Do I need to change my website for AI search? An honest answer.

At some point in the last few months, you have probably wondered what AI means for your website. This is our honest view.

Firstly, let’s address an important fact: Google still handles around 90% of the world's searches. That has not shifted overnight. But how Google displays results is changing. Google AI-generated answers now appear in roughly half of all searches though, and fewer people are clicking through to websites as a result. At the same time, a growing number of travellers are skipping Google entirely and asking tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity directly. "What is a good boutique guesthouse in the Winelands for a long weekend?" They trust the answer they get back.

The reason so much of the current advice is confusing is that it picks a side.

"Google is dead."

"AI is everything."

Neither is true.

How AI tools decide who to recommend

When someone asks an AI tool for a property recommendation, it does not rank pages the way Google does. It reads reviews, listings, travel articles, and other websites, looks for patterns across all of them, and builds an answer from what it consistently finds.

If your property is described accurately and in enough detail across enough of those sources, the AI treats you as a credible answer. If only your own website mentions you, it is less confident.

Which raises an obvious question: if AI is reading all these other sources, do you even need a website anymore?

The answer is yes, more than ever, for two reasons.

Firstly, your website is the only place on the internet (yes I said the internet 👴) where you control the full story. Every other source, your TripAdvisor listing, your Booking.com profile, a travel blog post, tells a partial version of who you are. Your website is where the complete picture lives. AI tools use those external sources to decide whether you are worth recommending. They use your website to understand what they are recommending.

Secondly, the AI still needs somewhere to send people. Getting recommended is only half the equation. The other half is what happens when someone clicks through. If your website is clear, fast, and easy to book, the recommendation converts. If it is not, you have been found and lost in the same moment.

The properties that will do well in AI search are not the ones who abandon their websites in favour of being everywhere else. They are the ones who treat their website as the destination everything else points toward.

So do you need to start from scratch?

No, but that does not mean nothing has changed either.

Properties with clear, well-structured, specific websites are better positioned than they were before. Properties with vague, slow, or poorly organised websites are more vulnerable than they were before. The fundamentals have not changed. They matter more.

The rest of this article explains that that means for you in practice.

Three areas of your website worth updating

When an AI tool is building a response, your website is one of the sources it draws from. What it struggles with is text that sounds beautiful but does not communicate anything concrete.

"A magical escape for discerning travellers" tells an AI almost nothing. "A 4-suite adults-only farm stay in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, 15 minutes from Hermanus, with an equipped kitchen, vegetable garden and a wine cellar stocked exclusively with Walker Bay wines" tells it quite a lot.

Springnest websites are built with this in mind. Your property type, location, room details, and key features are laid out clearly in the places an AI actually looks. But the words themselves are yours to write.

Your homepage text. Read it as a stranger would. Within ten seconds, can they tell what the property is, where it is, who it is for, and why it is worth booking? If not, that is the first place to fix. Specific beats atmospheric, every time.

Your room and accommodation descriptions. These are consistently underdeveloped on hospitality websites. Specific detail, views, room size, what is included, what is nearby, is more useful to AI and to guests than general adjectives.

A frequently asked questions page. AI tools are question-answering machines. If your website already contains clear answers to the questions guests actually ask, "Is it suitable for children?", "How far from the airport?", "What is included in the rate?", those answers can be pulled directly into AI responses. A well-built FAQ page works harder than almost any other content on your site.

Build content around the topics your guests actually search for

Blogging for volume never really worked. Publishing post after post on loosely connected topics, hoping something would surface in Google, was a weak strategy long before AI search arrived. What has changed is that AI has made the gap between purposeful content and aimless content even wider.

AI tools are not just looking for a single page that mentions a topic. They are looking for websites that demonstrate genuine authority on it. A well-structured set of content around a specific theme, "romantic stays in the Winelands", "what to do in the Karoo for a week", "why the Eastern Cape is worth the drive", signals expertise in a way that a homepage alone never can.

This is sometimes called a hub-and-spoke model. A central page covers a topic clearly and in depth. Supporting articles go deeper on specific aspects of it and link back to the centre. Each piece answers a real question a guest would genuinely ask. Together, they tell AI tools that this website knows what it is talking about.

For an independent property that does not mean publishing constantly. It means being deliberate. Three or four well-written, specific articles built around the topics your ideal guests are searching for will do more for your AI visibility than twenty loosely connected posts. Write with a purpose, link them properly, and let the content work together rather than in isolation.

Claim and update the listings AI already trusts

Beyond your website, AI tools reference a handful of sources consistently.

Google Business Profile is the most important. It is free, it is widely trusted, and if it is incomplete or out of date, that is the version of your property the AI is working from. Check that your listing accurately describes what you offer, is correctly categorised, and reflects what a guest would actually find when they arrive.

Review platforms matter too, not just the reviews themselves, but whether you respond to them. An active, engaged property reads differently to an AI than a dormant one.

Your regional tourism body is also worth a look. Tourism associations, wine routes, regional boards, most of them publish content about properties in their area and are actively looking for it. A mention or listing there is free, credible, and exactly the kind of third-party source AI tools treat as reliable.

Collectively, it builds the consistent, cross-platform picture that AI tools use to decide whether you are worth recommending.

Get someone outside your business to write about you

Travel writers, bloggers, and journalists have always been valuable to independent properties, when the fit is right. What has changed is why. In an AI search world, a well-written piece from someone outside your business does something your own website cannot: it tells AI tools that an independent voice has validated you. That gives them a reason to trust your property that no amount of on-site content can replicate on its own. The key word is well-written. A post from someone with no real audience and nothing interesting to say does not move the needle. The goal is a credible, specific piece of content that lives permanently somewhere the AI is likely to find it.

Travel bloggers who cover your region, journalists who write for local lifestyle or travel publications, content creators who already spend time in your area. Many of them are actively looking for properties to write about. A hosted stay in exchange for an honest, permanent piece of content is a reasonable proposition, and it produces something that works for you long after the visit.

One well-written piece from someone outside your business, sitting permanently on their site and describing your property specifically, carries more weight in AI results than many posts on your own blog. The AI is looking for independent voices. A third party saying you are worth visiting means something different than you saying it yourself.

Start with whoever is closest. A regional travel writer. A popular local blogger. Your tourism association's content team. You do not need many. One or two, built up over time, make a meaningful difference.

What your Springnest website is already doing for your AI visibility

Every Springnest website is built on the structural foundations that AI visibility depends on. Clean page hierarchy. Fast load times. Clear property information laid out consistently in the places AI actually looks. Structured data markup that tells AI tools exactly what your property is and where it sits. These are not optional extras or recent additions. They are built into every Springnest website by default.

We did not build it this way because AI search arrived. We built it this way because a well-built website has always required it. What AI search has done is make the gap between a well-built website and a poorly built one impossible to ignore.

Your Springnest website is already on the right side of that gap. The four things above are what you do with that advantage.

If you do one thing this week, open your Google Business Profile and read it as a stranger would. Is it accurate? Is it specific? Does it describe the property you actually have today? That is often the first place an AI looks. It should be the first place you check.

Questions about AI and what it means for your property? Comment below and we'll give you a straight answer.