Why Your Travel Brand Isn’t Showing in Google AI Overviews - And How to Fix It

We’ve had a flood of questions from clients asking why their organic traffic has dropped, why their content isn’t appearing in AI Overviews, and what to do about it. The truth is, visibility in this new AI-powered search world isn’t just about great content anymore, PR now plays a central role.

Here’s what’s happening, and how to get your brand into the new top spot.

AI Overviews are automatically generated summaries Google shows at the top of many search results - especially unbranded, informational queries like “best family holidays in Europe” or “how to travel with a toddler”. These Overviews pull from multiple trusted sources and often give users the answer without needing to click on any individual site.

A boutique tour operator saw traffic to a “best time to visit Morocco” blog drop by 50% in a month. A luxury hotel lost its page-one visibility for destination guides it had previously ranked highly for. Several brands are seeing 30–40% declines in traffic to their informational content.

A key reason for that drop is because users are now seeing AI Overviews first and they’re often satisfied with the information given, so they don’t scroll down or click through. The result? Fewer visits to your website, even if your content is still technically ranking.

But while traffic may be down, there’s an upside. Anecdotally, we’re hearing that conversions are much higher when a brand does appear in an AI Overview. The logic is simple: if the AI has already featured your brand, the trust hurdle has been cleared. People are clicking further down the funnel, with less need to comparison-shop or dig deeper. AI is doing the vetting for them.

There’s no set formula, but AI Overviews tend to favour:

• Clear, structured content (answers at the top, bullet points, tables, and strong headers)
• Trusted authors and expert sources
• Reputable brand mentions across the wider web
• Rich topical authority - multiple pieces of content around the same theme

It’s also worth noting that AI doesn’t just crawl your blog. It’s pulling from a wide network of data sources, and this is where PR plays a vital role. Your brand needs to be seen, cited, and trusted across multiple third-party sources before AI will consider you as a valid inclusion.

A major factor in whether your brand appears in an AI Overview is E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These aren’t just SEO buzzwords anymore, they’re how AI evaluates who to feature.

And PR is how you build those signals externally.

One of the key sources that AI uses to generate these Overviews is traditional media and high-authority publishing outlets. Think Condé Nast Traveller, The Guardian, Travel + Leisure, The Points Guy, even Reddit. These are the exact places PR professionals have always worked to get their clients featured. And now, thanks to licensing agreements being signed between publishers and AI companies, these media outlets are becoming even more integral.

Rather than AI replacing traditional media, it’s building directly on top of it.

Content from publications is being licensed and fed directly into LLMs (think; ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot etc.), meaning the stories, roundups and recommendations they publish are more likely to be cited in AI Overviews. This reinforces the power of magazines, media outlets, and high-authority blogs – and gives travel brands a clear route into AI visibility: get featured in those sources.

So, while SEO gets your website in shape, PR gets your brand into the wider conversation. And without that, you may not be visible to AI at all.

We’ve seen this in action:

• A boutique hotel in Portugal was featured in Condé Nast Traveller’s “Best Family Hotels in Europe” after a Lemongrass PR campaign. Not long after, they started showing up in AI Overviews for terms like “luxury family hotels Algarve”
• A luxury safari operator had its founder quoted in Forbes on sustainability trends and was included in Travel + Leisure’s “Top Safari Operators for 2025”. Now, they’re appearing in Overviews for “best African safari companies”

In both cases, the combination of owned content and earned media placements created the trust signals needed for Google’s AI to take notice.

1. Optimise your website content
   - Make sure you’re answering questions directly and clearly
   - Use bullet points, headers, FAQs, and tables
   - Include publication dates, author bios, and credible source links
   - Create content clusters around core topics to build depth
2. Invest in PR to build authority across the web
   - Target publications you see already being cited in AI Overviews
   - Focus on brand mentions as well as backlinks
   - Pitch for top 10 lists, seasonal roundups, and destination features
   - Position your founder or expert as a go-to commentator in your space
   - Provide exclusive data, commentary, or insights that journalists want to cite

You don’t just need good content, you need other people talking about your brand in the right places. PR does exactly that.

SEO and PR are no longer separate channels, they’re deeply interconnected in the age of AI-powered search.

The future of travel discovery is AI-assisted. From Google’s AI Overviews to tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, users are turning to tools that summarise and streamline their research.

Travel brands that invest in both great content and strong PR will be the ones that surface consistently across these platforms. If your brand isn’t appearing, it’s likely because AI doesn’t know who you are, or doesn’t trust you yet.

You can change that, starting now.

We help travel brands do exactly that. From SEO and content audits to full PR campaigns that land your brand in the right places, Lemongrass is already helping clients navigate this shift, and win.

Want to know more about how AI Overviews are affecting your brand, and what you can do about it? We’re hosting a dedicated webinar where we’ll dive deeper into the trends, share practical examples, and answer your questions live.

Watch this space – more details coming soon.