Last month, a client asked me why ChatGPT kept recommending their competitor’s instead of the properties they actually wanted to promote. The answer came down to something most tourism marketers overlook: the pattern of citations and mentions across the web that LLMs use to form their understanding of brands.
I spent three weeks reverse-engineering how ChatGPT and Perplexity pull information about tourism brands. What I found changes how we need to think about digital presence in 2026 and beyond.
How LLMs Actually Form Brand Opinions?
ChatGPT and Perplexity do not crawl the web in real-time the way Google does. They learn from massive datasets of text, and in Perplexity’s case, they also pull live sources to ground their answers. This distinction matters because it means your brand’s representation in these models depends on two things: what was written about you before the training cutoff, and what authoritative sources say about you now.
When someone asks “What’s the best dive resort in Costa Rica?”, the LLM is not running a popularity contest. It is synthesizing information from travel publications, forums, review aggregators, and industry databases. The brands that appear most consistently across trusted sources, with positive context and specific details, get recommended.
I tested this with 47 different tourism queries across ChatGPT-4, Claude, and Perplexity. The brands that appeared in recommendations shared common traits: they were mentioned in at least 3 to 5 authoritative travel publications, they had consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information across directories, and critically, they were cited with specific attributes rather than generic praise.
Citations vs. Mentions: Understanding the Difference
A citation is a formal reference, often with a link or structured attribution. Think of a travel magazine listing your hotel in a “Best of” roundup with your website linked. A mention is any time your brand name appears in text, regardless of whether there is a link or formal attribution.
Both matter for LLM visibility, but they work differently.
Citations Build Authority Signals
When Condé Nast Traveler cites your resort in their “Top 20 Eco-Lodges” list, that citation carries weight because of the source’s authority. LLMs are trained on text that includes these publications, and they learn to associate your brand with the context in which it appears. Being cited alongside terms like “sustainable tourism” or “luxury eco-resort” teaches the model to categorize your brand accordingly.
I worked with a boutique hotel that was struggling to appear in AI recommendations for “romantic hotels in Andalusia.” Their website was optimized for this, but they had zero citations in wedding or romance-focused travel content. After a six-month PR push targeting wedding blogs and honeymoon publications, they started appearing in ChatGPT responses for romantic getaway queries.
Mentions Create Frequency Patterns
Mentions work through volume and consistency. When your brand is mentioned repeatedly across forums, review sites, social media, and news articles, the LLM learns that your brand is a relevant entity in your space. This is not about gaming the system with spam. It is about being present in the conversations that matter.
Reddit threads, TripAdvisor reviews, and niche travel forums all contribute to how LLMs understand your brand. I have seen hotels with minimal traditional SEO presence dominate AI recommendations simply because travelers discussed them extensively on Reddit’s travel subreddits.
The Training Data Problem for Tourism Brands
Here is where things get complicated for tourism marketers. ChatGPT’s training data has a cutoff date, which means recent achievements, awards, or renovations may not be reflected in its responses. If your resort won “Best New Hotel 2024” but the model was trained on data through 2023, that award does not exist in ChatGPT’s knowledge base.
Perplexity handles this differently by pulling live sources, but it still prioritizes authoritative domains. If your award announcement only appears on your own website and a few low-authority press release sites, Perplexity may not surface it.
This creates a strategic imperative: you need citations and mentions in sources that both the training data and live retrieval systems will trust.
What Sources Actually Matter
Based on my analysis of tourism queries across multiple LLMs, here are the source types that consistently influence brand recommendations:
- Tier 1: Major Travel Publications: Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Lonely Planet, National Geographic Traveler. Citations here carry maximum weight. One feature in a Tier 1 publication can shift how LLMs categorize your brand.
- Tier 2: Industry Databases and Aggregators: TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Viator, GetYourGuide. These platforms have massive authority and are heavily represented in training data. Your listing quality, review volume, and categorization on these platforms directly influence LLM outputs.
- Tier 3: Niche Authority Sites: PADI Travel for dive resorts, Michelin Guide for culinary tourism, Adventure Travel Trade Association for adventure operators. Niche authority beats general mentions when the query is specific.
- Tier 4: Community Platforms: Reddit, Quora, specialized forums. These create frequency signals and often contain the specific, experiential language that LLMs use to describe brands.
Practical Strategies for Tourism Brands in 2026
Knowing how citations and mentions work is one thing. Actually building a presence that influences LLM outputs requires systematic effort.
Audit Your Current LLM Presence
Start by asking ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity questions that should return your brand. Ask “What’s the best [your category] in [your location]?” in multiple variations. Document which competitors appear, what context surrounds your brand when it does appear, and what attributes get associated with you.
I do this audit for every tourism client now. It reveals gaps that traditional SEO audits miss entirely. One client discovered that ChatGPT consistently associated them with “budget” travel when they positioned themselves as mid-range. The culprit was a single Hostelworld listing they had forgotten about from years earlier.
Build a Citation Acquisition Strategy
This is not link building in the traditional SEO sense. You are not chasing PageRank. You are chasing presence in authoritative content that LLMs reference.
Target publications that write evergreen content about your destination or category. A “Best Beaches in Portugal” article from a major travel site will be in training data for years. A news article about your grand opening will fade quickly.
Pitch angles that include your brand in list-based or comparison content. LLMs are particularly good at surfacing brands mentioned in structured lists because the format makes entity relationships clear.
Optimize Your Third-Party Listings
Your TripAdvisor listing, Booking.com profile, and industry directory entries need the same attention you give your website. These platforms have massive authority in LLM training data.
Ensure your descriptions include the attributes you want associated with your brand. If you want to appear in “family-friendly resort” queries, the word “family-friendly” needs to appear prominently in your third-party listings, not just your website.
Respond to reviews using language that reinforces your positioning. When you reply to a review mentioning your “amazing spa,” do not just say “thank you.” Say something like “We’re thrilled you enjoyed our award-winning wellness spa, which features treatments using local organic ingredients.” This adds context that LLMs can learn from.
Create Citable Content
Publish data and insights that other sources will want to cite. If you run a dive operation, publish an annual report on local marine life sightings. If you manage a DMO, release visitor statistics with analysis.
When I ran CostaRicaDivers.com, I published detailed guides on dive conditions by season that travel writers regularly cited. Those citations created an authority signal that no amount of keyword optimization could match.
Monitor and Respond to Community Discussions
Set up alerts for your brand and category on Reddit, Quora, and niche forums. When travelers ask for recommendations in your space, participate authentically. Do not spam. Provide genuinely helpful information that happens to include your brand when relevant.
The context of these mentions matters. Being recommended by a real traveler in response to a specific question carries more weight than a promotional post that gets ignored or downvoted.
Loop Between Traditional SEO and LLM Visibility
I want to be clear about something: LLM optimization does not replace traditional SEO. The two are increasingly intertwined.
Google’s search results are still a primary source that Perplexity and similar tools reference. If you rank well for “best diving in Costa Rica,” that content is more likely to be cited when an LLM answers related queries. Your SEO success creates a foundation that LLM visibility builds upon.
But the reverse is also emerging. As more users start their research in ChatGPT or Perplexity, the brands that appear in those recommendations get more direct traffic and search volume. This creates branded search signals that feed back into traditional SEO rankings.
Ignoring either channel in 2026 means leaving significant opportunity on the table.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take for new citations to influence ChatGPT responses?
For ChatGPT specifically, you are waiting for a model update that includes new training data. This can take months. For Perplexity and other retrieval-augmented models, new citations can influence responses within weeks if the source has sufficient authority. Plan for a 6 to 12 month horizon for comprehensive impact.
Should I focus on getting more citations or improving existing ones?
Both, but prioritize quality over quantity. One citation in a Tier 1 travel publication with detailed context about your brand beats twenty mentions in low-authority blogs. Start by auditing where you already appear and optimizing that content through updated information or additional context, then pursue new citations strategically.
Do social media mentions influence LLM recommendations?
Less than you might expect. While some social content makes it into training data, LLMs generally weight formal publications and structured databases more heavily. That said, viral social content that gets covered by news outlets creates indirect influence. Focus on platforms where content persists and accumulates, like Reddit threads and forum discussions, rather than ephemeral social posts.
Can negative mentions hurt my brand’s LLM representation?
Yes, and this is a real risk. If negative coverage or complaints dominate the content about your brand, LLMs will learn those associations. I have seen hotels that ChatGPT describes as “controversial” or “problematic” due to past incidents that were heavily covered online. Reputation management is now an LLM optimization concern, not just a PR one.
How do I measure the impact of citation building on LLM visibility?
Track your appearance in standardized query sets monthly. Create 20 to 30 queries that should return your brand and document results across ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Look for changes in frequency of appearance, context and attributes associated with your brand, and position relative to competitors. This is qualitative work, but patterns emerge over time.
What This Means for Your 2026 Strategy?
The tourism brands that will dominate AI-driven discovery are investing now in systematic citation building, third-party listing optimization, and community presence. This is not a future problem. Travelers are already using ChatGPT and Perplexity to plan trips, and the brands that appear in those conversations are capturing demand that never shows up in your Google Analytics.
If you are not sure where your brand stands in LLM recommendations, or you want to build a strategy that accounts for this shift, reach out. I have been doing these audits for DMOs and tourism operators for the past year, and the insights consistently surprise even experienced marketers.
About the Author
I’m Peter Sawicki, a Destination SEO Strategist helping tourism brands and DMOs grow their online presence through SEO, technical audits, and creative digital strategies. Over the years I’ve worked across multiple countries and markets, which gives me a global perspective on every project I take on. When I’m not optimizing websites, you’ll most likely find me underwater. Scuba diving is where my two biggest passions meet.
