) and its own measurement, the citation. The two are worked on together, not one in place of the other.

    What is the link between AI visibility and my platform commissions?

    When an answer engine cites your business and leads the customer to your website, your phone or your profile, the booking is made without a paid intermediary. The more your direct sales grow, the more the share of your revenue going through platforms falls, and so does what you pay in commissions per euro taken. It is work on this ratio: we never promise a reduction in the absolute amount of your bill, nor a renegotiation of your rates.

    How much does an AI visibility service cost for a hotel or a restaurant?

    Our prices are public and displayed on this page: AI visibility audit from €990 excl. VAT, audit with GEO strategy from €2,490 excl. VAT, monthly management from €990 excl. VAT per month and performance pack from €3,790 excl. VAT per month. All amounts exclude VAT and are “from” prices: the exact scope is agreed together. The starting point remains a free 30-minute diagnosis, with no commitment.

    How long does it take for an establishment to be cited by AI?

    Nobody can promise a timeframe, and we will not: the output of a language model cannot be controlled, and no serious data documents a guaranteed timeframe. What industry experience does allow us to say is that source corrections (website, directories, reviews) become visible in the measurements within a few weeks to a few months of measurement waves, depending on the starting point. That is an order of magnitude, not a commitment. Be wary of anyone who sells you a guaranteed citation within thirty days.

    A question that is not on the list?

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  • Free meeting · 30 min · no obligation

    What do AI assistants say about your establishment?

    Thirty minutes, at your establishment or by video call: where your citation stands in ChatGPT and Gemini, what each engine reads about you today, and where to start. The AI visibility diagnosis is the way in, with no paid audit and no commitment. Main office in Bayonne, on-site work in the Basque Country and in Béarn, and remote support anywhere in France.

    Book 30 free minutes
    Email[email protected]
    Phone06 50 82 74 13
    Address2 place du Château Vieux
    64100 Bayonne
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    Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm

    Last updated: 26 October 2026

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