Perplexity

Travel brands should stop optimizing for ChatGPT and Perplexity alone. That is the main takeaway from the latest referral traffic shift. New March 2026 reporting says ChatGPT still leads AI chatbot referrals at 78.16%, but Gemini rose to 8.65% and passed Perplexity at 7.07%. For hotels, tour operators, DMCs, and resort groups, that is not a trivia point. It is a distribution warning. If your visibility strategy only covers Google SEO plus a little ChatGPT experimentation, you are already behind the way trip planning is fragmenting. Source: Marketing Edge reporting on March 2026 referral shares. ...

Perplexity has evolved from an experimental AI search engine to a serious competitor in travel discovery, now handling 780 million monthly queries and offering direct hotel booking through 140,000 properties, while maintaining a 6.6% share of the AI search market with explosive 800% user growth between 2024-2025. This represents a fundamental shift in travel search behavior that hotels can no longer ignore. While Google maintains dominant market position, Perplexity’s conversational approach and integrated booking capabilities create new opportunities for hotels to capture high-intent travelers who prefer AI-assisted discovery over traditional search results. ...