Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) are working to find their footing as artificial intelligence (AI) prompts tectonic shifts in online visibility.
With Phocuswright reporting that 56% of travelers are using AI for planning, prioritizing AI visibility is paramount for travel companies.
“Travel discovery is clearly moving from browsing links to getting direct answers, and that shift is understandably unsettling for many DMOs,” said Dave Corner, senior director of destination experience for SimpleView.
The nature of DMOs puts them at a strategic advantage when it comes to being cited in conversational queries. Visibility in AI search isn’t about chasing a trend or out-optimizing an algorithm, he said.
“It’s about leaning into the role DMOs already play best: being the most trusted, reliable source of information about their destination,” Corner said.
And it goes further than showing up in AI results. The new era is prompting DMOs to reimagine their role: from marketing entity to structured travel provider for the AI ecosystem.
How DMOs can boost visibility
SimpleView and Granicus completed an analysis of ChatGPT user traffic on destination websites and found that AI is already using DMO content at scale. The analysis showed that in an eight-day period earlier this month, ChatGPT made nearly two million requests to DMO sites seeking to answer traveler questions, Corner said.
And there are steps a DMO can take to boost visibility.
To start, Janette Roush, senior vice president of innovation and chief AI officer for Brand USA, said DMOs should focus on what they can control, namely data.
“AI asks whether the system can accurately describe you,” she said. “If it can, you are in a strong position.”
Roush suggested DMOs start with getting their website schema in order—AI reads code, not design. So content gaps on a DMO’s website can turn into gaps in AI responses. Then, DMOs should write content that doesn’t exist elsewhere, she said.
“Google already has your addresses and hours, but it does not have the Ghostbusters connection to a specific NYC location, or why one neighborhood feels completely different from the one next door.”
That means moving past “Top Ten” lists and toward lesser asked questions—adding insight that no one else has published online, Roush said.
Callum McPherson, founder and CEO of Obvlo, a destination content platform, said the structure of delivery matters, including website structure, content management systems and schema markup. Other factors such as public relations and backlinks are important, too—as is much of what has been relevant to search engine optimization (SEO).
Corner agreed that as AI becomes a bigger part of planning, DMO websites matter differently. DMOs are becoming less of a “digital brochure” and more of a “living knowledge base,” he said.
“That framing aligns with how AI actually behaves. Nearly half of all AI retrievals from DMO sites—about 45%—come from individual listing pages for attractions, restaurants, hotels and tours,” Corner said, citing the Simpleview and Granicus analysis.
DMO websites aren’t just supporting content anymore, they’re providing a factual backbone to AI to provide travelers with answers.
However, establishing authority isn’t just about visibility—it’s also about accuracy.
With the way AI scrapes the web for information to provide relevant answers, some are questioning whether what AI is surfacing is always the best answer.
While DMOs can’t control the travel content third parties publish online, they can establish themselves as an authority so their answers are what AI surfaces, McPherson said.
“We are the local authority that can verify what is real,” Roush said.
If done correctly, DMOs can provide stabilization as AI answers travelers’ questions by acting as a “destination intelligence layer,” Corner said.
Evolving to destination-as-a-service
Going forward, DMOs will need to make sure that AI systems represent their destinations accurately wherever recommendations are surfaced, Roush said.
Content creation work will not disappear, she said. “What changes is our role: We now also steward our destination's data to keep it accurate wherever AI picks it up.”
Roush shared a vision of DMOs operating in a “destination-as-a-service” (DaaS) model at Phocuswright’s Travel Marketing AI Summit in March.
Last week, she told PhocusWire that she sees DaaS being composed of two components.
First, she envisions a verification layer through which AI systems check claims against a local authority. Second is content portability—publishing the DMO’s content through a structured, machine-readable format that AI systems can consume.
“These thoughts are still evolving; we are figuring it out in real time,” Roush said.
She likened the concept to the creation of Google’s General Transit Feed Specification, an open standard created with Portland’s TriMet now used to publish transit data across the globe.
Destinations need something similar—a common schema that AI can consume.
“The idea is that instead of relying on the model’s underlying training data to plan a trip or relying on its search capabilities to search only trusted websites, the LLM pulls verified, structured destination data and storytelling straight from the DMO,” Roush said, adding that could happen via model context protocol (MCP) or through an API.
And demand could extend past general AI search.
Tour operators building proprietary LLMs will need authoritative destination content, and eventually consumers will want to connect personal AI platforms to that content, according to Roush.
She said to picture a traveler asking AI about the order in which to visit the Empire State Building or the Staten Island Ferry in New York.
AI could theoretically answer with real-time subway data, foot traffic and weather updates, pulling in NYC Tourism’s editorial with insight on where to watch the sunset or that specific “Ghostbusters” connection.
“That is the combination DaaS could make possible: real-time operational data plus the first-person storytelling only the DMO can author, arriving in a single query,” Roush said.
The most significant change to come isn’t the disappearance of a DMO website but a repositioning, Corner said.
“The site becomes less of a front door and more of the system underneath everything—a structured intelligence layer that feeds AI answers, social discovery, mapping platforms and conversational planning tools,” Corner said.
When asked about the concept of DaaS generally, McPherson said DMOs are likely going to need to adapt and change significantly.
“What nobody needs is a DMO website that is a whole bunch of listings on local businesses,” McPherson said, noting that’s covered by sites like Tripadvisor.
Instead, he said DMOs should evolve to become highly curated, trusted information guides.
How that information appears, whether through indexing or through an MCP server or an API, remains to be determined, he said.
“Maybe all of the above,” McPherson said. “I could see a DMO piping information directly into LLMs through an MCP and that being a good idea.”
Will they need websites in the future? He’s not sure. But eventually, DMOs could serve as a “bank of information,” McPherson said.
Bottom line: AI is not going to make DMOs less important, Corner said.
“It makes them more important,” Corner said. “The organizations that operationalize trust, structure and care will increasingly shape how their destination is experienced long before a traveler ever books a trip.”