How to get your tourism business featured in Google’s AI Overviews

Wondering how to get your tourism business featured in Google’s AI-powered search results? When someone searches now, Google often shows an AI Overview at the top: a short summary with links to the sources it trusts. It’s changing how travellers discover and trust information online. In this post, we explain how to give your website the best shot at being one of those cited sources, using an approach called AI search optimisation (also known as GEO or AEO).

So what exactly is it, and how do you get in?

What are Google AI Overviews?

An AI Overview is the AI-written summary Google now shows at the top of many searches. It cites a handful of websites as its sources, shown as links and cards. When your page is one of them, Google highlights:

• A clickable blog title
• A short AI-written summary
• Your business name and logo (if detected)
• A thumbnail image
• A publish date (if structured data is present)

It’s Google saying: “These are trusted sources worth checking out.”

Getting cited like this is the goal of AI search optimisation (GEO or AEO), which shapes your content so AI tools can read, trust and surface it. We’ve written an introductory blog post to help you understand it and improve your visibility.

• Higher organic traffic
• Authority in the travel planning journey
• AI visibility across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot

Why it matters for tourism operators

Unlike the old list of ten blue links, AI Overviews are built from context-rich, trustworthy content. It’s not about keyword stuffing or backlink spam. Instead, Google is looking for:

• Well-structured blog content
• Accurate schema markup (BlogPosting, Article, FAQPage, etc.)
• Topical relevance (content that matches searcher intent)
• Author and publish date visibility
• Internal linking to related tours or services

This is about being found AND favoured by AI.

How to get featured in AI Overviews

Here are the practical steps:

1. Write helpful, traveller-focused Blog Posts
   • Answer real visitor questions (e.g. “best time to kayak in 1770” or “how to hike the Great Ocean Walk”)
   • Use subheadings, lists, and short paragraphs for readability
2. Use Schema Markup
   • Add BlogPosting schema (most SEO plugins do this automatically)
   • Include author, datePublished, headline, image, and mainEntityOfPage
3. Include original images
   • These are more likely to be picked up for the thumbnail
   • Optimise image filenames and alt tags (e.g. sunset-kayaking-1770.jpg)
4. Internally Link to Tours, FAQs or Booking Pages
   • Show Google your blog is part of a content cluster, not a standalone island
5. Keep It fresh
   • Update blog posts at least every 6 to 8 months
   • Refresh schema dateModified when content changes
6. Optimise for AI Discovery
   • Answer the question clearly in the first line or two, then add detail
   • Avoid overly salesy language, and focus on helping the traveller decide

Real example: Walk91 featured in Google’s AI results

Need help?

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