CEO of Adido, Andy Headington, delves into the differences in search traffic for travel-specific websites from AI platforms vs traditional search engines, and how conversion rates compare in a world where AI is changing the game in every aspect
"A year ago, I set out to separate hype from reality when it came to Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI in travel. Were travellers really flocking to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and others to find their next trip, as the headlines would have it?
The narrative was that Google was on its way out and travel was about to change overnight. Yet the data told a different story, with less than 0.12% of all traffic to travel websites coming from LLMs.
One year on from my original research, I expected the share of traffic from LLMs to have jumped dramatically, but did this prediction play out?
Growing, but still behind
Analysis of 41 UK-based travel websites, using Google Analytics data, shows that traffic from AI tools still only accounts for 0.37% of overall visits.
That's not to say the growth in the last 12 months hasn't been notable. LLM traffic to travel websites in that time has grown by 214%. However, a total of fewer than 18,000 sessions across 41 websites—when some sites are generating hundreds of thousands of visits a month—isn't going to set the world alight.
We will still see many poorly configured Google Analytics accounts end up with five times that amount of traffic from undefined sources. Or looking at it another way, ChatGPT, by far and away the biggest referrer of LLM traffic, generated about as much as DuckDuckGo and Yahoo combined in many instances.
With that said, a year ago, the picture looked very different, as smaller search engines were driving more traffic than ChatGPT. At a micro level, change is clearly happening, although some of that may be due to the rise of AI Overviews in Google.
ChatGPT leads the pack
Last year, speaking on stage at ABTA, CLIA and beyond, I talked about how far in front ChatGPT was in terms of driving website traffic compared to other LLMs, and in the last 12 months, very little has changed.
Despite all the hype towards the end of 2025 around the growth of Gemini and how Anthropic is now worth more than OpenAI; in the end user's mind, there is only one 'AI' tool. With the vast majority of AI/LLM traffic to websites still coming from ChatGPT, it's no wonder that most travel marketers are only talking about one platform when it comes to increasing bookings.
ChatGPT gets nearly nine out of 10 of all LLM visits to travel websites, up slightly from 86.4% last year to 88.1% this year. The other LLMs still haven't been able to make a meaningful dent in its market share.
Something else to note is that Perplexity has 8.5% of visits in 2025 but has dropped to 4.4%. Their visits were shared broadly between Copilot and Claude. While the growth in both was large percentage-wise, the actual visits were still tiny.
The conversion conversation
Do LLMs drive better conversion? In short, yes, they do.
In our study, LLMs converted at a much higher rate overall when compared to traditional channels like organic search (SEO) or PPC (pay per click). The average conversion rate in our data showed an overall website 'key event' conversion rate of 2.27%. These 'events' could include anything from destination enquiries to newsletter sign-ups. However, LLM traffic converted at 4.15%, an increase in conversion rate of 82%. When LLMs were compared to organic search, the growth rate more than doubled to 105%.
Nearly all travel companies prioritise quality over volume when it comes to enquiries, particularly in the world of tailor-made travel, so focusing investment here makes sense. For some travel websites, LLM key event conversions were much higher than the average, with only six-out-of-41 actually having less success compared to organic.
One year on from our original study, it's not surprising to see an increase in traffic to travel websites from LLMs like ChatGPT. There's no doubt usage has grown significantly. However, when beginning this year's research, I expected overall LLM traffic to reach around 0.5% or higher. Therefore, an overall attribution of 0.37% in Google Analytics was slightly underwhelming. Yes, traffic has grown by 214%, but the bigger question is whether it should have grown more.
For travel marketers, it is worth understanding more about how ChatGPT indexes and surfaces content and, in turn, setting up reporting to monitor inbound clicks from LLMs. Nonetheless, Google generates 65-times more organic traffic to travel websites on average. The takeaway is clear: focus marketing spend on where the audience is already paying attention, and stronger results will be the reward."
