Independent Hotels vs Chains in AI Answers
Chains took about 70% of hotel mentions in 576 AI answers, yet independents took about 65% of boutique picks and 46% of budget picks. Here is where they win.
Do independent hotels or chains win in AI answers?
Large websites, loyalty programmes and marketing teams should give big hotel groups an advantage in AI answers too, and they do for most questions. To see where independent hotels still win, we asked ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek 64 hotel questions across eight cities, three times each, and sorted the more than 5,000 hotel mentions in those 576 answers into chains and independents.
Chains take about two thirds of mentions
Independents took about 3 in 10 hotel mentions (between 27% and 32%, depending on how a few small groups are counted), with the rest going to chains and hotel groups. Marriott, Accor, Hyatt, Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Hilton and IHG were named most often.
The share varied by assistant:
| Assistant | Independent share of hotels named |
|---|---|
| Gemini | about 37% |
| DeepSeek | about 31% |
| ChatGPT | about 24% |
Independents win the questions about character
| Question type | Independent share |
|---|---|
| Best boutique hotel | about 65% |
| Best budget hotel | about 46% |
| Romantic hotel for couples | about 40% |
| Best hotels (general) | about 27% |
| Family friendly hotel | about 23% |
| Business trip | about 16% |
| Best luxury hotel | about 12% |
When a guest asks for something with personality, such as a boutique hotel, a romantic stay or good value, independents take a large share of the answer. The groups dominate questions about luxury, families or business travel.
Some independents appeared repeatedly. The Greenwich Hotel and The Bowery Hotel in New York, The Warehouse Hotel in Singapore, and Hotel K5 and Palace Hotel in Tokyo were each named by all three assistants.
Why chains probably win the rest
One study can't establish the cause, but three findings point the same way. ChatGPT's links went mostly to brand sites such as fourseasons.com, hyatt.com and marriott.com, which are large, well organised and easy for an assistant to use. The "best luxury hotels" articles in Time Out, Travel + Leisure and the Michelin Guide feature the same famous names, and those articles feed the answers. Larger hotels also offer assistants more material through more reviews and booking-site listings.
What independent hotels can do
- Begin with questions you can win. Boutique, romantic and value questions are where independents already take roughly 40% to 65% of mentions, so track those first.
- Get onto curated lists. The independents named by all three assistants are the ones that guides write about, and a Michelin Guide listing or a place in a "best boutique hotels" article is likely to do more than another ad.
- Use plain words for the hotel wherever it appears. If your website and booking listings say "boutique", "adults only" or "near the old town", an assistant reading them can match you to those questions.
- Leave "best luxury hotel" to the groups. Independents made up only about 12% of hotels on those lists.
How SearchSeal helps
SearchSeal shows which hotels AI names instead of you for each question, along with the guides and booking pages that came back with those answers. Sources that omit you become "get listed" tasks, giving you a short list of places to work on. See AI visibility for hotels.
Method and limits
- 576 answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek on 21 October 2026, across Jakarta, Bali, Paris, London, Tokyo, New York, Bangkok and Singapore.
- A language model labelled each hotel as chain or independent from its name. In a second review we used the majority label where the same hotel had been labelled differently, and corrected small groups the model had marked as independent (for example Rocco Forte, Red Carnation and Autograph Collection hotels). Hotels in marketing collections such as Relais & Châteaux or Design Hotels count as independent. A few labels may still be wrong, so take the shares as approximate.
- Full method: Where ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek find hotels.
Frequently asked questions
Do independent hotels or chains get more mentions in AI answers?
Independents took about 3 in 10 hotel mentions (between 27% and 32%, depending on how a few small groups are counted), with the rest going to chains and hotel groups.
Which questions do independent hotels win?
When a guest asks for something with personality, such as a boutique hotel, a romantic stay or good value, independents take a large share of the answer. The groups dominate questions about luxury, families or business travel.