Being mentioned by AI is not the same as being booked. Right now, many airlines are winning the mention and losing the click.
If your airline is celebrating the fact that ChatGPT or Gemini “knows” your brand, I would hold off on the champagne. New research suggests the assistants are happy to say your name. They are much less keen to send travellers to your website.
What Raven actually found
Consultancy Raven published its Customer Growth Index at the World Aviation Festival in Lisbon this week. It scores the digital experience of 101 airlines. According to a World Aviation Festival release, reported by Runway Girl, the headline numbers are blunt:
- When travellers ask AI assistants about routes or travel needs in an airline’s market, the assistants name that airline in 78% of answers.
- But they link to the airline’s own website in only 27%.
- For 85 of the 101 airlines, the assistants linked to online travel agents and metasearch sites more often than to the airline itself.
- Finnair topped the ranking.
- Raven estimates the shortfalls it measured add up to around $3 billion a year in lost revenue.
Treat the $3 billion as Raven’s estimate, not a settled fact. It comes from a consultancy and I have only seen it in a press release. But you do not need to believe the exact figure to see the problem. The gap between 78% and 27% is huge.
My take: mentions are the new vanity metric
For years, the travel industry has argued about share of voice. Now we have a new version of the same trap. “We appear in AI answers” sounds great in a board deck. It tells you nothing about who gets the traveller at the moment of purchase.
Think about what a traveller does after asking an AI about a route. They want prices, times and a way to buy. If the assistant links to an OTA, they click the OTA. The airline paid for the aircraft, the crew and the brand. The OTA collects the booking.
That is the real story. AI is not removing the middleman. For 85 of 101 airlines, it is promoting the middleman. It is the same pattern I raised in Hilton’s AI agent problem is a gift to the OTAs. The AI knows who you are, then hands the sale to someone else.
Why do assistants link to OTAs?
The release does not explain why, so this is my view, not Raven’s. OTAs and metasearch sites have spent years building pages for every route, date and price. They are easy to read, quote and link to. An airline site is often built around its own booking engine and marketing messages. To an assistant looking for a useful page, the OTA page can look like the better answer.
If that is right, this is not an AI problem. It is a content and search problem that AI has made more visible. It also fits what I wrote in AI knows what a ‘comfortable seat’ means. Airline data doesn’t. Assistants can only use what airlines make clear and findable.
What airlines should do now
Here is where I would start. None of it is glamorous, but all of it is in an airline’s control.
- Measure links, not just mentions. Track how often AI answers name you, and how often they send people to you. If you only count the first, you are flattering yourself.
- Build the best page on the internet for each route. Clear schedules, clear fares, baggage rules, onboard product and how to book. Make it easier to quote than an OTA page. This is classic specialist travel SEO, and it matters more now, not less.
- Treat AI visibility as its own discipline. Knowing which questions assistants answer, which sources they trust and where your brand is missing is what specialist travel AI and GEO work is for.
- Make the click worth taking. If an AI sends someone to your site, the page must load fast and let them buy without friction.
- Do not go to war with metasearch. Free traffic has changed, as I covered in Metasearch isn’t dead. Free traffic is. Aim to be the best answer in every channel.
The uncomfortable bit
Finnair topped the ranking. The release does not say what Finnair did differently, so I will not guess. But it proves one thing: this is not fixed. Some airlines are already better at turning an AI mention into a link to their own site. The rest are, in effect, building awareness for their distributors.
The airlines that win the next few years will not be the ones AI talks about most. They will be the ones AI sends people to.
Over to you
If an AI assistant names your brand but links to someone else, did you really win that customer? And who should be responsible for fixing it: the SEO team, the digital team, or the commercial team that owns the OTA relationships?
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