When Travelers Ask ChatGPT
Where to Go
Trip planning now starts with a question to ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity, in English or Arabic: where to go in Saudi Arabia, whether AlUla is worth it, where to stay on the Red Sea. The answers are built from earned media: the coverage, reviews, and authority content the models trust. A destination or hotel missing from that coverage is missing from the answer.
The travel edition of the flagship session Earned Media in the Age of AI, tuned for Saudi tourism and the brands connecting the Kingdom with the world, using real data from the earned media OS I built and run.
By Syed Irfan Ajmal · Founder of EMOS · Previously on stage at Arabian Travel Market Dubai.
One asset. One placement. Six compounding returns.
A single authority asset and a single piece of travel coverage do not stop at the placement. They compound around a six part flywheel. Spin it long enough and it starts turning on its own, because journalists cite sources other journalists have already cited.
Hover or tap a segment to read each return
AI changed how trips are planned.
And how coverage is earned.
A credible mention in media travelers already trust keeps selling a destination long after it goes live, and it makes the next mention easier to get. AI has just changed earned media from both sides at once: how travelers find you, and how the coverage gets earned.
LLMs and AI search now decide which destinations get seen.
And they reward exactly what earned media produces: authoritative coverage, citations, and genuine expert content.
AI agents can now do the core jobs of a PR team.
The work of earning travel coverage breaks into six stages. Each one now has an AI agent doing the heavy lifting, with a human deciding at every gate.
Sources: Mastercard & CrescentRating, Global Muslim Travel Index 2026 · Phocuswright, 2025
AI travel answers reward
what earned media produces.
Ask an AI assistant to plan a week in Saudi Arabia, AlUla to the Red Sea to Diriyah, and ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews assemble the answer from sources they trust: travel press, guides, reviews, expert commentary, in English and Arabic. Earn that coverage once and it pays out to travelers, to search, and to the machines that cite you, at the same time.
Travelers
Trip planning now starts with a question to ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity, in English or Arabic, and travelers trust editorial coverage and reviews far more than a destination's own ads.
A place worth going, vouched for by sources they trust.
Search engines
Google still routes a huge share of travel demand, now through AI Overviews as well as classic results, weighing links, mentions and expertise signals to decide which destinations rank.
Authority signals from independent travel media.
Generative engines
LLMs and AI search, from ChatGPT to Perplexity, assemble travel answers from the coverage they trust, so they surface destinations and hotels with genuine authority.
To cite the most trusted, most mentioned source.
Why AI rewards this: about 83% of AI citations point to third-party sources rather than brand-owned pages (Analyze, 83,670 citations); branded mentions are the strongest correlate of Google AI Overview visibility, roughly 3x backlinks (Ahrefs, 75,000 brands); and adding credible citations lifts generative-engine visibility 30 to 40% (Princeton GEO study).
Six jobs that used to need a team.
AI can now run every one. None of them without a human.
Each stage maps to a tool in the earned media system I built and run, so the session runs on live data, not slideware. No product pitch: you leave with the method, not a demo. Below the pipeline: the same six stages in travel terms.
Drafts, researches, or even builds the tool, report, calculator or dataset itself.
Reviews and approves before anything moves to the next stage. No stage skips this.
Scroll sideways on narrow screens to see all six stages
Signal
Surface the topics about to break before the market notices.
Authority Content
Build the research, tools and data that earn coverage.
Verify
Screen out AI slop and unverified claims.
Match
Find the right journalists for the right stories.
Pitch
Draft and send outreach, scored and tuned.
Attribute
Track what the coverage actually produced.
In a multi-platform, largely zero-click journey, no one can honestly draw a clean line from one article to one booking, and any vendor who promises that is selling you something. What you can track, and what this session sets up: whether AI assistants actually recommend you, your share of voice against rivals, and the demand signals coverage moves, from branded search to direct and referral traffic. Leading indicators you can act on, not vanity clippings.
In the room, we do not just describe the pipeline. We run it live.
- 01.Audit what AI assistants currently say about your destination, hotel, or brand.
- 02.Earn the coverage AI models actually cite.
- 03.Run a full earned media pipeline with AI, brand-safe and no code, every claim traceable to a real source.
- 04.Track what actually moves in a zero-click world: whether AI recommends you, your share of voice, and the branded search and traffic coverage lifts.
- It still fabricates and over claims. Verification is not optional.
- It cannot build a real relationship with a journalist.
- It misreads nuance, timing and embargoes.
- It cannot make the judgment call on what is genuinely newsworthy.
The session is candid about all of it. That is the point.
The questions this session tends to open.
Which jobs of a travel PR team can AI agents genuinely run today, and where do they still fail?
How do you pair AI with human judgment so the work earns the trust of journalists, travelers, LLMs and AI search?
Why do LLMs and AI search now decide which destinations and travel brands get seen, and what do they reward?
One session,
three ways to run it.
Same content, tuned to your room. Every format is built for Saudi tourism and Vision 2030, and runs in person or virtual, in English. Tell me the slot and the audience, and I will tell you which fits.
Keynote
A fast, story-led mainstage talk with a live “what does AI say about your destination?” moment. Best to open or close a track.
Interactive workshop
The full working session: idea sprint, spot-the-slop, and a live pitch clinic on the room’s real pitches. Best as a hands-on breakout.
Panel or fireside
I bring the live data and the contrarian takes; you bring the moderator and co-panelists. Best for a debate on AI, PR and destination marketing.
Not sure which? Send the event, the slot and the audience, and I will recommend the format that moves your metric.
Bring this session to your travel stage.
Organizers, send the event, audience and the metric you want moved. Curious about the content, ask a question. Response inside a working day, no salesy follow-up.
Real case studies.
Zero filler.
GEO · SEO-PR · Content Marketing
One or two emails a month. The campaigns I’m building right now, what’s working in earned media, and the case studies behind the numbers. Unsubscribe whenever.